Psychoanalysis, Poetic Testimony and the Trauma of the Holocaust

In this fascinating and innovative book, Rina Dudai looks at Holocaust trauma through the lens of poetic testimony: the act of writing poetry and prose to both relay and process traumatic events.

Dudai begins with a study of both factual testimony and the act of bearing witness in the aftermath of trauma. She uses these as the foundations for her exploration of poetic testimony and the benefits the creator will find over and above other forms of testimony. Showing how this method avoids the additional trauma often brought about by making survivors directly address their experience, Dudai offers a new toolkit to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists working with patients experiencing trauma. Through an analysis of the works of three writers who survived the Holocaust – Primo Levi, Ka-Tzetnik, and Aharon Appelfeld – Dudai establishes a conceptual framework for discussing this mode of testimony and the poetic language through which it speaks. By comparing the work of these writers, Dudai identifies the distinct qualities of this form of poetic language while establishing a foundation for discourse of other literary works that deal with trauma.

Through close textual analysis and the incorporation of therapeutic concepts like "acting out" and "working through," Psychoanalysis, Poetic Testimony, and the Trauma of the Holocaust is an invaluable resource to psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals working with trauma patients, as well as students and scholars of literature and 20th-century history.

Rina Dudai is an interdisciplinary scholar of literature, film, and psychoanalysis, based in Israel. She is a member of the interdisciplinary group at the Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis.