Animal Killer: Transmission of War Trauma from One Generation to the Next

A psychoanalytic process from its beginning to its termination is described to illustrate crucial technical issues in the treatment of individuals with narcissistic personality organization and the countertransference manifestations such patients stimulate in the analyst. The subject of this book exhibited cruelty to confirm and stabilize his grandiosity. His internal world was a "reservoir" of the deposited image of his father figure, an individual most severely traumatized during World War II. The patient was given the task to be a mass-"killer" of animals instead of being a hunted one.This book most clearly illustrates how the transgenerational transmission of trauma takes place and how the impact of war continues in future generations. The book also provides an understanding of a special kind of psychological motivation that directs a person to use weapons for mass killing. In this era of pluralism in psychoanalysis, providing the story of a psychoanalytic case in its duration opens ways for comparison and discussion of technique and can be used as a teaching tool.