Description
Berghahn Books Dark Traces of the Past Psychoanalysis and Historical Thinking 2011 Edition by Jurgen Straub, Joern Rusen
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. Table of contents :- Preface to the SeriesAlon ConfinoList of FiguresIntroduction: Psychoanalysis, History and Historical Studies: A Systematic IntroductionJurgen StraubPART I: THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEMORY AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESSChapter 1. Three Memory Anchors: Affect, Symbol, TraumaAlaida AssmannChapter 2. Origin and Ritualisation of Historical Awareness: A Group Analytic View and an Ethnohermeneutic Case ReconstructionHans BosseChapter 3. Identity, Overvaluation and Re-presentating ForgettingHinderk M. EmrichPART II: SHOAH: THE CHAIN OF GENERATIONSChapter 4. Transgenerational Trauma, Identification and Historical ConsciousnessWerner BohleberChapter 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 GermanyKurt GrunbergChapter 6. Understanding Transgenerational Transmission: The Burden of History in Families of Jewish Victims and their National Socialist PerpetratorsJurgen StraubPART III: CASE STUDIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS AND LITERARY CRITICSChapter 7. On Social and Psychological Foundations of Anti-SemitismKarola BredeChapter 8. From Religious Fantasies of Omnipotence to Scientific Myths of Emancipation: Freud and the Dialectics of PsychohistoryJose BrunnerChapter 9. Working Towards a Discourse of Shame: (Working with Shame Discourse) - A Psychoanalytical Perspective on Postwar German Literary CriticismIrmgard WagnerBibliographyNotes on the ContributorsIndex