Book review : From Budapest to Psychoanalysis
In the 2023 book From Budapest to Psychoanalysis - Three Portraits and their Analytic Frames edited by V. Csillag (Routledge), each of the three authors retrace in their own autobiographical chapter how they grew up in communist Hungary before emigrating to a foreign country in the West: Csillag to the USA, Lanczi to the UK and Vamos to France. They recall in their own way how, as adults, they decided to train to become psychoanalysts.
During the years that followed the Second World War,
in Hungary, a Russian occupied communist country, it was taboo to
talk or write about the Holocaust, the concentration camps, and the Jewish population in
general.
While the three authors were born after the war, many members of their parents’ generation were survivors or victims or of the horrors of Auschwitz – Birkenau and other concentration camps. They were submitted to violent, brutal, inhumane conditions and left behind many loved ones who perished. No one in Hungarian society spoke of what had happened. These survivors who returned home were not welcome nor treated compassionately. Many Jewish families were terrified and tried to keep their Jewish identity secret from the outer world, but also from their own children. They wanted to keep their children safe and protect them in case of a new persecution. A large number of them changed their Jewish sounding names to more Hungarian sounding names and stopped celebrating Jewish holidays in order to assimilate. Some families discreetly baptized their children, imagining it would protect them “in case the Germans come back”. The authors were part of the generation of these children, also called the second generation of survivors (often referred to as "2Gs", for second generation).
The
book thus adds to a field dedicated to studying this specific type of
intergenerational trauma from a psychological perspective. Authors such as N.
Zajde, a student of Tobie Nathan - who himself was one of the main founders of
the ethnopsychiatry movement - brought fundamental concepts to this discipline
in Guérir de la Shoah (Éditions Odile
Jacob 2005) and Enfants de survivants (Éditions
Odile Jacob, 2005).
Russians from the USSR had freed the survivors from
Auschwitz. Within the context of communism, the communist doctrine instructed
the population to shun all religions. While religious fervour and practice were
not possible for Christians either, however, certain basic Christian traditions
were still present. For these Jewish families having recently returned from the
camps, they had to hide their Jewish identity while observing the basic simple
Christian practices to blend in, without showing any religious fervour in any
case. These double standards were confusing and hard to understand for the
second generation of survivors, which Csillag, Lanczi and Vamos were part of.
The three authors brilliantly describe the
post-Holocaust years in Hungary from a historical, sociological, and
psychological perspective. They describe the atmosphere, the said and unsaid
(more implicit) emotions, and individual as well as collective subconscious
processes.
The chapters
also give in-depth descriptions of the way Hungarian youth lived in the 1960's
and 1970's in a patriarchal society.
Finally
Csillag, Lanczi, and Vamos honestly depict their individual experience of
immigrating to a new country, where the language, customs and way of life are
different and unknown. Immigrating in view of building a new life came with
difficulties, strife and sacrifices. This new life was not necessarily entirely
better than the old one that was left behind.
They each tell their individual life stories in a personal, honest, brave way. A fascinating book for psychologists, university students, and curious readers at large.