An international group of psychoanalysts and film scholars address the enduring emotional legacy of the Holocaust in Cinematic Reflections on the Legacy of the Holocaust: Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Particular focus is given to how second and third generation survivors have explored and confronted the psychic reverberations of Holocaust trauma in cinema.

This book focuses on how film is particularly suited to depict Holocaust experiences with vividness and immediacy. The similarity of moving images and sound to our dream experience allows access to unconscious processing. Film has the potential to reveal the vast panorama of Holocaust history as well as its intrapsychic reverberations. Yet despite the recent prominence of Holocaust films, documentaries, and TV series as well as scholarly books and memoirs, these works lack a psychoanalytic optic that elucidates themes such as the repetition compulsion, survival guilt, disturbances in identity, and disruption of mourning that are underlying leitmotifs.

Cinematic Reflections on the Legacy of the Holocaust will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and therapists as well as to scholars in trauma, film, and Jewish studies. It is also of interest to those concerned with the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities and their long-term effects.

About the Author

Diana Diamond is Professor of Psychology at City University of New York, and is on the faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the Weill Cornell Medical College. She has written numerous articles on personality disorders, attachment theory and research, mental representation and the application of psychoanalytic theory to the understanding of narrative and symbolism in cinema. She is the co-author or co-editor of four books, including Attachment and Sexuality (Routledge, 2008) and the forthcoming A Clinical Guide to Treating Narcissistic Disorders: A Transference Focused Psychotherapy (Guilford Press). She is also in private practice of individual and couple therapy and psychoanalysis in New York City.

Bruce Sklarew is a practicing analyst in Chevy Chase, MD who co-edited four books, including The Last Emperor: Multiple Takes (Wayne State) and Bernardo Bertolucci: Interviews (University of Mississippi), and authored over fifty papers on film and applied analysis in communities. He originated Recover, a bereavement program at the D.C. Morgue. He is the film editor for The American Psychoanalyst and The International Journal for Applied Psychoanalytic Study.

Reviews

"This is an astonishing book. It triggers a passionate reading through images of films representing the unrepresentable Shoah and their discussion from various psychoanalytic points of view. Indeed, transference leads the reader to the discovery of his own untold history - I unexpectedly found myself in Mathausen, where my uncle had survived but of which he never spoke. At the same time, it offers a wealth of information on the historical evolution of cinematic reflections on the Holocaust since WWII. Its plurality of approaches culminates in the last chapter's discussion, which keeps the reader at the edge of her seat as she sheds her prejudices and takes part on the ongoing process of witnessing events, as says Dori Laub, without a witness."-Francoise Davoine, Retired Faculty member, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; former member of the Ecole Freudienne; Member, ISPS

"Bruce Sklarew and Diana Diamond have gathered inquiries covering representation, memorialization, trauma and transcendence. The result is a collection that illuminates the intersections of cinematic storytelling and psychoanalytic exploration. With a focus on seminal movies such as The Pawnbroker, Hiroshima mon amour and Son of Saul, it calls attention to the horrific as well as therapeutic aspects of films that have confronted the Shoah and its legacy."-Annette Insdorf, Columbia University Film Professor and author of Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust

"This is an astonishing book. It triggers a passionate reading through images of films representing the unrepresentable Shoah and their discussion from various psychoanalytic points of view. Indeed, transference leads the reader to the discovery of his own untold history - I unexpectedly found myself in Mathausen, where my uncle had survived but of which he never spoke. At the same time, it offers a wealth of information on the historical evolution of cinematic reflections on the Holocaust since WWII. Its plurality of approaches culminates in the last chapter's discussion, which keeps the reader at the edge of her seat as she sheds her prejudices and takes part on the ongoing process of witnessing events, as says Dori Laub, without a witness."-Francoise Davoine, Retired Faculty member, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; former member of the Ecole Freudienne; Member, ISPS

"Bruce Sklarew and Diana Diamond have gathered inquiries covering representation, memorialization, trauma and transcendence. The result is a collection that illuminates the intersections of cinematic storytelling and psychoanalytic exploration. With a focus on seminal movies such as The Pawnbroker, Hiroshima mon amour and Son of Saul, it calls attention to the horrific as well as therapeutic aspects of films that have confronted the Shoah and its legacy."-Annette Insdorf, Columbia University Film Professor and author of Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust

Book Information
ISBN 9781138306981
Author Diana Diamond
Format Paperback
Page Count 254
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 362g