L. Baron et al., NARCISSISM, INTERPERSONAL ADJUSTMENT, AND COPING IN CHILDREN OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS, The Journal of psychology, 127(3), 1993, pp. 257-269
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.