The Collective Silence German Identity and the Legacy of Shame

In "The Collective Silence," German psychotherapists explore the ways in which a legacy of shame, guilt, and abuse has conspired against families and hidden aspects of German identity. Seeking to shed light on the collective silence surrounding the Holocaust in Germany, the contributors offer compelling accounts, histories, and experiences that illuminate the ways in which contemporary Germans continue to grapple with the consequences of the Holocaust. Denial in the older generations, as well as anger and confusion in the younger ones, comes vividly to the surface in these evocative stories of coping and healing. Told from the vantage points both of therapists and of patients, these stories encompass the psychological plight of all those facing the legacy of genocide -- from the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi official to the children of Jewish immigrants, from those raised in the Hitler Youth Movement to those born well after the war.

The silence surrounding the Holocaust continues to prevent healing - whether of the victims, Nazis, or the generations that followed them. The telling of the stories surrounding the Holocaust - all the stories - is essential if we are to understand what happened, recognize the part of human nature that allows such atrocities to occur, and realize the hope that we can prevent it from happening again. Seeking to shed light on the collective silence surrounding the Holocaust in Germany, the contributors offer compelling accounts, histories, and experiences that illuminate the ways in which contemporary Germans continue to grapple with the consequences of the Holocaust. Denial in the older generations, as well as anger and confusion in the younger ones, comes vividly to the surface in these evocative stories of coping and healing. Told from the vantage points both of therapists and of patients, these stories encompass the psychological plight of all those facing the legacy of genocide - from the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi official to the children of Jewish immigrants, from those raised in the Hitler Youth Movement to those born well after the war.

Translator's Introduction- Gordon WheelerThe EditorsThe TranslatorsThe ContributorsPsychological Symptoms of the Nazi Heritage: Introduction to the German Edition- Barbara Heimannsberg and Christoph J. SchmidtChapter 1. Psychotherapy and the Nazi Past: A Search for Concrete Forms- Richard PickerChapter 2. Farewell to My Father- Irene AnhaltChapter 3. I Too Took Part: Confrontations with One's Own History in Family Therapy- Heidi SalmChapter 4. The Psychoanalyst Without a Face: Psychoanalysis Without a History- Sammy SpeierChapter 5. Family Reconstruction in Germany: An Attempt to Confront the Past- Margarete HeckerChapter 6. Effects of Lingering Nazi Worldviews in Family Life- Almuth MassingChapter 7. "How Can I Develop on a Mountain of Corpses?" Observations from a Theme-Centered Interaction Seminar with Isaac Zieman- Wolfgang BornebuschChapter 8. Unwilling to Admit, Unable to See: Therapeutic Experiences with the National Socialist "Complex"- Waltraud Silke BehrendtChapter 9. The Dialogue Between the Generations About the Nazi Era- Helm Stierlin:Chapter 10. The Work of Remembering: A Psychodynamic View of te Nazi Past as It Exists in Germany Today- Barbara HeimannsbergChapter 11. The Difficulty of Speaking the Unspeakable: How an Article Entitled "The Nazi Past in Psychotherapy" Was Never Written- Irene Wielp tzChapter 12. Holocaust Perpetrators and their Children: A Paradoxical Morality- Dan Bar-OnChapter 13. "Guilty!" Thoughts in Relation to My Own Past: Letters to My Son- Gunnar von SchlippeTranslator's Afterword- Cynthia Oudejans Harris

Barbara Heimannsberg and Christoph J. Schmidt have private psychotherapy practices in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.