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Dark Traces of the Past

Dark Traces of the Past

Jurgen Straub | Jorn Rusen

(2011)

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Abstract

The relationship between historical studies and psychoanalysis remains an open debate that is full of tension, in both a positive and a negative sense. In particular, the following question has not been answered satisfactorily: what distinguishes a psychoanalytically oriented study of historical realities from a historical psychoanalysis? Skepticism and fear of collaboration dominate on both sides. Initiating a productive dialogue between historical studies and psychoanalysis seems to be plagued by ignorance and, at times, a sense of helplessness. Interdisciplinary collaborations are rare. Empirical research, formulation of theory, and the development of methods are essentially carried out within the conventional disciplinary boundaries. This volume undertakes to overcome these limitations by combining psychoanalytical and historical perspectives and thus exploring the underlying “unconscious” dimensions and by informing academic and nonacademic forms of historical memory. Moreover, it puts special emphasis on transgenerational forms of remembrance, on the notion of trauma as a key concept in this field, and on case studies that point the way to further research.


Contraryto the functions ordinarily focused upon, Dark Traces of the Pastopens a considerably expanded scope of functions for psychoanalytically oriented historical studies, designating potentials of psychoanalysis that historical research and historiography will not be able to ignore at length without disadvantage.”  ·  SirReadaLot


Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Contents v
List of Figures vii
Preface to the Series ix
Psychoanalysis, History, and Historical Studies: A Systematic Introduction 1
Part I — Construction of Memory and Historical Consciousness 17
Chapter 1 — Three Memory Anchors: Affect, Symbol, Trauma 19
Chapter 2 — Origin and Ritualization of Historical Awareness: A Group Analytic View and an Ethnohermeneutic Case Reconstruction 33
Chapter 3 — Identity, Overvaluation, and Representing Forgetting 45
Part II — Shoah: The Chain of Generations 67
Chapter 4 — Transgenerational Trauma, Identification, and Historical Consciousness 69
Chapter 5 — On the Myth of Objective Research after Auschwitz: Unconscious Entanglements with the National Socialist Past in the Investigation of Long-Term Psychosocial Consequences of the Shoah in the Federal Republic of Germany 83
Chapter 6 — Understanding Transgenerational Transmission: The Burden of History in Families of Jewish Victims and their National Socialist Victimizers 101
Part III — Case Studies in Psychoanalysis and Literary Critics 137
Chapter 7 — On Social and Psychological Foundation of Anti-Semitism 139
Chapter 8 — From Religious Fantasies of Omnipotence to Scientific Myths of Emancipation: Freud and the Dialectics of Psychohistory 159
Chapter 9 — Working toward a Discourse of Shame: A Psychoanalytical Perspective on Postwar German Literary Criticism 186
Bibliography 202
Notes on the Contributors 214
Index 217