The Wounded Healer: Finding Meaning in Suffering (original) (raw)
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The Meaning of Stories Without Meaning: A Post-Holocaust Experiment
2015
Dissonance exists in efforts to communicate about suffering and despair. Showcasing common societal flawed reactions to despair begs for discourse to create a more communicatively healthy response. Attempting to communicate the suffering of others and feeling like I was failing at that goal led to my own suffering. Using writing as a method of personal healing created an intersection of personal narratives of suffering and victim’s narratives (which can arguable only allow for the co-opting of the story and narcissism). Grappling with the limits of writing to heal provided a lens to see the victim’s narratives in such a way that created self-reflexivity. Rather than equating the suffering of the victim’s to my own, which I absolutely do not do, instead I found potential answers to despair in the post-Holocaust theologians. This dissertation is an experiment in trying to communicate suffering and meaning in a post-Holocaust world where my story and the survivors stories both have sim...
1997
A pragmatic existential therapy was developed to help patients stuck in intractable life situations make the psychic turn of death camp survivors who learned to adapt to savage conditions in extremity. Using a model of absurd heroism inimical to therapies seeking to modify intrapsychic dynamics, this hardminded intervention thematizes (a) the clinical activation of biological intelligence; (b) reconciliation with the existential situation; (c) problem-solving; (d) therapeutic shaping of realistic, life-affirming attitudes; and (e) absurd happiness. Phenomenological evidence of the survivors' existential posture is drawn from death camp literature, while a comparative case application features a patient afflicted with neurofibromatosis. THE ABSURD SENSIBILITY OF EXISTENTIAL THERAPY Existential therapy is not premised on a comforting view of the human condition. Rather, like the stark philosophy of life and death from which it sprang, existential therapy is rooted in a hardmuided realism that issues from a tragic, frequently absurd view of human existence. In this regard, Hemingway (1960) once remarked that tragic heroes are human beings destroyed but not defeated. This applies exquisitely to the 40 survivors of Treblinka. Mind you, any literal comparison of these survivors with patients I have treated in the psychiatric service of an urban hospital would be an egregious insult, both to those who didn't survive bestial conditions, and
History of the Human Sciences , 2004
In light of the great interest in interdisciplinary trauma research, this article explores the philosophical-literary concept of cultural trauma from the perspective of psychiatric and psychoanalytical studies of the long-term consequences of the Holocaust. The extensive literature on the psychological after-effects of the Final Solution offers an exceptional opportunity to study the aftermath of extreme violence from different subject positions, including the perspectives of survivors, perpetrators, bystanders, and their descendants. Moving from the epicenter of the historical event of the Holocaust to its psychological periphery, the survey reveals how much the concept of trauma has changed in the course of five decades as a result of political and cultural developments. But the review of the literature also demonstrates that none of the existing concepts of Holocaust trauma is well suited to explain the effects of Holocaust representations on individuals or collectives who encounter the Final Solution only as a media event for educational or entertainment purposes.
Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne, 2000
The Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jewish people ended over 50 years ago, but both public and scholarly interest in the Holocaust remains intense and has a salient psychological component. The Holocaust continues to be the setting for many novels, plays, and films, and is also frequently invoked as a metaphor in policy debates such as in justification of the NATO air attacks against Yugoslavia. Holocaustrelated psychological research can serve as a basis for better understanding of subsequent, and perhaps of future, ethnopolitical violence, the focus of the ongoing joint CPA-APA Ethnopolitical Warfare Initiative. This research includes theories of why people participate in genocide, the analysis of bystander and rescuer behaviour, and the development of interventions that may help to prevent or de-escalate ethnic conflicts and to ameliorate their effects. Psychological studies of Holocaust survivors have contributed to our knowledge of PTSD, the transmission of trauma to subsequent generations, and the possibility of coping and recovery after extreme stress.
Failed empathy--a central theme in the survivor's holocaust experience
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 1989
... Our data originate from our psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic work with survivors and their chil-dren as well as from a selected number of videotaped interviews of survi-vors at the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University. ...
Trauma, Healing and The Reconstruction Of Truth
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2014
The author analyzes recent developments in trauma theory, made necessary especially after the massive psychic traumas following World War II and the Shoah. The theories of Freud and Ferenczi are analyzed, especially, their different views of reality and their clinical attitude. When working with survivors of any trauma (from incest to genocide) it is necessary to reconstruct the historical details as carefully as possible, with the appropriate timing. Psychoanalysis is therefore viewed as an ethical and political practice similar to testimony, allowing the reconstruction of truth within the community and interrupting the cycle of the death instinct from one generation to the next.
Existential Trauma revised v1 0
Literature has suggested that the cyclical nature of psychological trauma can lead to enduring long-term effects on individuals and those around them. This review examines the effects of psychological trauma and its relationship with existential therapy, not to endorse a particular approach in isolation, but to explore a variety of understandings of psychological trauma pertinent to counselling psychology. Despite being relatively unexplored with regards to psychological trauma, favourable empirical evidence is beginning to amass for existential therapy. A review of the contributions (and limitations) of existing approaches to trauma therapy is initially considered before the focus turns to the contribution that existential therapy might make. van Deurzen's existential dimensions (1997) and Jacobsen's existential conceptualisations of crisis are considered in some depth, along with the limitations and empirical challenges of existential therapy. Speculative practical and therapeutic implications are identified and relevant future research is suggested.
From Post Holocaust Theology to Post Holocaustic Theologies Fabiano Soares20191113 106486 1lz53l
From Post Holocaust Theology to Post Holocaustic Theologies Fabiano Soares20191113 106486 1lz53l, 2019
It is a very brief essay that aims to show a coherent legitimate Post-Holocaustic Theology heritage on Modern Theologies, such as Feminist/Womanist and Black/Indigenous Theologies, not only by means of Theological Dialog but in an existential level, being, in some cases easy to call all the Theologies that pledge for a responsible ecclesiastic answer from the Churchs towards suffering groups - Holocaustic Theologies! It uses Post-Holocaust Theological bases to produce dialog tools.