Emotional Inheritance – on transgenerational trauma
16.9.2023
Translation: Veronica Bielawski
In her book Emotional Inheritance, psychoanalyst Galit Atlas uses touching and compelling case histories to describe how traumas are passed down through generations – and how to resolve them.
As a young father, Jon suddenly suffers a nervous breakdown that he can’t explain. He harbours suicidal thoughts, which he attributes to the early death of his sister. Over the course of therapy, Jon is able to shed light on his past and recognise the real reason for his self-doubt.
The secrets of the mind include not only our own life experiences but also those we unknowingly carry with us: the memories, feelings, and traumas that we inherit from previous generations.
This is what New York psychoanalyst Galit Atlas writes in the preface to her new book, Emotional Inheritance. She then launches into a collection of case histories that explore the emotional traces of traumatic events from past generations.
Transgenerational trauma – when emotions are inherited
Galit Atlas describes the stories of people she’s treated as a psychoanalyst and doesn’t shy away from talking about her own emotional inheritance either. Over eleven case histories, Atlas illuminates how the causes of mental health problems are often hidden in the past.
The technical term for this is transgenerational trauma. In other words, these are traumatic experiences passed down through the generations, potentially carrying psychological effects over to the children's and grandchildren's generation. With the personal stories recounted in her book, Atlas demonstrates the effects therapy, often lasting several years, can have – how it can gradually reveal dark family histories, thus often elucidating her clients’ emotional worlds.
The search for past causes of present feelings
One of the stories she describes is that of Jon. At 35, Jon suffered a nervous breakdown after the birth of his daughter. The cause? Unknown. He has a death wish, but has no idea why. He decides to undergo therapy where, together with Atlas, he explores what might have led to his mental collapse.
When Jon was only a few months old, his older sister died in an accident. This broke his mother. She was incapable of engaging with her baby, Jon, and giving him the attentiveness he needed. One day, Jon learned from his brother that he was an unwanted child – that his mother had actually wanted to abort him. Jon explains in the book that his parents didn’t want a fifth child; four were enough. And that while four remained in the end, it wasn’t the four they’d wanted.
Atlas then draws a line to the underlying psychoanalytic theories. In Jon’s case, the difficulties many unwanted children experience throughout their lives. She quotes the psychoanalyst Sándro Ferenczi, who as early as 1929 published an essay entitled The Unwelcome Child and His Death Instinct. In it, he states that there’s often a direct relationship between being unwanted as a child and having a subconscious death wish later in life.
The interesting thing is that those affected don't even need to remember the traumatic events for psychological symptoms to rear their heads. Take Jon, who was unaware of having been an unwanted baby at the time of his mental struggles, yet carried suicidal thoughts with him throughout his life. By recognising the reasons behind this, he could finally make peace with it.
How our grandparents’ war traumas still impact us today
Jon’s story is described in the second part of the book, which deals with parents and the remnants of their own life stories. In the first part, Atlas explores the influence of our grandparents’ experiences. Often, war trauma is what continues to affect the emotional world of descendants generations later.
Take Rachel’s story. Her grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. He had never spoken about the horrors he experienced in Auschwitz. And yet, even as a child, Rachel struggled with inexplicable anxiety. She had a recurring dream in her childhood in which she’d desperately attempt to hide a baby. When she became a mum herself, the dream returned. Eventually, she learned that her grandfather came to Auschwitz with his wife and baby. Both of them were murdered. Despite not knowing this before, Rachel relived the fear for the infant in her own dreams.
Finally, the third and last part of the book is about ourselves and how to break the vicious cycle of emotional inheritance. Atlas deals with traumatic childhood experiences that haunt people throughout their lives, even if they consciously or subconsciously try to suppress them. Exploring the causes of negative feelings helps to process these experiences, diminishing their impact on the present.
A door opens
Although the past can’t be changed, confronting past events that have an effect on the now offers relief. According to Atlas, our lives begin to change for the better when we can identify our emotional inheritance and connect the dots.
Header image: Anna Sandner
Science editor and biologist. I love animals and am fascinated by plants, their abilities and everything you can do with them. That's why my favourite place is always outside - somewhere in nature, preferably in my wild garden.
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