ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will illustrate through a case presentation the complex relational dynamics emergent when both the psychoanalyst and the patient are impacted by transgenerational transmission of trauma. Specifically, the analyst was the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and the patient’s father, traumatized as a Russian POW, became a Nazi collaborator. The above vignette provides a glimpse into the inner world and experiences that an analyst may bring to this type of therapy encounter. Even in this brief excerpt one can identify dynamics that may facilitate or impede the analyst’s psychoanalytic functioning: a personal knowledge of trauma, desire to repair or heal, tolerance for intense affect, and also defensive mechanisms for avoiding or escaping pain. My purpose is also to demonstrate how these dynamics serve to enhance as well as challenge the analyst’s empathic attunement, holding and containing functions, and ability to take interpretive action. Because a primary source of suffering for a patient affected by transmission of trauma is the unarticulated, intolerable, or dissociated affects and identifications stemming from historical atrocities (Abraham & Torok, 1994; Davoine & Gaudilliere, 2004; Faimberg, 1988), enactment may be an essential vehicle through which this material is accessed and then made available to the analytic process. To this point, I will examine an area of mutual resistance that developed between the patient and me and the process of working through, which enabled the patient to gain greater access to himself. It also provided an opportunity for further growth and healing in the analyst.
