When the third is dead: Memory, mourning, and witnessing in the aftermath of the Holocaust

When the third is dead: Memory, mourning, and witnessing in the aftermath of the Holocaust. - The origins of psychoanalysis, as well as the concerns of our daily endeavors, center on engagement with the fate of the unbearable - be it wish, affect, or experience. In this paper, the author explores psychological states and dynamics faced by survivors of genocide and their children in their struggle to sustain life in the midst of unremitting deadliness. Toward this continuous effort, he re-examines Freud's theoretical formulations concerning memory and mourning, elaborates Andre Green's concept of the 'Dead Mother', and introduces more recent work on the concepts of the 'third' and 'thirdness'. Throughout, his thoughts are informed by clinical experience with the essential role of witnessing in sustaining life after massive trauma. He brings aspects of all these forms of knowing to reflections about a poem by Primo Levi entitled 'Unfinished business' and to our own never finished business of avoiding denial while living in an age of genocide and under the aura of uncontained destructiveness.