Children of Social Trauma : Hungarian Psychoanalytic Case Studies

Observing the ways in which a large group of people may experience collective trauma, which can have identifiable effects in succeeding generations, the author has pioneered individual and group therapy with Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

She has identified 'Holocaust syndrome' where neurotic symptoms are expressed in the children and grandchildren of socially traumatized individuals, and in this book explores the use of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in work with the psychological effects of social trauma on succeeding generations.

The text describes case studies of work with three generations of Holocaust survivors' families in Hungary, where 75 per cent of the Jewish population, a total of 600,000 people, died in the Holocaust.

The case of Hungary is unusual in that the Holocaust survivors were not deported, but were reinstated in their own country, which gives this group a unique psychological profile.