Trans-generational Trauma and the Other

Book excerpt: Often, our trans-generational legacies are stories of 'us' and 'them' that never reach their terminus. We carry fixed narratives, and the ghosts of our perpetrators and of our victims. We long to be subjects in our own history, but keep reconstituting the Other as an object in their own history. Trans-generational Trauma and the Other argues that healing requires us to engage with the Other who carries a corresponding pre-history. Without this dialogue, alienated ghosts can become persecutory objects, in psyche, politics, and culture. This volume examines the violent loyalties of the past, the barriers to dialogue with our Other, and complicates the inter-subjectivity of Big History. Identifying our inherited narratives and relinquishing splitting, these authors ask how we can re-cast our Other, and move beyond dysfunctional repetitions - in our individual lives and in society. Featuring rich clinical material, Trans-generational Trauma and the Other provides an invaluable guide to expanding the application of trans-generational transmission in psychoanalysis. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and trauma experts.