![]() Fifty-six adults born to mothers who were survivors of Nazi concentration camps and 54 adults born to parents who immigrated to Israel before 1939 with their own parents (non-HSO) were recruited randomly from an Israeli sample. This study examined the interpersonal problems and central relationship patterns of Holocaust Survivors’ Offspring (HSO) who were characterised by different patterns of parental communication of their parents’ Holocaust trauma. The experiences of not being understood by others, not understanding others, and the lack of shared understanding involved in failed intersubjectivity are discussed and related to the importance of opening lines of communication between survivors and their descendents. The echoes of the parental trauma in the recollected loneliness accounts are conceptualized as representing a sense of failed intersubjectivity in these interpersonal processes. A narrative analysis of their recollected accounts of loneliness in childhood and adolescence yielded 4 major categories of loneliness experiences in the context of growing up in Holocaust survivor families: (a) echoes of parental intrusive traumatic memories (b) echoes of parental numbing and detachment (c) perceived parents’ caregiving style and (d) social comparison with other families, in particular the lack of grandparents. These adults, children of mothers who had survived Nazi concentration camps, were recruited from a random nonclinical Israeli sample. Intergenerational consequences of extensive trauma experienced by parents for the loneliness experienced by their children were explored in 52 adults (26 men and 26 women) who grew up in Holocaust survivor families. Finally, we will discuss the social and methodological implications of our study. ![]() We will trace processes of development and changes in these relationships over the 12 years. We will examine the relationships of the women in these three generations, both with significant others and with each other. The current analyses are based on the perspective that, through life narratives, it is possible to view the transformations of relationships over time and that these transformations in relationships are central to personal development. The first series of interviews were conducted in the early 1990s within the framework of a pioneering study in which, for the first time, three generations in each of 20 families were interviewed and their narratives analyzed. Its uniqueness lies in its double analysis of the stories told by these women, with an interval of 12 years between telling. The current article presents an analysis of the life stories of three generations of women within a family headed by a Holocaust survivor. ![]() Only near the end of the war was it possible to begin working through the regressive transferences evoked by the traumatic situation through increased insight, or to attempt to disentangle the present from the past through interpretation. Thus, strengthening the ego forces became the focus of treatment during the war period, and this was facilitated by relational factors. These patients reacted to the existential threat with feelings of impotence and terror, perceiving it as a repetition of the past. The impact of the Gulf War on the children of Holocaust survivors was particularly strong. An important analytic goal is to help these patients become aware of the unconscious meaning embedded in their acting out through increased insight, so they will be able to extricate themselves from the need to concretise and verbalise instead. A particular characteristic of children of survivors is their tendency to recreate their parents’ experiences in their own life through concretisation. In this paper, I have attempted to explore the curative effect of insight and relational factors in the analyses of Holocaust survivors’ offspring before and during the Gulf War.
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