Psychic Numbing | Holocaust Literature Introductory Lesson 6

About This Lesson

The human mind often struggles to comprehend remote, large-scale suffering—a phenomenon known as “psychic numbing.” This phenomenon, while protective for our emotional and mental well-being, can hinder our ability to respond intellectually, emotionally, and ethically to history and current events, and it can prohibit us from recognizing that we have the agency to make meaningful change in the world. In the classroom, psychic numbing can make it difficult for students to fully engage with a historical event like the Holocaust, which is both remote in time and overwhelming in scale. 

In this lesson, students investigate psychic numbing through multimedia resources and group discussion. These activities prepare students to recognize this common response, understand its causes and impact, and develop strategies that empower them to engage with challenging histories and issues they care about in their own lives. The activities are designed to help students understand the rationale for studying a work of Holocaust literature, which leverages the power of individual stories to provide an access point to the larger histories in which such stories are situated. At the end of the lesson, students revisit the classroom contract, adding or revising as appropriate with the understanding they have developed over the course of these introductory lessons.

Guiding Questions

• What is “psychic numbing,” and how is it relevant to studying a work of Holocaust literature?
• In what ways can understanding our emotional responses deepen our comprehension of literature and history and our empathy toward others’ experiences?

Learning Objectives

• Practice perspective taking in order to develop empathy, understand conflict, and recognize the limits of any one person’s point of view.
• Seek and engage with a range of perspectives during classroom discussions to develop a nuanced understanding of complex issues.
• Recognize that your decisions matter, impact others, and shape your communities and the world.

Lesson Plan

Activity 1: Explore “Psychic Numbing”

Briefly explain that today’s lesson will explore common human responses to large-scale suffering and trauma. Let students know that the purpose for this exploration is to better understand and prepare for the emotional and intellectual responses that they and others may have when reading a work of literature about the Holocaust. 

Tell students that they are about to watch a video clip about psychic numbing. Before viewing the clip, ask students to briefly write in their journals about what comes to mind when they hear the phrase “psychic numbing.” You may prompt them to consider each word by itself and then have them reflect on what those words could mean when placed together. 

Show the short clip Reporter: Psychic Numbing (02:58) to your students. Direct them to simply watch and listen; they do not need to take notes unless it helps them process the information.

After viewing, have students reflect in their journals, using the following questions as a guide:

• What did you find interesting, insightful, or challenging about this video clip?
• Do you agree that as the scale of human suffering increases, our ability to feel compassion for those affected becomes overwhelmed? To what extent have you personally experienced this phenomenon? 
• How might personally knowing the victims of a tragic event impact our emotional response?

Ask students to form small groups or pairs to discuss their reflections. 

Bring the class back together for a whole-class discussion in which students share the most interesting or important ideas, questions, or connections from their small-group conversations.

Read aloud What’s Psychic Numbing Got to Do with Me? While reading, encourage students to mark up the text by using the annotation guide—this will help them comprehend the text and answer the connection questions. Afterward, have students gather in pairs or small groups to discuss the connection questions at the end of the reading. 

Connection Questions:

• What are your initial reactions to the reading?
• What is psychic numbing, and why do researchers believe we experience it? 
• How does this reading extend, connect to, or challenge what you learned from Nicholas Kristof’s video clip on psychic numbing?
• In what ways can building empathy help reduce psychic numbing? 
• According to the text, why might reading and deeply engaging with one person’s story help reduce psychic numbing and increase empathy?
• Based on what you have learned, what are some practical tools or strategies for counteracting or minimizing numbness? Can you think of other strategies that are not named here?

Conduct a whole-class discussion to reflect on the content and make connections between psychic numbing and a unit on a work of Holocaust literature. You may want to use the following questions and prompts to facilitate the discussion:

• How can reading a work of Holocaust literature based on a central character, family, or community help us grapple with this large-scale and complex history? 
• What are some strategies for preparing to encounter difficult content that haven’t been addressed yet or that you would like to reinforce from today’s lesson? 

Alternatively, or additionally, you can ask students to consider the guiding question from this lesson: 

• In what ways can understanding our emotional responses deepen our comprehension of literature and history and our empathy toward others’ experiences? 
• How might you answer this question based on your new understanding of psychic numbing? 

Activity 2: Revisit the Class Contract

At the end of this lesson, revisit the classroom contract as a whole class and determine if there are aspects that need to be modified, omitted, or added. This can be completed through a whole-class discussion and/or an exit ticket and then discussed and displayed during the following class period.