After the catastrophe: working with the intergenerational transmission of collective trauma in Jungian analysis.

Abstract

The psychological/emotional impact of the collective traumas and psychic catastrophes of the Jewish holocaust, Stalin's Gulags, and China's Cultural Revolution upon the second and third generation of survivors in the U.S., China and Russia is explored through the lens of Jungian analysis and infant observation. Infant observation research in Russia and China provides a scaffolding for the study of the transmission of collective trauma. Parent/infant interactions that may indicate that the intergenerational transmission of trauma is taking place will be explored. Analytical and infant observation research indicate that trauma can be transmitted from one generation to the next, often unconsciously, and that the impact of collective trauma creates tears and holes in the emergent cultural and personal psychic skins of the infant that can impede the development of a coherent individual identity, as well as secure attachment relationships. These tears and holes in the cultural and personal psychic skins can later become the focus of analysis in the second and third generation of survivors. Analysis can become a space for both collective/personal mourning and healing as coherent symbolic, historical and personal narratives are co-constructed and integrated within the analytical temenos.