The Power of Witnessing

Reflections, Reverberations, and Traces of the Holocaust: Trauma, Psychoanalysis, and the Living Mind

Nancy R. Goodman, Marilyn B. Meyers, Nancy R. Goodman, Marilyn B. Meyers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136978913
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del Holocausto

Witnessing comes in as many forms as the trauma that gives birth to it. The Holocaust, undeniably one of the greatest traumatic events in recent human history, still resonates into the twenty-first century. The echoes that haunt those who survived continue to reach their children and others who did not share the experience directly. In what ways is this massive trauma processed and understood, both for survivors and future generations?

The answer, as deftly illustrated by Nancy Goodman and Marilyn Meyers, lies in the power of witnessing: the act of acknowledging that trauma took place, coupled with the desire to share that knowledge with others to build a space in which to reveal, confront, and symbolize it. As the contributors to this book demonstrate, testimonial writing and memoir, artwork, poetry, documentary, theater, and even the simple recollection of a memory are ways that honor and serve as forms of witnessing. Each chapter is a fusion of narrative and metaphor that exists as evidence of the living mind that emerges amid the dead spaces produced by mass trauma, creating a revelatory, transformational space for the terror of knowing and the possibility for affirmation of hope, courage, and endurance in the face of almost unspeakable evil. Additionally, the power of witnessing is extended from the Holocaust to contemporary instances of mass trauma and to psychoanalytic treatments, proving its efficacy in the dyadic relationship of everyday practice for both patient and analyst.

The Holocaust is not an easy subject to approach, but the intimate and personal stories included here add up to an act of witnessing in and of itself, combining the past and the present and placing the trauma in the realm of knowing, sharing, and understanding.

Contributors: Harriet Basseches, Elsa Blum, Bridget Conley-Zilkic, Paula Ellman, Susan Elmendorf, George Halasz, Geoffrey Hartman, Renee Hartman, Elaine Neumann Kulp-Shabad, Dori Laub, Clemens Loew, Gail HumphriesMardirosian, Margit Meissner, Henri Parens, Arlene Kramer Richards, Arnold Richards, Sophia Richman, Katalin Roth, Nina Shapiro-Perl, Myra Sklarew, Ervin Staub.

Part 1

A Triptych of the Power of Witnessing

Chapter 1

The Power of Witnessing

Nancy R. Goodman

Introduction

Witnessing is a powerful force that allows massively traumatic experiences to become known and communicated. In this chapter, I describe how witnessing of the Holocaust takes place to give definition to the way a witnessing process develops and evolves. Contact is made with the Holocaust and with the remarkable ways Holocaust survivors, and all who witness, have been able to represent the horror to others. In particular, survivors’ affirmations of their humanity are so moving and impressive that they create in us a determination to know more about how witnessing takes place even though there will be pain endured in doing so. When concentration camps were liberated, the world learned about genocide and unimaginable inhumanities. It is the power of witnessing that is able to break through the barriers erected in the mind when facing fear and terror and then is able to engender ways to convey what took place to others. Over and over again, the essence of witnessing is found to rest in a connection between people. Many survivors have recorded how they “lived to speak.” They kept alive a sense that someone would be able to listen. Without witnessing, the most terrible of events can remain untold, leaving a place of negation and ‘nothing’ in the mind and in the historic record. When the psyche is overwhelmed with helplessness, the story may remain unsymbolized and fragmented until a witness is present who says, “I want to know.” Then, the power of witnessing helps give birth to the narrative.

There are important lessons to be learned from the study of witnessing of the Holocaust. Knowing how witnessing of the Holocaust takes place helps fortify desire to witness other genocides and mass traumas. When a blind spot in the eye (and I) is constructed to hide from the inhumanities of the Holocaust, it is also likely to operate in obfuscating knowledge of other mass atrocities and traumas. It is the power of witnessing that can overcome the terror of seeing and allow blindness to diminish. As a psychoanalyst, I am aware that the traumatic places in my patients’ minds, and in all human beings, are better attended to by understanding the power of witnessing and the way it functions. As Marilyn and I read each contribution to this volume, we learned more and more about the ways witnessing elicits meaningful, direct, thoughtful, and poetic articulation of human experiences of rupture and terror. These examples of witnessing reinforce a belief that the “nothing” of mass trauma and of moments of trauma can become important stories for both internal communication and dialogue with others.

Dori Laub, a psychoanalyst, child survivor, and co-founder of the Yale Video Archives of Holocaust Testimonies (now the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies), has written extensively about Holocaust trauma and the way it becomes known through testimony and in psychoanalytic therapies (1992a, 1992b, 1998, 2005; Laub & Auerhahn, 1989, 1993). By welcoming the objective and subjective facts of what has transpired, it is the presence of the witness that is the essential element for bringing the unspeakable into existence. Those who study mass trauma, annihilation terror, abuse, and neglect show repeatedly the importance of establishing a safe relationship for bringing nascent trauma stories into being (Bohleber, 2010; Caruth, 1995, 1996; Davies & Frawley, 1994; Herman, 1992; Laub, 1992a). Once telling takes place, the trauma and the way it has settled in the mind can be reflected on. The story can then evolve, bringing depth to witnessing within oneself and with others.

How the Power of Witnessing Works: Importance of Space, Holding, Containment, and Grief

Throughout this project, I have been thinking about how to depict the way the power of witnessing makes it possible to tell about the very most terrible of events. How does the place of too much become titrated enough to become a spoken place? The idea of space, space within the mind and space between people, is particularly important for comprehending what brings about movement in the mind. A view opens because someone else is willing to see as well.

The contact made during witnessing seems resonant with what occurs between a mother and her infant when continuous interactions accrue over time (Beebe, 1986; Beebe, Knoblauch, Rustin, & Sorter, 2005; Schore, 1994; Stern, 1985). Daniel Stern (1985) states: “The central idea [is] that internal objects are constructed from repeated, relatively small interactive patterns derived from the microanalytic perspective. … They are constructed from the patterned experience of self in interaction with another” (p. xv). The power of witnessing exists in this fearless willingness to know and to be known as it is transmitted back and forth. It gains its potency through the dynamics of a system of micro-communications engendering new possibilities. I believe these micro-communications take place continually between analyst and patient in psychoanalytic treatment as unconscious fantasy, frightening wishes, imagined punishments, and overwhelming affects are discovered. In the intimate process of the dialogue, the type of holding defined by Winnicott (Abram, 1996; Winnicott, 1956, 1971) and the containment and alpha functioning (taking in and processing) defined by Bion (1962, 1984) come to exist, making inroads into what could not previously be known. For Winnicott, holding could lead to development of a transitional space, a play space. I see the type of space created by witnessing to be where description, metaphor, and reflection arise. Intense affects, terror, hatred, shame, aloneness, and grief can begin to be felt, named, and shared.

Dead Space and Living Surround

I present here a picture I have come to see in my mind of the way the power of witnessing opens space. Bohleber (2010) points out that we need to resort to metaphor when attempting to knit together meaning where it has been disrupted, as with the Holocaust. I develop a dynamic metaphor made up of two elements: the dead space and the living surround. In choosing the term dead space to refer to the traumatized place, I am influenced by Green’s (1993) concept of the “dead mother,” the mother who does not respond and places in the baby an internal sense of a “no one,” a painful place of nonexistence rather than an internal aliveness.

The Holocaust places a dead place in the individual and in humanity. This traumatic place is so dark and dense. It has no pulsation, no breathing, no flexibility. Sometimes, it is solid like cement, separate from all else that is alive in the mind; sometimes, it oozes out and invades other places in the mind. Sometimes, it has narrative, or at least fragments of narrative, but cannot be told as if the telling itself would wound self and other too deeply; sometimes, it is completely unsymbolized. The density I am imagining as a defining feature of the dead space indicates that both the horrific known and the too much unknown are present. This is how I have come to think of the way huge, unremitting traumas of all kinds get into the mind. It is in the minds of survivors, and it will likely exist as a smaller point of dead space in the minds of even distant witnesses, including the readers of this volume.

In turn, I have come to think of the power of witnessing as the force providing a clearing away and lighting for a living surround near the dead space where an opening, the new space, develops and takes hold. There may be pathways to the edge of the silent or actively volcanic abyss. My favored imagining is of a circular surround, first narrow and over time widening and perhaps, here or there, penetrating, mining, and refining the dead space. There can now be communication between the trauma and the living mind. Whatever form it takes, it begins with someone claiming loudly and forcibly, “Let us visit this place together.” In this way, the dense overgrowth blocking access to the dead space is trampled, becoming a place for growth and fertilization of mind with narrative, building of monuments, and lasting conversation both with others and within oneself. As more knowing takes place, there is expansion of the living surround and in turn further penetration of the dead space. The dead space and the living surround inform each other.

Sometimes, there is an attempt to compartmentalize who trembles from knowing the Holocaust—just survivors and their children, just Jewish people—but the Holocaust belongs to all of humanity and will arouse fear in all. The power of witnessing also belongs to all who can find the inspiration of the living surround. When there is a living surround, the mind can make a story, describe, and even over time reflect on what has taken place and how it resides in the psyche. Reflection is important. It is a developmental landmark for the child to look in the mirror and to see “that is me.” The child is realizing something about a separate and individual identity. When the trauma becomes a witnessed trauma, it can be mirrored back, becoming a more recognized part of oneself. Around the dead space, survivors, writers, scholars, and artists do think and find ways to bring impressions and accounts to us. These may be in the form of descriptions of gruesome atrocities and through constructions of evocative, often-heartbreaking imagery. This is what can happen when the power of witnessing is active. Throughout this book, we find this duality repeatedly—there is the too much of absolute trauma, and there is the finding of words and symbols when witnessing takes place that brings the horror, learning, and the human spirit into being.

Does the traumatic place become so infused with light that it ceases to exist? I think not. In fact, the desire to eradicate it entirely, and the fantasy that it can disappear, may be a kind of identification with the perpetrator who would hide a cemetery, as if all the death never happened. Witnessing confirms that it happened, it must not be eradicated, there is a way to let others know, and there is always grief. Grief is one of the ingredients making up the substance of the dead space that needs to be released. I think that so much that is evocative in the contributions in this book—poetry, reflections, art forms, scholarship—arrives as the witness producing them passes through private grief and horror. This grief is as eternal as grief can be. It is extraordinary. It contains an amount of sadness equal to the number of stars in the Milky Way. It can be mourned, maybe, one star at a time. I think that in what I am calling the living surround grief can become a felt grief. This grief feels awful, and it feels affirming. Grief itself can release the poetry needed to express the feel of what has happened. Once there is this opening, opening to the grief of others also expands. The Holocaust can never be transformed—but through the power of witnessing, the mind gains expressiveness and greater capacity to see contemporary mass and individual trauma and the desire to intervene. It is worth enduring the suffering and hard work of witnessing to make the living surround because it is here the mind can think and symbolize and feel and where others can be invited also to witness. It is here that contact is made with oneself and with others.

The Holocaust: Can it be Known?

The Holocaust, as an entity, is itself too hot a burning fire, too cold a frozen place, and too threatening to sanity to take in completely. I choose to use metaphoric language because this is often the only way to enter the world of horror. During the Nazi reign in Germany (1933-1945), 6 million Jewish people were slaughtered in a genocide and millions of others as well. Techniques of destruction were developed that defy ideas of humanity. It is almost impossible to truly think about one extermination camp, one furnace, one mother or father being torn from each other and their children, killing of babies, unbearable thirst and hunger, instances of abject humiliation, and every moment of the extermination of 6 million individuals and the attempts to eradicate their culture as well. Contained in the Holocaust are methods of madness and proclamations distorting what is rational and intelligible. It is only through bringing witnessing to this “tremendum” that the horror of the Holocaust takes enough shape to be at least partially known and communicated to others. Ervin Staub (see Chapter 26) is a persistent believer that the Holocaust, other genocides, and all mass killings can be and must be approached for study. His books contain evidence of the importance of witnessing to define The Roots of Evil (1989) and the possibility of Overcoming Evil (2010).

The Holocaust is often referred to as unthinkable because it requires bringing such devastation into one’s mind and into the minds of others. It is so large, massive, and destructive. Basically, there is no template for the totality of what took place. In our interview with Laub (2008), he used ideas of a “black hole,” “the core,” and the “empty circle” to represent what is at the center of the survivor’s experience: “From the survivor perspective [the core] is fraught with terror and with loss and sadness, and this may be a little bit insurmountable, but mostly it is being surmounted. But there will be always a circle, an empty circle somewhere.” Grotstein (1990) writes about patients living with equivalents of the “black hole” phenomenon he relates to analytic despair. He defines the central element to be meaninglessness. “The absence of the ‘floor’ of meaningfulness exposes the ‘black hole’” (p. 382). In my way of thinking, the dead space at the center can breathe just a little bit once it has been witnessed and in many ways must also remain as a monument to the horror that has transpired.

Trauma

It is deeply frightening to see and feel the tortuous scenes that were perpetrated on the Jewish population of Europe by the Nazis. There is always trauma in this territory of reckoning. Facing trauma is difficult; facing Holocaust trauma is intensely difficult. Psychoanalysts refer to trauma as “psychic helplessness,” a state of being completely overwhelmed. Trauma hurts so much—it entails experiences of shock, a breaking through of a usual ego barrier, altered perceptions, affect overload, a sense of fragmentation, depersonalization, and dysregulation (A. Freud, 1967; S. Freud, 1896, 1919; Herman, 1992; Krystal, 1978; Tarentelli, 2003; van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 2007). Color, size, space, and sense of time may appear altered, surreal, foggy, compressed, or expanded. Sound may be suspended or cacophonous. Psychic helplessness and annihilation anxiety (Hurvich, 2003, 2011) can be accompanied by the sense of dissolving and eternally falling. The fearful images and fantasies in the intrapsychic world of wishes and fears no longer have any boundary with the external world of terror. The external too much has crashed through, and now the internal might not be contained. Catastrophe seems a certainty.

There is psychological impact as well for those who come to know the traumatic through witnessing. This is known as secondary trauma, vicarious trauma (McCann & Pearl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface: An Invitation
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I A Triptych of the Power of Witnessing
• Part II Reflections
• Part III Reverberations
• Part IV Traces
• Part V Links
• 1 Postscript: A Goodbye
• Index