Name: Psychoanalysis, Historiography, and the Nazi Camps
ISBN: 978-3-031-58009-3

Overview

Authors:

Dan Stone ⁰

Dan Stone
1. Royal Holloway, University of London, London, United Kingdom
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Shows how changes in historiography have made us more alert to the insights of views unfashionable in the postwar era
Looks at the works of Eddy de Wind, Louis Micheels, and Elie A. Cohen, and accounts from female doctors who survived
Explores how psychoanalytic concepts have changed over time in response to greater understanding of the Holocaust

Part of the book series: The Holocaust and its Contexts (HOLC)

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Keywords

Eddy de Wind
Elie A. Cohen
Auschwitz
concentration camps
Louis Micheels

About this book

In the postwar years, Dutch survivors Eddy de Wind, Louis Micheels, and Elie A. Cohen, who went on to become practicing psychoanalysts, penned accounts of their survival of the Nazi camps. Their sober assessments contrast sharply with those by Bruno Bettelheim and Viktor Frankl, which emphasized decisiveness, 'positive thinking', and resistance, missing the fact that many Holocaust victims with those characteristics or other qualities did not survive. De Wind’s, Micheels’ and Cohen’s accounts are more sober, (self-)critical, and shaped by analytical practice. By analyzing them anew and comparing them with accounts by female doctors who survived Block 10 in Auschwitz, this book argues that their theories of survival accord with contemporary sensibilities in psychoanalysis and Holocaust historiography. Psychoanalytic concepts have changed over time in response to greater understanding of the Holocaust and recent Holocaust historiography makes us more receptive to insights that were unfashionable in the first postwar decades.

Reviews

“This ground-breaking new book takes a vital approach to Holocaust survival and its psychoanalytic dimension. By analysing insights from survivor-doctors ranging from Eddy de Wind to Alina Brewda, Dan Stone shows how psychoanalysis has played a major role in our understanding of the wartime genocide, through focusing on psychic responses to the terrible reality of the camp universe and the high emotional cost of remaining alive. This crucial work argues for awareness of the irrational and frightening in an analytical understanding of the Holocaust as a ’break with civilization’.”—Sue Vice, University of Sheffield, UK

“Dan Stone tells a complex and nuanced tale about the interwoven development of psychoanalysis, Holocaust historiography, and our understanding of Holocaust survival. In so doing, he amasses details and sources many of which have been overlooked, or not contextualized, even by experts in our field.”
—Henry Greenspan, author of On Listening to Holocaust Survivors

Authors and Affiliations

Royal Holloway, University of London, London, United Kingdom

Dan Stone

About the author

Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is the author, most recently, of Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after World War II and the Holocaust (2023) and The Holocaust: An Unfinished History (2023).

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Psychoanalysis, Historiography, and the Nazi Camps
Book Subtitle: Accounting for Survival
Authors: Dan Stone
Series Title: The Holocaust and its Contexts
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-58009-3Due: 23 June 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-58010-9Due: 23 June 2024
Series ISSN: 2731-5711
Series E-ISSN: 2731-572X
Edition Number: 1

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Psychoanalysis, Historiography, and the Nazi Camps