Intergenerational Effects in Families of World War II Survivors from the Dutch East Indies

Abstract

The effects of the occupation of the former Dutch Indies by the Japanese and the Indonesian War of Independence have only recently become open to public reflection and debate in the Netherlands. For more than 4 decades, the warfare in the former Dutch Indies seemed forgotten. This chapter elaborates upon (1) the reasons for this forgetfulness within Dutch society; (2) mechanisms and expressions of intergenerational traumatization in children of survivors from the Dutch Indies, with an emphasis on projective identification; (3) presentation and discussion of some brief vignettes and a case presentation to exemplify the concepts used to illuminate different expressions of intergenerational traumatization; and (4) the results of studies on the 2nd generation of survivors from the Dutch Indies. Studies reveal that problems of the 2nd generation may not be found in special diagnostic classifications, but in the psychodynamics that led to each individual's problems. The parents' traumatic imagery can play a pivotal role in various patterns of family dynamics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)