A Child Survivor of the Holocaust Comes Out of Hiding: Two Stories of Trauma

Abstract

This paper is a personal narrative of the author's Holocaust story, the experience of her war trauma as a very young “child survivor,” and aspects of her two therapies and hospitalization experiences, all of which helped to reshape the author's professional endeavors. Within the narrative, she compares experiences in her personal treatments to highlight what main qualities in the therapist's person and stance were both helpful and a hindrance for her, and what elements she, the patient, may have brought to each of these endeavors. Prevailing psychoanalytic culture and the sociopolitical climate of the times are considered as some other variables that affected the treatment.