Between Silence and Words, Trauma’s Haunting Legacy

Presenter: Jill Salberg, PhD

Over the past few decades psychoanalysis has steadily been theorizing about trauma transmissions affecting multiple generations. Unmourned and unconscious these histories remain open wounds passing from one generation to the next in search of recognition and repair. Attachment has a primal role in our psyches, and trauma can cause massive disruption and disorganization of the parent-child bonding system. This paper addresses trauma and its transmission trans-generationally through the lens of contemporary attachment research/theory, neuroscience linking it all with psychoanalytic relational trauma theory. Understanding the complexity of these unconscious transmissions from the first to the second and later generations becomes crucial in a world where trauma sadly has become ubiquitous. Two clinical cases will be discussed reflecting how to work clinically with these transmissions and how to think about witnessing as a psychoanalytic therapeutic tool. The paper will additionally speak to the current moment we are living through of mass social trauma, including the violence and helplessness we are surrounded by.