The transmission of trauma across generations: identification with parental trauma in children of Holocaust survivors.

Abstract

This study examines the phenomenology of intergenerational transmission of trauma with the aim of elucidating the interactional process of transmission within an object relations framework. The method consisted of systematic textual analysis of semi-structured interviews with six Jewish women born after the war who were children of concentration camp interned Holocaust survivors. Four superordinate themes were identified: heightened awareness of parents' Holocaust survivor status, parenting style, overidentification with parents' experiences and transmission of fear and mistrust. These were found despite the variation in parental communication. The data suggest that unconscious processes are at least partially involved in the transmission of trauma. A form of projective identification is proposed as an explanatory mechanism which brings together diverse aspects of the observed phenomena: projection by the parent of Holocaust-related feelings and anxieties into the child; introjection by the child as if she herself had experienced the concentration camps; and return of this input by the child in the form of compliant and solicitous behaviour associated with enmeshment and individuation problems. Further research may establish these phenomena as a particular form of Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder.