As discussed in the last issue of ISTSS StressPoints’
Clinician’s Corner column, in 1993, the Transcending Trauma Project (TTP) was launched under the auspices of the Council for Relationships, affiliated with Jefferson University, and located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It was based on grounded theory methodology to gain an understanding of how Holocaust survivors coped with and managed to rebuild their lives after the devastating suffering, deprivation and losses experienced during the genocide of the Nazi Holocaust designed to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. To expand the focus beyond the individual survivor and to apply systemic analysis to the study of coping and adaptation after extreme trauma, TTP not only analyzed the individual survivor as a single unit but also analyzed the individual survivor within their family unit.