Individuals with Nazi and Nazi-Sympathizer Family History: Psychotherapeutic Issues.

This article presents the findings of an ongoing supervision group (founded in 1999) researching the after-effects of the Nazi period on people in psychotherapy in Germany today. The unacknowledged collective shadow hidden behind half-truths, prevarications, and silence itself prevents a genuine working through of the Nazi past. Patients' lack of knowledge concerning their families' own past leads to unconscious guilt, which often then leads to psychosomatic disturbances. But this is not only a problem in Germany. Unacknowledged collective shadows are prevalent in many countries worldwide. Psychological difficulties on the individual and societal levels result.

Holocaust victims and perpetrators.

The author presents here the results of 12 years of work with a group of psychotherapists in Germany on the subject of the after-effects of the Nazi period on people in psychotherapeutic treatment today. She identifies several typical complexes concerned with issues of identity, loyalty, relationship, authority and aggression. Case examples and references to texts from the Nazi period illustrate the phenomena. The author's concern is that psychotherapists be aware of their own collective (family, ethnic, national) past so that they can fully engage in their work without having to repress painful collective complexes. In training analysis this aspect of the work is especially important so that the following generations of analysts can experience the importance of this level of the collective unconscious.

The reception of Holocaust research in the world of psychology.

After having spoken to lay and professional audiences in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, England, France and in the United States on the effects of the Shoah on people in psychotherapy today and found varying reactions, I decided to pursue the question in a more consequential way. I devised a questionnaire which I sent to a large number of international psychoanalytic societies. My initial impressions were confirmed: Freudian societies generally devote more work to the topic. Some Jungian societies with especially interested individuals have also devoted a substantial amount of work to the Shoah and its aftermaths. The Jungian hesitancy has to do with our often more archetypal approach and with shame about Jung's statements on the Jewish archetype. On the collective level, the presence of a survivor population seems to make research on the topic more difficult. A certain amount of time must evolve before a society (be it professional, individual or political) deals with collective trauma, be it the Shoah or political oppression. On the personal level, intimacy (also in future, adult relationships) seems blocked when fantasies about parents' implications in the Shoah prevail. The bottom line of both phenomena is taboo, a prohibition against touching tameh. I propose that the IAAP supports research projects on the Shoah. They could also, as the Freudians do, offer a special prize at each international conference for the best piece of research on the topic of collective trauma.

A space for play / A space for play

Basic to the junguian paradigm is an imaginative approach an openness to play. The board game which I have developed is a kind of psychodrama with objects chosen and placed on a wooden board. Here I pay special attention to dynamic developments which emerge out of the transference situation. A deeply experiences, permits work on a deeper level of th psyche than verbal therapy generally allows for (AU)