Teaching about the Holocaust and the Subject of Objectivity: Psychoanalysis, Trauma, and Counter-Transference in an Advanced Writing Course

This work examines various ways teachers can use psychoanalytic concepts to help students approach the subject of objectivity as it relates to social science research writing and other general education courses.1 By using the psychoanalytic notion of counter-transference, I will explore a new model for scientific objectivity, which moves beyond the traditional stress on neutrality, abstraction, generalization, and impersonality. In this “postmodern” form of scientific discovery, the creation of an “empathic classroom” helps students to explore and utilize their personal unconscious negative reactions to their research material. Moreover, by coming to terms with their own subjective responses to various threatening subjects, students can learn to integrate emotional aspects of selfhood into the research process. By developing the notion of subjective objectivity, I hope to show how the scientific quest for an “objective” stance often forces students and teachers to repress and deny their unconscious fears and doubts related to the subject matter in question. In the case of research in the social sciences, this repression of subjectivity often denies the researcher access to important information essential to the inquiry process. Since the social scientist’s own desires, fears, and values are most often related to the particular object of study, the denial of the researcher’s own feelings only serves to hide subjective reactions, which may unconsciously hinder or possibly help the research process. For example, in my own research on social science explanations of the Holocaust, I have found that my strong emotional responses to this subject matter have helped to block my ability to analyze objectively certain theories and concepts. On the other hand, I have also found that when I analyze my subjective responses, I am often able to use this emotional material to indicate unexplored areas of research. This effort to incorporate counter-transferential aspects of subjectivity into the writing of social science research has been explored by Alain Giami in his article “Counter-Transference in Social Research: Beyond Georges Devereux.” Giami argues that: