Developmental & Ecological Perspective on the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma & Violence

The focus of this essay is on understanding the development and maintenance of patterns of violent behavior for the purpose of identifying points of prevention and intervention. Close attention is paid to using person-centered language that does not conflate exhibiting violent behaviors with being a violent person. There is a meaningful perceptual difference between discussing the behaviors of a violent person versus discussing a person who engaged in violent behaviors: the former is more likely to be associated with immutable characteristics of a person and the latter is more likely to be associated with attempts at understanding social and contextual causes of the behavior.

Forgotten Stories of Women: Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma of Holodomor and Holocaust Survivors’ Offspring

The aims of the study were to examine intergenerational effects of two cultural contexts of massive genocide: the Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine, and the Holocaust 1939-1944 on the second and third generations of women in Ukraine and Israel. Forty women participants were recruited for four focus groups, two in each country, comprised of 10 participants each, using a snowball method in both countries. The second-generation groups were named as “the mothers’ group”, and the third-generation group (comprised of daughters of the mothers’ groups) were named as “the daughters’ group”. Inclusion criteria for sampling were: (a) being female above 18 years old, and (b) having family experience of the Famine 1932-1933 / Holocaust during 1939-1944. The groups were moderated by two experienced psychologists in each of the countries. The participants were presented with seven semi-structured questions and were asked to share their family narratives and experiences of the genocide. The study applied inductive thematic analyses that progressed from description to interpretation, for key themes that emerged during the groups’ sessions. The results of the study showed the centrality of five emerging themes in both mothers’ and daughters’ narratives, including: “emotions and feelings of experiencing genocide, “attitudes toward food and starvation”, “sense of losses and death”, “transgenerational transmission of trauma in family narratives”, and “ethnic identity”. The cross-cultural perspective of the current research shed light on the similarities and differences between the traumatic narratives constructed by the offspring of the second and the third generations in the two contexts of Ukraine and Israel. The Ukrainian women attributed greater importance of commemoration of Holodomor victims as part of an effective coping strategy with trauma, while the Israeli women put more emphasis on the attitude of asceticism that was inherited from the Holocaust survivors. The cross-cultural clinical and educational implications are discussed.

The neurobiology of attachment and the influence of psychotherapy: a literature review

AimsTo review the existing scientific literature on the neurobiology of caregiver-infant attachment and the effects of psychotherapy on neurobiological structures. We hypothesised that the therapeutic relationship is a new attachment relationship that can model and re-map neural networks involved in emotional self-regulation.Understanding attachment is relevant to working with women and families in the perinatal period and has an impact on treatment outcomes. Evolutionary perspectives show that the infant's attachment to the caregiver is important for survival, development of self and relational patterns. Mother's attachment predicts the infant caregiving behaviour in perinatal period and psychotherapeutic interventions at this time have a role in modifying the risk of intergenerational transmission of trauma and further pathological attachment styles.MethodWe performed a MEDLINE search focussing on the past 10 years. Keywords used were attachment, neurobiology and psychotherapy. We included original studies and existing reviews looking at all types of formal psychotherapy used and focussing on human research. Exclusion criteria were non psychotherapeutic interventions and attachment based on couples only.ResultThere has been an increasing focus in the literature on studying the neurobiology of attachment in caregivers and infants both in healthy cases and in psychopathology over the past decade. Existing studies concentrate on care givers, there is growing evidence on the effects of attachment styles on the infant's brain, mostly from animal studies. Some authors looked at the effects of parental childhood trauma on later parenting styles and intergenerational transmission of trauma. A few studies highlighted neurobiological changes as a result of psychotherapeutic interventions in various psychiatric disorders.ConclusionThere is growing evidence on the neurobiology of attachment focussing on specific neurotransmitters and brain pathways. The modulating effect of psychotherapy has also been studied, albeit with more focus on recovery from psychiatric illness. The literature on neurobiological changes with psychotherapy remains scarce and heterogeneous and further research may be needed in the neurobiology of therapeutic relationship itself as there is increasing recognition that this may be the agent of change, with evidence in the role of linking cortical structures to subcortical limbic systems.

Childism: A Review of Falih Koksal’s Article on “Needs, Habits and Children’s Wellbeing” Alongside an Exploration of the Film “System Crasher”

In this review I will focus on societies mistreating children in order to fulfil certain needs through them, to project internal conflicts and self-hatred outward, or to assert themselves when they feel their authority has been questioned. Regardless of their individual motivations, they all rely upon a societal prejudice against children to justify themselves and legitimate their behaviour. We are all familiar of prejudice against people of colour, women, LGBTQ in Western society. Sadly, prejudice against children – “childism” (Young-Bruehl, 2012) is not acknowledged. Incarcerating children, sending victims of abuse and neglect to juvenile detention centers (juvies) is unethical and unacceptable. We all know that many children who have spent years of their lives in and out of juvies will join the adult prison population. The word “childism” is not in the political discourse or our dictionaries, and no subfield of Prejudice Studies has been dedicated to it. In this review I invite readers to understand how our (Western) society is failing to support the development and well-being of its children to combat such a prejudice. Childism is a prejudice that rationalizes and legitimates the maltreatment of children and as professionals we have a responsibility to fight it. We (all of us) must learn not to project our self hatred onto our children in the form of a prejudice. With psychoanalytic understanding and guidance an abusing system can give up abusing. The “intergenerational transmission of trauma” can be interrupted.

Psychosocial family-level mediators in the intergenerational transmission of trauma: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction: Psychosocial factors within the family appear to play a critical role in mediating the intergenerational transmission of trauma; however, there has yet to be a review article that quantitatively synthesizes causal mechanisms across a diversity of trauma-types. This study aims to systematically consolidate the epidemiological research on family-level psychosocial mediators and moderators to ultimately produce causal diagram(s) in the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Methods and analysis: We will identify epidemiological peer-reviewed publications, dissertations, and conference abstracts that measure the impact of at least one psychosocial family-level factor mediating or moderating the relationship between parental trauma exposure and a child mental health outcome. English, French, Kinyarwanda, and Spanish articles will be eligible. We searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PTSDpubs, Scopus and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses and will conduct forward citation chaining of included documents. Two reviewers will perform screening and data extraction independently. We will extract reported mediators, moderators, and relevant study characteristics for included studies. Findings will be presented using narrative syntheses, descriptive analyses, mediation meta-analyses, moderating meta-analyses, and causal diagram(s), where possible. We will also perform a risk of bias assessment for studies included in meta-analyses and will construct a funnel plot to assess publication bias. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval is not needed for this review. Results will be presented at academic conferences and published in a peer-reviewed journal in hopes to inform the development and evaluation of resilience-building interventions.

Intergenerational transmission of trauma in the experiences of young adult individuals of Jewish origin

My research falls within a qualitative orientation. The purpose of this study is to show the ways and consequences of intergenerational transmission of trauma as reflected in the life experiences of young adults. Data were analyzed using a linguistic-narrative method. In this paper, I look at the intergenerational transmission of trauma in Jewish families as reflected in the life experiences of young adults. They see the consequences of trauma in their loved ones and in themselves. In the case of the former, they can be grouped into three categories: fear of disclosing one’s nationality, a special form of which is the prohibition on speaking about one's Jewish origin to one’s descendants and the change of name by one’s ancestors; overprotectiveness towards one’s descendants; and showing emotional distance from them. In turn, the consequences of trauma perceived in the self are: fear of strangers and overprotectiveness towards one's own children.

The Gaols of Guyana: Hauntology and Trauma in the soundscape of Prison

Using Hauntology, this paper illustrates how the supposed demise of a socio-political and economic system – colonialism – still impacts on and has something to offer contemporary political analysis in Guyana’s gaols. Drawing on Fiddler’s spatio-hauntology alongside the work of Derrida and Gordon this paper shows how hauntology provides an alternative theoretical framework to look at the intergenerational transmission of trauma, which can be traced back to colonialism and slavery. It acknowledges the impact structural violence has on the collective imaginary and how this – consciously and unconsciously – shapes the psychosocial material underpinning contemporary Guyanese identities, desires, experiences, social action, and systems of punishment which includes prisons – its buildings, space, regimes, processes, sounds, laws and rationale. Guyana’s prisons contain phantoms of the past. Only by acknowledging Guyana’s ghosts and the phantasm of past trauma is it that we can begin to understand contemporary Guyana and Guyanese society, which includes their jails.