Psychology and Psychiatry

"Rather than teaching ethics as a theoretical subject, a method is proposed that encourages direct personal confrontation with ethical dilemmas through the consideration of key examples, in the Talmudic manner. This develops ethical ‘muscles’ and allows candidates to explore the dilemmas of what Primo Levi called the ‘grey zone’ where the boundaries between good and bad are unclear."

«On pourrait tout autant parler de destruction de l'humain, dans la mesure où ce qui caractérise principalement celui-ci c'est le lien que ces témoignages de sens ont avec la parole. Ceci rejoint les réflexions de Primo Levi qui parle de "destruction de la raison" comme but et résultat principal des camps de concentration. Ce qui est intériorisé par le sujet qui participe à une "situation relationnelle traumatique", est composé par les caractéristiques de cette relation qu'il a avec l'autre».

[One could talk of the destruction of the human being in this sense: the main characteristic of the human being is the link between the testimony of the senses and words. This relates to the reflections of Primo Levi who talks of the “destruction of reason” as the goal and the main result of the concentration camps. What is interiorized by the subject who has gone through a “traumatic relational situation” is composed of the characteristics of the relationship that he or she has with the others.]

"Primo Levi, despite a life of literary productivity and success, succumbed to depression and suicide, an end that Langer finds presaged in Levi’s writing. Levi never claimed any heroism, triumph or transcendence of the suffering of the death camps; instead his writing revealed an irremediable split. [...] Levi insisted on staying with the murky gray zones of human compromise and collusion, the drastic trade-offs at the margins of existence. The very fact of his testimony stood for the persistence of the adamantine self through the great leveling of individuality and debasement of consciousness. He returned from a world of utter senselessness, a world reduced to minimal units of consciousness, on the long march through winter where 'survival begins with shoes'.”

"The Shoah requires that we rethink the concepts we use to conceive of the human experience, its transmission and its memory, starting with the classic concept of representation. What is representation when the representation of being human has fallen apart?"

«The example of Primo Levi shows why the figure of the surviving witness forces us to redefine the testimony as an act. The act of testifying thus becomes an act of personal attestation of the witness. The testimony of the survivor amplifies the personal implication and responsibility of the witness: the surviving witness testifies to the unspeakable confrontation with destruction to which the dead were subjected, "and" to his own experience of survival, destruction and the need to testify».

«The present study deals with social relationships in the extreme situation of the concentration camp, using Primo Levi's If This Is a Man, written just after the author's release from Auschwitz. This text was chosen because it is one of the most important testimonies of the Holocaust and, at the same time, a work of great artistic value. An analysis of the behaviour described gives us access to otherwise irretrievable data. Three aims have been pursued: (1) to explore and describe interpersonal and intergroup behaviour in extreme situations from the victims' perspective; (2) to analyse these types of behaviour through social identity theory (SIT); and (3) to highlight certain observations and comments by Levi, an excellent "privileged observer", which mightsuggest new directions of research in this field».

«This paper will focus on situations of chronic danger and will examine the role of creative arts therapies, particularly drama therapy, in these circumstances. It will use examples from the most extreme case of life-threatening situations in human history, the Holocaust, to show the potential power of creative work in helping people cope».