Undergoing, Healing From, and Treating Trauma: The Experience Of Being Both a Holocaust Survivor and a Mental Health Professional, Julie Hannah Levey, UG '24 (2268875)
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Dr. Viktor Frankl, and The Choice: Embrace the Possible, by Dr. Edith Eva Eger are two Holocaust testimony narratives written by mental health professionals. While Frankl was a psychiatrist before the Holocaust began, Eger survived the Holocaust as a teenager and did not pursue her degree in clinical psychology until she was inspired by reading a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning decades later. Frankl and Eger’s memoirs – which were published 71 apart from one another – provide critical insights into what it means to undergo trauma, to heal from it, and subsequently, to help others to do the same. Holocaust survivor mental health professionals, such as Frankl and Eger, are uniquely situated in an in-between position: they have access to their own survival stories and the trauma they endured, as well as to a clinical understanding of the mind and the ways it may respond to trauma. Through analyzing Frankl and Eger’s stories in conjunction with studies in the field of psychology about complex trauma, post-traumatic growth, and the experience of being a mental health professional who survived trauma oneself, I have found that the Holocaust, despite what may be its exceptional atrocity, should nevertheless be central for understanding how therapists should think about trauma more broadly. Additionally, I have demonstrated that Frankl and Eger were better equipped to help others – and themselves – process trauma because they came to understand trauma both from a personal and from a professional perspective.