Displacement trauma: complex states of personal, collective and intergenerational fragmentation and their intergenerational transmission

Abstract

Originally presented at the Journal's one day conference entitled 'Displacement: Contemporary Traumatic Experience' held in London in November 2019, this paper expands on the author's theory of the implicit psychological organizing gestalt, an associated pattern of psychic functions which operate in an integrated way to simultaneously structure and organize our experience of self-cohesion and self-continuity. The gestalt, which implicitly links the formation of psychic skin, body image, cultural skin and both personal and cultural identity with place, functions as an emergent non-conscious permanent presence or background 'constant'. It develops over time and emerges out of embodied emotional experiencing with the total environment - both human and non-human. The author argues that it is the rupture of this gestalt and the disorganizing consequences of its loss which underlies the experience of displacement trauma. If disruptions in the formation of the gestalt and/or its later rupture remain unrecognized and unrepresented then the absence creates a void which can be intergenerationally transmitted. Case material is presented which describes this and which highlights the ways in which the gestalt can contribute to our understanding of collective displacement anxiety, cultural trauma and cultural complexes.