The Enduring Psychological Legacies of Genocidal Trauma: Commentary on "The Intergenerational Transmission of Holocaust Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Theory Revisited"

The author critiques Gomolin's thesis that the concept of "intergenerational transmission of trauma" is an artifact arising from the countertransference needs of the psychoanalysts who first treated children of Holocaust survivors. Gomolin's own research into this area suffers from the serious methodological issue of not having investigators who were blind to the hypothesis under question. As such, her conclusions should be regarded as opinions based on subjectively selected material from the literature and not as objectively reliable or valid. In addition, thousands of studies across multiple disciplines and with varied patient populations have found that there are transgenerational effects of trauma and that the psychodynamic sequela, (including symptomatology, and resilience), deserve attention in the psychoanalytic treatment and study of descendants of survivors of genocide.