Dark Traces of the Past

Jürgen Straub is Professor of Psychology at the University of Chemnitz. He was research director and member of the management committee at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Essen (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen, KWI) from October 1999 to September 2001. Beginning in April 2004, he will lead the research group Intercultural Communication – Intercultural Competence at the KWI. His research topics include the psychology of cultural practices, methodology of qualitative research, and historical consciousness.

• Preface to the SeriesAlon ConfinoList of FiguresIntroduction: Psychoanalysis, History and Historical Studies: A Systematic IntroductionJürgen 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 GrünbergChapter 6. Understanding Transgenerational Transmission: The Burden of History in Families of Jewish Victims and their National Socialist PerpetratorsJürgen 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 PsychohistoryJosé BrunnerChapter 9. Working Towards a Discourse of Shame: (Working with Shame Discourse) - A Psychoanalytical Perspective on Postwar German Literary CriticismIrmgard WagnerBibliographyNotes on the ContributorsIndex

“Contrary to 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