On Holocaust Testimony and Its "Reception" within Its Own Frame, as a Process in Its Own Right: A Response to "Between History and Psychoanalysis" by Thomas Trezise

With this essay the author responds to some allegations brought by Thomas Trezise against the author's work with video testimonies of Holocaust survivors as reported in his contributions to the book Testimony. The author describes a methodological approach to testimony closely informed by psychoanalysis and demonstrates how the personal investment of the researcher in his material does generate important data when carefully monitored in countertransference analysis. Testimony is understood as a struggle with extreme, frequently traumatic experience that should be interpreted with close attention to the dynamic processes in which the narrative unfolds. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]