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The analyst’s listening can be hampered by the indirect effects of extreme traumas, of which the Shoa is a unique prototype. All analytical listening must be affect-based listening; in situations of extreme trauma, it involves ensuring the conditions for “reality testing” that is necessary for survivors and their descendants to escape the amnesia imposed from the outside. When the analyst himself is a descendant and he has another descendant on his couch, this requirement is twofold. The denial and repression of affects seem likely to spread, but moving away from the traumatic core may give fresh impetus to the analytical process.