NARCISSISM, INTERPERSONAL ADJUSTMENT, AND COPING IN CHILDREN OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

We tested the theory of intergenerational transmission, which suggests that the Holocaust trauma, combined with circumstances in the survivo rs' lives (early loss of a parent, was a child survivor, had a hiding experience) and circumstances in their children's lives (having a fath er who survived, being the first-born or only child, and not participa ting in a children of survivors group) would result in poorer interper sonal adjustment and coping and greater narcissism than in children of survivors without these circumstances and children of parents who imi grated from Europe before World War II. Three hundred fifty children ( 241 children of Holocaust survivors and 109 children of escaped Europe an-born parents) completed four scales of the California Psychological Inventory (Gough, 1988), the O'Brien Multiphasic Narcissism Inventory (O'Brien, 1987), and the Hardiness scale (Kobasa & Puccetti, 1983). T he results failed to support the attribution of adjustment and persona lity differences in children of survivors to survivor status.