Dr. Auerhahn Wins Hayman Award for IPA Congress

Dr. Nanette Auerhahn had been notified that she has won the2019 award by the Committee for the Elise M. Hayman Award for a paper that sheco-authored with Dori Laub, M.D.  Thepaper is titled “Probing the Minds of Nazi Perpetrators: The Use of DefensiveScreens in Two Generations”.  The award,carrying a $4000 prize, will be presented to Dr. Auerhahn at the Congress ofthe International Psychoanalytic Association to be held in London from July24-27, 2019. 

The paper, which explores defenses used by Naziperpetrators, describes walled-off, dissociated states that allowed atrocitiesto be committed outside normal thought process by persons who had no particularcharacter pathology.  The study used Dr.Auerhahn’s own clinical material plus years of material accumulated by Dr. DoriLaub with whom she has worked for several decades, beginning while a doctoralstudent at Yale University.  Dr. Laubdied in June 2018, after which Dr. Auerhahn completed the paper.  In their work with children of bothperpetrators and survivors, both analysts were able to help their analysandsintegrate evidence of screened off atrocities into their narrative when theywere recognized and interpreted.

An earlier version of this paper was presented by Drs. Lauband Auerhahn at a meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in NewYork on February 14, 2018.