Comments on the reviews of Kaplan, S. (2008). Children in genocide: Extreme traumatization and affect regulation. London: International Psychoanalytical Association

My choice of grounded theory as research approach has been made against the background of three factors. The first and foremost is that my research interest evolved when I carried out two interviews with survivors who were children themselves during the Holocaust, i.e. from the data. The information that I obtained gave me a strong sense of urgency, a motivation, to try to understand the major concerns for child survivors, based on their own perspective. I decided to start doctoral studies after many years in clinical practice. My interest thus emerged from the interviews and not from an existing theory. Grounded theory is a method that sticks closely to the empirical and that aims to create theoretical models based on the development of concepts, of relationships between concepts and of theories concerning social and psychological processes from a certain aspect tied to a special context (Glaser, 1978).