ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on the themes and process of a conference organized by Thomas Kohut and the author through the Erikson Institute at the Austen Riggs Center. The title of the conference was “The Legacy of Perpetrator Trauma in Groups and Families” as experienced by descendants of Nazis, generations not guilty in deed but affected by powerful feelings of guilt, shame, and horror by association. The chapter examines the nature of the transmission of this trauma, the forms it takes and some of the group dynamics that play out in relation to it. It also explores dream processes of the perpetrators’ era through a remarkable dream journal from the 1930s. A natural experiment in what is called “social dreaming,” this record of ordinary German citizens’ dreams illuminates the steady assault on a person’s inner life and the way that massive social trauma and malignant authoritarianism contribute to profound, collective dissociation and the licensing of horrific destructiveness.
