Open Letter

2/20/2004 -0800

Dear Professor Loewenberg:
Mary K. Amstrong mentioned your name in her article,
"Splitting and Projection Before, During and After World War Two,"
and after reading The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohorton Lloyd deMauses Psychohistory, I viewed your website http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/loewenberg/

As a short self-introduction, my name is Sieglinde Alexander and I live in California since 1991 after I immigrated as a 42 year old to the USA, without knowing anyone here.

I am the product of an emotionless and traumatizing, postwar Childrearing practice, where the needs and autonomy of a child were never acknowledged, and instead the heavily leaning nazi-drilling and controlling methods were consciously and subconsciously practiced.

Being forced to live with the imprint of abuse for 42 years, I asked the question today, how can we stop such inheriting violence? My childhood experience, naturally brought me to the subject adults abused as children, which I see as the result of early imprint and the continuation of presently practiced violence, not only in Germany.

In the last 13 years my search has lead me to many cultures who are showing the generations-old scars of violence, generation after generation. If I summarize the evidence that historical analysis delivers, my theory that it is the traumatized adult who re-traumatizes is clearly supported. For this reason, I would like to ask how valuable or beneficial is the exposure of historical violence, if we cannot utilize such knowledge and provide a way out of the continuing imprinted violence.

One other discovery I made is that logical explanations and guidelines, a learning of the left-hemisphere, cannot solve the manifested emotional trauma in the right-hemisphere, if no emotional healing takes place before the traumatized person rears another generation.

If your time permits, I truly would welcome your view.

Sincerely, Sieglinde W. Alexander

Answer:

Dear Ms. Alexander--
Thank you for writing me. I agree with you that it is the traumatized adult generation who re-traumatize the children of the next generation. Only psychotherapy and insight can stop an endless cycle of violence.

PL

return to: Open Letters