Transgenerational transmissions of trauma

Transgenerational transmissions of trauma: Repetitions and ruptures in our lives and in the world

With Sue Grand, Jill Salberg & Zack Eleftheriadou (Chair)

Over the past few decades, psychoanalysis has steadily been theorizing about trauma transmissions affecting multiple generations. These traumas are individual, familial, cultural and political. Unmourned and unknown, these histories remain open wounds passing from one generation to the next in search of recognition and repair. Until they are mourned and repaired, they will continue to occupy every generation in problematic ways.

In families, transmissions are absorbed by young children through their early attachment relationships, while racial, sexual/gender, class and historical pain is inflicted on our psyches and our interpersonal relationships, and it is powerfully re-enacted in our politics. This unconscious history can transmit resilience, resourcefulness, and care for the other. But all too often, the here-and-now is inscribed with darker transmissions: hopelessness, terror, despair, hostility towards the Other.

In this seminar series, we will examine clinical processes through the lens of history, social critique, psychoanalytic theory, and attachment theory.  As clinicians and as citizens, living in a time of chaos and uncertainty, we understand that the violence of trauma fractures our experience of being in the world; it ruptures human bonds and damages the fabric of attachment. Repairing history means knowing, and mourning, our unknown histories, and the histories of others. 

This seminar series will run for four weeks on Fridays in May 2025. We have designed the sessions so that there is plenty of time for questions during the session as well as to process and apply what is being taught to your ongoing clinical work each week between sessions.

For booking details visit TR Together.

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