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Abstract
This paper draws a parallel between the biographical narrative life‐story interview technique and psychoanalytic therapy. It points out that this type of interview may, in some cases, assist with the re‐construction of a new narrative identity of the interviewee. Where there is practically no intervention by the interviewer it can do this just by providing the interviewee with a situation where there is someone who does not want anything other than to listen to her life narrative. Through this process there can be a therapeutic effect which is more than a joyful by‐product, which the interviewees not only unconsciously experience, but for which they overtly express their gratitude.
The paper features the case of such a woman, who was sterilised in Auschwitz. It also tells the story of a man where the interviewer experienced incredibly strong resistance and projective identification throughout the interview. This resulted in almost insoluble guilt in the interviewer. The paper tries to interpret the story of the interviewee, who is also a Shoah survivor, and is unable to make some things in his life story explicit. The interpretation suggests that he might have killed some Arrow Cross officers in order to take their uniforms to help others. He has lived for the last 60 years with feelings of insoluble guilt. The question is raised whether in this case the interview had a similar therapeutic effect to the first case or not.
Notes
1. Excellently discussed by Sebastian Haffner in his book Defying Hitler (Haffner, Citation2002), explaining why his personal story in Germany in the 1930s is important to understand the period as a whole.
2. The method of analysis was developed by Gabriele Rosenthal. See detailed analysis of her method in her book (Rosenthal, Citation1995). While she uses a ‘Gestalt’ psychological basis, in my understanding her method has a lot in common with psychoanalysis for what we dig up is unconscious content rather than Gestalts or exclusively Gestalts.
3. A detailed analysis of this effect of the narrative interview technique is given by Gabriele Rosenthal (Citation2003).
4. The biblical word Shoa (
), also spelled Shoah and Sho'ah, meaning ‘calamity’ in Hebrew (and also used to refer to ‘destruction’ since the Middle Ages) is the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust. It is preferred by the author along with many others due to the supposed theologically offensive nature of the original meaning of the word holocaust as a reference to a sacrifice to a god. There is also concern that the particular significance of the Holocaust would be lessened as the use of the term becomes increasingly widespread in the latter half of the twentieth century to refer generically to any mass killings.
5. Mauthausen Survivors Documentation Project of Austrian Innernministerium, lead by Gerhard Botz, in Hungary Éva Kovács.
6. The previous interview was a structured one, where Márta had to answer pre‐formulated questions that did not reflect directly on her story.
7. The interview was conducted in my project ‘Totalitarianism and Holocaust’ within the broader project ‘Totalitarianism and Europe’, led by Mihály Vajda. There is another paper with co‐author Dóri Szego˝ on Gyula's story (Vajda & Szego˝, Citation2006).
8. I have to thank my student Dóri Szego˝ for conducting the interview within the framework of my above‐mentioned research.
9. The Arrow Cross Party (Hungarian: Nyilaskeresztes Párt‐Hungarista Mozgalom, literally ‘Arrow Cross Party–Hungarianist Movement’) was a pro‐German anti‐Semitic fascist party led by Ferenc Szálasi which ruled Hungary from 15 October 1944 to January 1945. During its short rule, 80,000 Jews, including many women, children and old people, were deported from Hungary to their deaths. After the war, Szálasi and other Arrow Cross leaders were tried as war criminals by Hungarian courts.
10. The text of the interview was transcribed phonetically. For the sake of legibility though, the excerpts in this paper are spelled in a way that is closer to orthography; conventional punctuation rules, however, are not observed: commas and full stops are used only at places where such stops were clearly indicated by the interviewee's tone. At the same time, only a few of the transcription marks were retained: emphatically said words are in bold type; * means short pause, while the number in parenthesis stands for the seconds of longer pauses. Marks of meta‐communication are in double parenthesis,/meaning the starting point of meta‐communication. The characteristics of spoken language, colloquialisms, faulty inflection, repetitions, moans are left unchanged, or are marked.
11. It was a Jewish sports club of the time.
12. In Fyodor Dostoevsky's (1994) Crime and Punishment the poor student, Raskolnikoff decides to murder, as a matter of principle, an old woman pawnbroker — having elaborated a convoluted programme of self‐justification for his planned crime in which he effectively elevates himself to the level of an amoral superman of Napoleonic stature, quite above the law.
13. The psychoanalytical term ‘projective identification’ refers to a behaviour, when in therapy the patient, in our case the interviewee, induces his/her own unconscious feeling in the therapist, or in our case the interviewer. This usually happens to unbearable unconcious emotions, and it can be present in everyday life situations as well.