SECOND-GENERATIONAL TRAUMA: A GROUP DISCUSSION
by ISPT Trauma Study Group

Monday, May 12, 2008
7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Workshop Description

This month’s ISPT meeting departs from the usual presentation format. This year, the ISPT sponsored a study group which met monthly to read and discuss current research in the field of trauma. We discussed the neuroscience of trauma, attachment theory and its implications for clinical work, and the multigenerational effects of trauma. At our May meeting, the group will present a summary of its work, and then will show an excerpt from the movie “The Joy Luck Club.” Last month’s presentation by Elgan Baker dealt with shame as a factor in cultural displacement-- specifically, the effect of a linguistic and cultural barrier between an immigrant mother and her son. This film picks up the theme, adding the dimension of traumatic experience before the mother’s immigration, and its impact on the development of her child.

We hope the film will generate a lively discussion. To that end, we have made available an essay about second generation effects of trauma, to prepare attendees to discuss the movie excerpt in light of trauma theory. The essay is called “Unresolved States Regarding Loss or Abuse Can Have Second-Generation Effects: Disorganization, Role Inversion, and Frightening Ideation in the Offspring of Traumatized, Non-Maltreating Parents,” by Erik Hesse, Mary Main, Kelley Yost Abrams, and Anne Rifkin. It appears in Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body, and Brain, edited by Marion F. Solomon, Daniel Siegel, and Marion Solomon.

Learning Objectives:  Participants will learn to:

1)  Describe several ways in which the trauma of one generation might manifest itself to the subsequent generation-- even when the latter is unaware of the traumatic event.
2)  Describe several ways in which the second generation may be affected by a parent’s unresolved trauma.
3)  Discuss the ways that shame, in particular, arises from trauma, and is passed down to succeeding generations, even when these are “protected” from the details of the trauma itself.

About the Presenters

The ISPT trauma study group began its monthly meetings in September. Itself a “second generation” group, formed from the ISPT group, we include PhDs, masters level therapists, social workers and students. Beginning with Judith Herman’s classic text Trauma and Recovery, the group proceeded to readings in trauma and dissociation, the neuroscience of trauma, and early attachment as it impacts response to trauma. Our powerful response to the movie “The Joy Luck Club” led us to focus on it as the best vehicle for discussing trauma with the larger group.