Holocaust Studies and the Nature of Evidence: Commentary on Gomolin’s “The Intergenerational Transmission of Holocaust Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Theory Revisited”

Abstract

This commentary addresses several problematic aspects of Gomolin’s paper, which includes a critique of the theory of transgenerational transmission of Holocaust trauma. These aspects are the following: a) the author’s evaluation of psychoanalysis and her validation of analytic theory; b) the author’s criticism of common psychoanalytic concepts relating to trauma; c) the approach to the universal theory of transgenerational transmission of trauma; d) the inaccurate use of concepts and the weakness of the author’s arguments; e) the lack of evidence of her conclusions; f) the author’s political bias and the way she relates to her Jewish identity.

Keywords:

• Transgenerational transmission of trauma
• chosen trauma
• enactment
• evaluation of analytic theory
• critical realism

Notes

1 I had the opportunity to discuss this paper with two colleagues and friends, Dr. Warren Poland and Dr. Ira Brenner, and am grateful for their input.

2 I base my opinion on “critical realism,” which claims that observation has epistemological priority over conceptualization. The view of “critical realism” in the light of the analyst’s subjectivity has been explored in depth by the Hanlys (2001).

3 To be valid, conclusions must be drawn from evidence, such as clinical evidence. Theories can raise questions, but only evidence can support conclusions.

4 I wish to point out that in cases in which the parents succeeded in working through feelings of mourning and guilt connected to their traumatic past, and in conveying their history to their children in a healthier way, the children have a much smaller tendency to enact their parents’ experiences in their own lives (Kogan 1995, 2015).

5 The question of how much of the pathology that one sees may be attributed to the parents’ Holocaust experience and how much to other incidental and personal sources was addressed by many analysts and summarized by Bergmann 1982.

6 The use of metaphors in psychoanalysis was explored by Arlow (1979), who pointed out the role of the metaphor as a derivative of the basic, persistent unconscious fantasy life of the patient. Metaphor is a way by which what was previously unknown may be recognized and reconceptualized in a novel way.

7 I have explored and illustrated in depth the phenomenon of enactment in the life of Holocaust survivors’ offspring (see Kogan 1995, 2002, 2003, 2015, 2016).

8 It is interesting to note that deeply introspective memoirs, although not on their own reliable evidence, repeatedly offer strong support of this observation. See, for instance, Michael Arlen’s Passage to Ararat, a report of his own introspective discovery of the roots of his denial of Armenian identity as they derived from his father’s unspoken inner conflicts in that area (Poland 2018).

9 For an extensive review of the history of this change, see Volkan (2019).