January 12th 2014: Sue Lieberman: “Ordinary Jews” and the Holocaust

For the past seven years, Sue Lieberman, an Edinburgh psychotherapist, has been working on a book exploring the complex feelings which Jews without any immediate family connection to the Holocaust – “ordinary Jews” – still feel towards it. Can these feelings be considered a ‘collective trauma’? Are they simply to do with the Holocaust or are other parts of our lives and inheritance involved? How do they unconsciously shape our suppositions and reactions to the world today? Sue will present some of her research findings and discuss the tremendous psychological challenges which this history has left us.