Volkan, Vamik D., M.D.
Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction, University of Virginia, USA
Consider a person who experiences a traumatic event in which drastic losses occur,
and helplessness, shame, and humiliation are felt. Because the individual is traumatized,
and the object losses and injury to self-image are too great to accept, the work of
mourning does not take place. Furthermore, feelings of helplessness, shame, and
humiliation cannot be reversed. According to their individual psychologies and the
severity of the trauma, different individuals deal with the effects of a trauma
differently. In this presentation, I will focus on those who "envelope" their
traumatized self-image, externalize it, and control it "out there". Thus, on the
surface they appear to go about their daily lives as if they were not traumatized.
The following is an example: a man's genitals were severely injured during his
childhood. He went through painful surgical and medical procedures, but one of his
testicles was lost. As an adult, he was preoccupied with symbolically-castrated people.
These unfortunate individuals represented his self-image, which was traumatized during his
developmental years. As long as he could take care of this displaced self-image in the
outside world and "control" other injured individuals, he could function without
much anxiety in his daily life. In spite of his intelligence and potential for better
employment, he worked as an orderly in an orthopedic hospital looking after
"mutilated" patients. In this profession, he responded to his repressed fantasy
as though he could repair himself and reverse his feelings of shame over having only one
testicle. He was not successful, however, in modifying his traumatized self-image; and was
doomed to remain a hospital orderly, until he came to analysis.
The transgenerational transmission of such an image occurs when a traumatized
individual "envelopes" his or her traumatized self-image, along with its
associated object representations, affects and fantasies, and externalizes it by
"depositing" it into the developing self-representation of a child. In this way,
the effects of the trauma are then passed on to the next generation. In his or her
interactions with the child, the older person, both consciously and unconsciously,
attempts to control the "deposited image", since it really belongs to the
individual and not the child. He or she then unconsciously, and somewhat consciously,
gives messages to the child, making it now the child's task to do the work of mourning
pertaining to the losses suffered by the older person, to reverse the unpleasant feelings,
and to remove the sense of helplessness. Furthermore, in interacting with the child, the
older person overtly and covertly gives approval, or disapproval, of the ego mechanisms
the child may utilize to perform his or her assigned task. Under this influence, the
child's utilization of certain ego mechanisms, e.g., denial, avoidance, or reversal of
affects, may become habituated; and the child may absorb the deposited image, with its
associated ego mechanisms, into his personality. This in turn, modifies the identity (the
personality organization) of the child. Consequently, the child may also develop symptoms
to deal with the deposited image.
If the individual who is the carrier of the deposited image cannot take care of it
through the modification of identity or symptoms, the deposited image remains bothersome
and influential. When he or she grows up - much like the person in the previous generation
(and sometimes with that individual's veiled approval) - he or she may externalize the
original enveloped traumatized self-image into the developing self-representation of a
third generation, and so on.
As the deposited image is passed from one generation to another, its meaning and
influence go through a transformation. This transformation occurs because various
unconscious fantasies from individuals in each generation attach to each deposited image.
In addition, the ego mechanisms that are used to respond to the conflicts that the
deposited image initiates, vary with each individual. Consequently, as the meaning and
influence of the original enveloped traumatized self-image change through several
generations of transmissions, the individual's internal adaptation to the situation goes
through a "change of function," similar to the phenomenon described by Heinz
Hartmann in 1939.
When the carrier of the deposited image grows up, he or she usually has a conscious
knowledge of the traumatic event that had befallen his or her parents, grandparents, or
great-grandparents, simply through hearing family stories. However, what influences him or
her on an internal structural level is not the historical truth about the trauma, but
rather his or her unconscious obligation to deal with the deposited image.
The study of the transgenerational transmission of trauma as it is carried within the
traumatized self-image to successive generations, provides an opportunity to research an
important aspect of ethnic or other large group psychology. Interdisciplinary work among
psychoanalysts, historians, political scientists, and former diplomats, as carried out by
my colleagues and I, focuses on the transgenerational transmission of a trauma caused by a
neighboring enemy and shared by thousands or millions of members of the traumatized group.
Members of the victimized group, while individually different, possess similar traumatized
self-images associated with helplessness, shame, and humiliation pertaining to the
traumatic event. The shared trauma is then passed to subsequent generations through the
deposited traumatized self-images. This legacy then links the group members of future
generations and influences their group identity. I call this shared trauma a "chosen
trauma". Since a group does not choose to be victimized, some of my colleagues
take exception to my term "chosen trauma". But I hold that the word
"chosen" fittingly reflects a large group's unconscious choice of having
their group identity defined by the transgenerational transmission of the shared trauma.
Volkan, Vamik D., M.D.
Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction, University of Virginia, USA
Mourning is a necessary and inevitable human reaction to the loss of loved ones,
special places, and other things that we cherish. We can also lose our self-esteem. Often,
even the threat of losing the objects that we love, or our self-esteem, can initiate the
mourning process.
A typical example of loss, is the loss of a family member through death. When a loved
one dies, an adult goes through various phases of mourning which can be divided into two
categories: (1) the initial mourning, and (2) the work of mourning.
The initial mourning includes responses such as denial, shock, bargaining, pain,
and anger, that eventually lead to an emotional acceptance of the fact that the deceased
is gone forever. Under normal circumstances, the initial mourning process lasts about
three months. Before it is completed, however, the work of mourning begins. The
work of mourning involves a slow process of revisiting, reviewing and letting go of the
mental image of the deceased person, and generally lasts about a year or so. It is, in a
sense, a very slow emotional burial of the lost individual. During this process, the
mourner selectively identifies with certain ego functions that had been provided for him
or her by the individual who has died, prior to his or her death. This "letting
go" of the image of the deceased is not a total process, however, since the mourner
continues, through identifications, to keep aspects of the lost individual within him- or
herself.
The above describes the "normal" mourning process. Many factors, however, can
"infect" and thus complicate this process. At such times, we speak of various
types of "complicated mourning". In essence, what the mourner does with
the image of the lost object (i.e., the image of a lost love, and so on), determines the
outcome of the mourning. As stated above, in "normal" mourning the mourner selectively
identifies with certain useful functions of the lost object, while at the same time he or
she lets the object "go". The image of the lost object then fades away only to
be remembered during certain times, such as on or near the anniversary of the loss.
However, if the mourner identifies totally with both the "good" and
"bad" functions of the lost object, the mourner does not let the image of the
lost object fade away. Consequently, both "good" and "bad" images of
the lost object are felt within the mourner, whose internal world turns into a
"battle ground" on which the "good" and "bad" images fight.
The result is "depression."
There are also those individuals who keep the image of the lost object within
themselves, without ever going through a "normal" or "complicated"
mourning process. They are "perennial mourners," postponing the work of mourning
for years to come. Their lives are dominated with aspects of the process of mourning,
without ever completing the process itself. In their postponement of mourning, perennial
mourners create "linking objects," which are items that exist in the external
world that mentally link the image of the lost person or object with that of the image of
the mourner. The mourner then becomes preoccupied with his or her linking object and, by
controlling it, he or she controls the perpetuation of the unfinished mourning process.
TO CONFERENCE