Judith Kestenberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Judith Kestenberg

Judith S. Kestenberg (born March 17, 1910 in Tarnau , Austria-Hungary ; died January 16, 1999 in Sands Point , NY ) was an Austrian- American psychoanalyst .

Life

Judith Ida Silberpfennig grew up in a wealthy Jewish factory owner family in Krakow , who moved from Poland to Vienna in 1924. She studied medicine at the University of Vienna and specialized in neurology and psychiatry . After receiving her doctorate in 1934, she began training with the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association and did a training analysis with Eduard Hitschmann until 1937 . As it is considered adherent of the Socialist Party was persecuted in Austria, she emigrated in 1937 to New York City , where they at Paul Schilder in Bellevue Hospital on child psychiatry specialist. She continued her psychoanalytic training at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute with Hermann Nunberg , who had also emigrated after the annexation of Austria . In 1943 she became a member and training analyst in the New York Psychoanalytic Society. In 1942 she married the lawyer Milton Kestenberg (1913–1991), who was able to flee Poland in 1939. They had two children. She became a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York University Medical School and also worked at Long Island Jewish Hospital. She has published seven books and over 150 magazine articles.

In the early 1950s, Kestenberg began systematically observing small children and their movements. Through contact with Maria Ley-Piscator, she learned the method of Laban movement studies , which she applied to her questions in developmental psychology and condensed it into a theory of the “Kestenberg Movement Profile”. From this she developed a method of movement retraining in order to positively influence the interactions between parents and children from infancy onwards.

Her husband Milton Kestenberg also worked as a lawyer for the United Restitution Organization after the war , which helped victims of Nazi redress in their reparation proceedings, and Judith thus came into closer contact with the surviving children and the Holocaust orphans. She helped formulate Survivor Syndrome and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder . After 1970, while working with the now adult descendants of Holocaust survivors, she came to the realization that they would psychologically deal with the persecution of their parents. By analogy, such after-effects of violent situations on the second generation also apply to the children of the perpetrators. Kestenberg ran a center for parents and young children for eighteen years. In 1981 she and her husband founded the project “International Study of the Organized Persecution of Children”, in which 1,500 interviews were carried out with child survivors. In 1986 Eva Fogelman strengthened the project team.

"When your grandparents were young"

In her child labor, Kestenberg had gained experience with the effect of picture books on the development of young children. She also came to Germany to teach German children, whose grandparents belong to the generation of perpetrators, about the Holocaust. She wrote a children's book that had a similar forerunner written for American children. In her opinion, the young children need education more urgently than the bigger ones, as they are just in the phase of developing a conscience and giving up their sadistic and egocentric desires in favor of friendship and love. The book deals with exclusion and annihilation, the grief of the survivors and the shame of those who follow. The book also addresses the current situation in Germany and the slogan “Foreigners out!”. In the afterword to her book, she asks herself whether toddlers can be told about the Nazi era, and how, and advocates the thesis:

If we really want to prevent wars, if we want to avoid despising and attacking strangers, then we have to tell the children the truth - as early as possible.

Fonts (selection)

  • with Charlotte Kahn (Ed.): Children surviving persecution: an international study of trauma and healing . Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 1998
  • Martin S. Bergmann, Milton E. Jucovy, Judith S. Kestenberg (eds.): Children of the victims. Children of the perpetrators. Psychoanalysis and Holocaust , Frankfurt a. M: Fischer 1995
  • with Ira Brenner: The last witness: the child survivor of the Holocaust . Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1996
  • with Eva Fogelman (Ed.): Children during the Nazi reign: psychological perspective on the interview process . Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 1994
  • with Vivienne Koorland (illustrations): When your grandparents were young: Talking to children about the Holocaust. Hamburg: Krämer 1993, ISBN 3-926952-69-5
  • with Janet Kestenberg Amighi: Children show what they need: how parents correctly interpret children's signals . From the American. trans. by Ursula Emhofer. Salzburg: Pustet, 1991
  • with K Mark Sossin: The role of movement patterns in development . New York: Dance Notation Bureau Press, 1977–1979
  • Children of survivors of Nazi persecution. Psychoanalytic Contributions. In: Psyche , 1974, pp. 249-265

literature

  • Elke Mühlleitner: Kestenberg, Judith. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 366–368.
  • Georg Romer: From neuropsychiatry through infant observation to transgenerational Holocaust research. Life and work of the psychoanalyst Judith S. Kestenberg. In: Journal for psychoanalytical theory and practice, 1999, pp. 114–128

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Judith Kestenberg , obituary at Echoes of the holocaust (en)
  2. ↑ a b c Elke Mühlleitner: Kestenberg, Judith, born. Silberpfennig , 2002, pp. 366–368
  3. ↑ Eduard Hitschmann ( Memento of the original from October 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , at psyalpha @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / psyalpha.net
  4. ↑ a b c d e Judith Kestenberg, Vivienne Koorland: When your grandparents were young: talking to children about the Holocaust. Afterword by Judith Kestenberg , 2002
personal data
SURNAME Kestenberg, Judith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kestenberg, Judith S .; Silberpfennig, Judith Ida (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Tarnów
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1999
Place of death Sands Point (New York) , Nassau County (New York)