[Letters from Clara Happel, in New York, to her son: 1936-1945]

Many psychoanalysts of the second generation, among them Clara Happel (1889-1945) were forced to emigrate at the time of the National Socialist domination. The experience of a total upheaval in the history of the world during the emigration period shattered this second generation's feeling of being pioneers. On the intra-psychic plane this was the equivalent of a serious identity crisis. The psychic state among the emigrés is described, using the fate of Clara Happel as an example. She had to master and work through "doubts and losses of all kinds". She did not succeed in escaping the reality of the annihilation which threatened her. The experience of the Nazi domination, the ravages of the Second World War, the reality of a policy of the extermination of men by men and the rise of the danger of nuclear destruction sharpened the process of mourning for things lost. She plunged into a conflict of profound ambivalence. The materialization of the nuclear danger with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought her face to face with her own frenzy for revenge. The shadow of objective reality fell across her ego in the form of melancholia. She lost the struggle with a reality which had become psychotic. The outside world replaced her inner life. She committed suicide on September 15, 1945. Her fate as a refugee shows that there are some situations where it is impossible to work through the conflict of ambivalence.