This article is an introduction to articles by Peter Pogany-Wnendt and Gottfried Wagner in this issue. In this article the author describes his own experience in coming to terms with his German-American heritage and the role that Germans of his parents’ generation in Germany played in the Holocaust. His goal has been to understand how reconciliation can occur between children of Holocaust survivors and children of Nazi sympathizers. Keywords: Holocaust, children of survivors, Naziism, Germany in World War II

War is a major cause of traumatic stress for children and adolescents. German children who were born just before WWII experienced multiple stresses during and after the war. In addition to the losses and deprivations associated with the war, they had to face the shame of their country’s defeat and responsibility for the war, and many lived with the knowledge of their families’ complicity in the Nazi atrocities—something that was largely unacknowledged and never discussed. While in some cases, war trauma results in an ever-repeating cycle of violence, in others, the children who experience war are remarkably open to reconciliation and peace. While genocidal violence has recurred—in Cambodia, in Bosnia, in Rwanda, for example, there is hope that the children who live through these experiences can help to bring an end to these horrific events. The author offers his views on how the unique perspectives of these children can inform us. He describes his experiences and his observations of his contemporaries and peers who were children in Germany during World War II, and adolescents in the post-war era. Some of these children have led the way in the ultimate acknowledgement of individual and collective responsibility and in taking steps to ensure that the horrors of the genocide would not be repeated.

Emotional dysregulation in childhood, which has been linked to significant social problems in older adolescence, is one of the most common reasons for pediatric mental health treatment and psychiatric hospitalizations. Behavioral approaches to treatment for these disorders are limited, however, resulting in increasing use of restraints and psychotropic drugs. A pilot study was implemented on an inpatient psychiatric unit to evaluate feasibility and provide proof of concept for a novel behavioral intervention comprised of anger control therapy (ACT), a cognitive-behavioraltherapy intervention, augmented by RAGE-Control, a videogame that trains players to regulate physiological arousal in a challenging but controlled situation. Patients (N=18, 9-17 years old) with high levels of anger documented by the State Trait Anger Expression Inventory-Child and Adolescent (STAXI-CA) were enrolled in a 5-session intervention (Experimental group). Changes in STAXI-CA State-Anger and Trait-Anger scores from baseline to Day 5 were compared to those of a demographically comparable treatment as usual (TAU) historic control group (N=19). The Experimental group showed large reductions in STAXI-CA scores, compared to the TAU group. Compliance and satisfaction were high. These findings support the feasibility of the ACT with RAGE-Control intervention. Randomized controlled trials augmenting ACT with the RAGE-Control game are needed to establish efficacy.

Background: We believe that the frequent treatment failure with patients with eating disorders is in part due to the heterogeneity of patients with this diagnosis and to an incomplete understanding of psychopathological factors relevant to prognosis and treatment planning for subgroups of patients. Goals: This ongoing study aimed to investigate the existence of psychopathologically significant dimensions in a sample of patients with Eating Disorders (EDs), using the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD-2) system (OPD Task Force, 2006). Methods: The sample included 50 consecutive non-selected young women (mean age 19, [SD = 2,6] years old) attending a Nutrition Day Hospital at the Eating Disorder Unit of the Niguarda Hospital, Milan, who were evaluated by an OPD-2 trained interviewer. We performed two different factor analyses with the Oblimin rotation: the first one using OPD Axis I (Experience of Illness) variables, and the second using factors taken from Axis I and Axis III (Conflicts) and Axis IV (Structure) variables. Conclusions: In the first analysis, we obtained four different psychodynamic dimensions, that we called Explicit Illness Configurations (EICs), that represent the patient’s psychological, somatic and social theory of illness and a symptomatic dimension. In the second analysis, we discovered three recurrent psychodynamic dimensions, which we called Implicit Functioning Profile (IFPs), representing more stable organizations of illness that may contribute to the high outcome variability in this disorder. These results suggest the existence of different subgroups of patients with EDs differing from each other with respect to psychodynamic features. These data suggest that tailoring therapeutic approaches to the patients’ individual profiles could improve outcomes.

Introduction: Germans who were children during World War II tended not to discuss their experiences, which were often quite traumatic. As they reached their sixties these “war children” began to show signs of posttraumatic reactions and other psychiatric problems. Goals: To describe the characteristics of the German war children—those who were children in Germany during World War II and the Nazi government—and discuss the reasons why these children never brought into language their traumatic wartime and post-war experiences for many decades after the war. Methods: The author reviews the research on this topic as well as his own findings based on interviews with these war children, and offers hypotheses as to why they did not discuss their wartime experiences. Results: This generation was afflicted by traumatic experiences, an inability to mourn, and guilt over their inability to do anything about their parents’ privations and sufferings. In addition, the ethos of the strength of German children, and the parents’ guilt over the Nazi atrocities, rendered them unable to recognize their children’s distress. German war children were indeed victims of war, and although not comparable to the victims of Nazi terror, they have suffered lasting consequences that are only now being recognized, as their collective silence comes to an end.