Meeting Across History: A Dialogue

Abstract

In the coda, Frie and Grand mutually explore what facilitated their process of interaction and dialogue. Frie is the grandson of a Nazi party member, and Grand is the daughter of an American Jewish soldier who liberated Dachau. Through Frie’s article and Grand’s discussion, they worked together to find an I–Thou relation in the shadow of this history. Their interaction in the coda focuses on issues of historicity, ethical clarity, and moral responsibility. They explore our internalized perpetrator legacies—how these legacies live within us, and how we can know, contain, and repair these histories. They examine the prevalence of bystander cultures, past and present, and consider the importance of acknowledging and addressing the transmission of perpetrator histories.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roger Frie

Roger Frie, Ph.D., Psy.D., is Professor of Education at Simon Fraser University; Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver; and Faculty and Supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute in New York. He is a psychoanalyst and psychologist in private practice and a historian and philosopher by training. He has published numerous books and is author most recently of Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust, which won the 2017 Canadian Jewish Literary Award and the 2018 Western Canada Jewish Book Award, and editor of History Flows Through Us: Germany, the Holocaust and the Importance of Empathy. He is Editorial Board Member of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Psychoanalytic Discourse and a former editor of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context.

Sue Grand

Sue Grand, Ph.D., is Faculty and Supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; Faculty, the Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis; Faculty, the trauma program at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies; Visiting Scholar at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; and a Fellow at the Institute for Psychology and the Other. She is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. She is the author of The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective and The Hero in the Mirror: From Fear to Fortitude. She is a coeditor of several books, including, with Jill Salberg, The Wounds of History and Trans-generational Transmission and the Other. Dr. Grand is in private practice in New York City and in Teaneck, NJ.