Journal of Narrative and Life History - Volume 3, Issue 4, 1993

AbstractSignificant work has been done on effects of the Holocaust on the second generation. Research shows there is a link between the parents' trauma and a variety of psychological symptoms in children of survivors. Children of Nazis have also been a topic of psychological and journalistic inquiry. The research suggests that many of these children experience conflict, shame, and personal guilt when dealing with their parents' Nazi past. The much discussed "inability to mourn" has been identified as the central reason for why these children were traumatized. These findings have been central to our awareness of the intergen-erational effects of the Holocaust. There is to date, however, no systematic research that compares the effects on these two groups of descendants. Thus, in an effort to advance research in this area, this study was undertaken to explore similarities between these two groups. Whereas previous studies have focused on the pathological effects of trauma on each group separately, the focus of this study was on comparative coping responses of individuals whose parents were involved in an extreme social injustice. An additional later aim is to study the interpersonal behavior between children of survivors and children of Nazis. The study consisted of interviewing 20 subjects, 10 children of Nazis and 10 children of concentration camp survivors. The former subjects were interviewed by a child of a Nazi (Kuphal), and the latter were interviewed by a child of concentration camp survivors (Weissmark). The interview was de-signed by a neutral party (Giacomo) to generate data by focusing on broad areas. The investigators hypothesized that these areas would yield useful data for comparing the similarities and differences between the two groups of sub-jects. Responses of children of survivors and Nazis revealed similar threads of images and associations to the past that run through their lives. These include: information-seeking, meaning-making, a personal sense of injustice, and re-dressing actions. (Psychology)

AbstractNarration in psychotherapy has become a key area of theoretical and empiri-cal concern. Rationales for this new concern are provided in the context of introducing a three-dimensional model of narrative structure. Numerous measures corresponding to each dimension are operationally defined and used in an illustrative study of 16 pairs of temporally contiguous child-thera-pist stories sampled from Gardner's (1971) Therapeutic Communication with Children. As predicted, the therapist's narratives were more structurally con-nected, more often concerned with protagonists' internal psychological pro-cesses, and more elaborate/complex than the children's narratives. The therapist's narrative measures, however, did not seem adapted to the chil-dren's varying narrative competence, indicated by the absence of significant covariation with the children's narrative measures or with their age. These and additional analyses illustrate how to assess narrative processes in psycho-therapy and suggest future research on and training in the use of narratives in psychotherapy. (Psychology)

AbstractTwo main questions guided this research: (a) How do newlyweds' affective statements and interactive styles found in narratives told about their relation-ship help us understand the meaning they make of their marriages? (b) How does analysis of the affective statements and interactive styles of Black couples (n = 136) in comparison to White couples (n = 135) help us understand the differential meaning in these groups? The representative sample was inter-viewed from 5 to 8 months after marriage. The narrative procedure asked the couples to tell the story of their relationship. By and large, Black couples and White couples showed similar patterns of affective reactions: They were gener-ally positive, emphasizing individual rather than communal affects, many of which dealt with the external world rather than their own interpersonal lives. In comparison to White husbands, Black husbands are more often perceived as the focus of affective life in the relationship. White couples refer to the external world in their affective statements more frequently than Black couples. With regard to interactive styles in the storytelling, there were more Black-White differences. Although most couples' interactions were mainly collaborative, Blacks showed less cooperative styles of interaction and greater conflict than did Whites. Using the developmental, cultural variant, and cultural equiva-lent perspectives, the article presents interpretations of the similimilarities and differences found for Black and White couples' narratives. (Psychology; an-thropology)