Theory buried under heavy description. Children in Genocide: extreme traumatization and affect regulation, International Psychoanalysis Library, 2008.

Abstract

In journalism when a reporter puts the main news or point of the story deep down in the text, we say she’s buried the lead, the lead being the main point of the story and usually the first paragraph. In Children in Genocide: extreme traumatization and affect regulation , psychoanalyst Suzanne Kaplan buries her theory. Her study of the after effects of trauma among Holocaust survivors who were children during their persecution and survivors of atrocities during the Rwandan atrocities of the 1990s, is filled with highly descriptive material from the many interviews that serve as data. An interesting grounded theory is peeking out from under all the disciplinary discourse and historical background one must read through to get to what grounded theory readers will consider the juicy parts: concepts on affect regulation in trauma survivors.