Citation

Zukier H. Holocaust Genocide Stud. 1997; 11(2): 190-212.

Affiliation

The New School for Social Research.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, Oxford University Press)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

20684101

Abstract

This article examines the frayed relationship between psychology and Holocaust history and its consequences for scholarship, arguing the need for a reconciliation between the fields. The causes for the split are traced in part to a reductionist approach to methodological, conceptual, and moral issues common in psychology, an approach particularly misleading in work on the Holocaust. On the other hand, historians continue to make the subjective motivations of both perpetrators and victims a central concern-an implicitly psychological question. Consequently, implicit (mis)conceptions of psychology affect-distort-long-standing historical debates. Zuckier argues that a misconception of psychological intentionality (unwittingly shared by both opposing sides) has set a wrong historical agenda and led to "fluke-and-freak" accounts of the Holocaust in which the protagonists are alternately said to act out their essential dispositions or to be the victims of their own psychological compulsions and accidental history. The article explores the effects of such conceptions in the study not only of perpetrators and victims, but also rescuers, witnesses, survivors, and their children. It concludes with an appeal for a more differentiated interactional approach.

Language: en