The emotional heritage of postwar Germany: The transgenerational transmission of a guilt conflict

Abstract

This clinical case study of a 60-year old woman suffering from recurrent depression brings to light the social situation of postwar Germany, during which time the patient grew up. Her life story is embedded within a discourse of emotional heritage involving National Socialist perpetrators. The text seeks to mediate between the inner world of the patient and the external world; that is, between the intrapsychic and the external social world. The adjustment mechanism described is part of her way of processing her Nazi father's wartime guilt. With this being case, it will be illustrated that children of Nazi-perpetrators are confronted with the paradox of finding their parents narcissistically lovable while, at the same time, identifying with their parents' defence mechanisms. To make optimal sense of the case study, relevant subject matter is drawn upon from Rainer Fassbinder's film ‘The Merchant of Four Seasons’, Heinrich Böll's novel ‘And Never Said a Word’ and Susanne Vega's song ‘Luka'. These associations with literature, film and music provide a way to contemplatively address the often difficult to bear countertransference. They also bring certain societal dimensions to the surface and help foster an understanding of the setting in which the patient finds herself. In this text, the hypothesis is advanced that the 1968 movement was a necessary development in German postwar culture. It represented a societal and psychological break with the generation of parents and grandparents who had experienced and participated in the war in order to make the unbearable intra-psychically bearable.