Suzanne Kaplan – författare

The authors in this book  focus on revenge as a neglected and insufficiently understood psychological mechanism in a broad spectrum ranging from the many and varied revenge acts of everyday life to the extreme societal destructiveness of genocide. Are perpetrators always avengers? What is the destructive potential of ordinary people? Envy

This book deals with affects and memories from extreme traumatization of Jewish survivors, who were children themselves during the Holocaust, and teenagers who survived the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, presenting an illustration of how complex affect regulating is for traumatized individuals.

The revenge motif appears in a number of arenas and in different cultures. We need to be mindful of its existence in order to discover how common it is. We can then learn to recognize when destructive revenge spirals are developing. By extension, we thus gain a basis for stopping these spirals successfully before they have gone too far. We can also learn what function revenge plays and has played in various contexts. A short overview of revenge as a motif in literature, film, culture, religion, and at work is therefore given as an introduction to our study of revenge.

This book deals with affects and memories from extreme traumatization of Jewish survivors, who were children themselves during the Holocaust, and teenagers who survived the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, presenting an illustration of how complex affect regulating is for traumatized individuals.

The revenge motif appears in a number of arenas and in different cultures. We need to be mindful of its existence in order to discover how common it is. We can then learn to recognize when destructive revenge spirals are developing. By extension, we thus gain a basis for stopping these spirals successfully before they have gone too far. We can also learn what function revenge plays and has played in various contexts. A short overview of revenge as a motif in literature, film, culture, religion, and at work is therefore given as an introduction to our study of revenge.

The authors' aim in this book is to focus on revenge as a neglected and insufficiently understood psychological mechanism in a broad spectrum ranging from the many and varied revenge acts of everyday life to the extreme societal destructiveness of genocide.Are perpetrators always avengers? What is the destructive potential of ordinary people? Envy, narcissistic wounds and rage are important themes with links to our forefathers. Human affects are central for attachment, symbolization and memory. How we deal with trauma will have an effect on the outcome of the revenge spiral. There are also grey areas between revenge and limit setting; what do these areas look like?The authors develop models for horizontal and vertical relationships which are important for an open reflective mental space. Via the concept of "space creating" the book describes the creative space with its possibility for reflection. The dilemma of the professional helper, the consequences of listening to traumatic memories and revenge fantasies, so called "vicarious traumas" are also taken up. By the end of the book, the necessity of refraining from - and concrete ideas of what we can do to stop - revenge should have been made much clearer.

"'

Hur upplevde barn upp till 14 år förföljelserna under Förintelsen och hur har de som vuxna handskats med påtvingande minnesbilder och känslor? Varför väljer en del överlevande att inte få barn? Vilka konsekvenser får dessa upplevelser senare i livet? Vad betyder det att bli berövad sin barndom?

Genom att använda sig av intervjuer genomförda av Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation samt uppföljande djupintervjuer med överlevande som själva var barn under Förintelsen ger författaren Suzanne Kaplan svar på dessa och många andra frågor. Hon visar hur de överlevande nått en punkt i livet när tiden är mogen för att berätta.

”Jag tänkte inte”