Posted by DAisym on July 14, 2007, at 11:28:38
In reply to Re: Inherited Sorrow, posted by Sigismund on July 12, 2007, at 15:47:02
I'm late to this thread but have a great interest...
There are tons of anthropological research studies that show that sorrow and grief can and is inherited, if you want to use that world. It is known as cultural grief and the most extensive studies have been done on Jews and American Indians. My fascination with this subject comes in around the language signifiers and the Lanconian theories. Lancan believes that we communicate unconsciously these things to each other, particularly in families.
Here is a quote:
"But trauma repeats, almost inevitably. Freud calls this the "repetition compusion." How does this happen? What comes in place of a wordless history? We evoke trauma repeatedly - through uncanny, disconnected impressions, feelings others carry for us and we can't feel, ideas and fears that seem without reason and yet persist. Unwittingly, we live in the continual presence of ghosts, whom we address (yet don't even know). In the absense of history we reenact trauma (the unbearable excess without words), staging the unspoken elements of experience. Trauma wrenches us outside of time in timeless repetition.
Language is traumatizing and carries trauma across generations, repeating as signifiers -- linked with symptoms and reenactments. In fact, signifiers are primary. They exist in our parents' words, long before we even know the world to which they refer. Lacan says, "It is the world of words that creates the world of things."As I study attachment behaviors between mom and baby, I keep thinking about this. How can I help the mom if I don't know her family history? And yet if I stir up her family history, doesn't that make it harder for her, in the here and now, to relate to her baby? It is all very complicated but fascinating.
poster:DAisym
thread:768906
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070714/msgs/769547.html