In his book, Healing collective trauma, Thomas Hubl argues that living in the modern world means that we are familiar with trauma even if it is unconscious. Societies can be filled with the same symptoms as individual trauma: Anxieties, phobias, obsessions, compulsions and addictions. Hubel encourages us to consider the human landscape through a multidimensional topographical map where families, society, culture and time have overlapping borders. None of these are independent from each other. In ‘Trauma and cultural perspective’, Martin de Vries writes that PTSD requires us to focus on the life history of the individual interacting with other individuals in the context of a culture and society. PTSD, therefore, describes an illness process based not on the nature of the person alone but on the person’s socio-cultural interaction over time.
Intergenerational (trans-generational, multi-generational or cross-generational) trauma refers to the effects of serious, untreated trauma within a group, family or community and has been passed down through epigenetics (Hubl, 2020). This might also be called inherited or ancestral trauma. Dysfunctional bonds and patterns may pass down through generations of a family. Historical trauma is described as complex trauma experienced over time and across generations by a group who share the same identity. This trauma is shared by the larger cultural group.
Gabor Maté argues that it is impossible to separate collective trauma from personal trauma (Hubl, 2020). This is because the physiology of our nervous system is created in interaction with the nervous systems of others. Even in utero the mother’s emotions impact the nervous system of the developing child. These states effect how brain systems will evolve and have a lifelong impact. Maté cites a study done in the aftermath of the six-day war in Israel in 1967 which found that women pregnant at the time were more likely to have children who were diagnosed with schizophrenia. What was happening collectively in the culture was reflected in the neurobiology of infants in the womb. It is therefore not possible to talk about trauma in individual terms. With every infliction of trauma at any level there is a belief of separateness. Therefore, healing must be social, taking place in ‘we-spaces’.
Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart conceptualised a model for historical trauma (Hubl, 2020). She defined historical trauma as an accumulation of psychological and emotional wounding over lifespans and generations that comes from massive group trauma experiences. Braveheart identified a pattern of symptoms that she refers to as the historical trauma response (HTR). This might be thought of as collective PTSD and shows up in symptoms like depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, numbing, anger and aggression, self-sabotage and self-destructive behaviour like addiction, suicidal ideation, inability to recognise and express emotion, and physical symptoms. Braveheart noticed that in people like the Lakota there was high mortality rates, alcohol abuse, patterns of child abuse and domestic violence. In this model there is a collective sense of unresolved grief. This grief may be fixated, impaired and disenfranchised. In children and grandchildren of these groups there are higher rates of PTSD and lower levels of psychological health. Many of these communities present similarly the world over. They often have lower socioeconomic status and have more stress and poorer health. Historical traumas are humanly produced usually when one group oppresses another. This often does not end but morphs over time. In the example of slavery in the United States this has led to current problems of institutional racism. However, the historical trauma is not just embedded within the oppressed group but also in the society and the oppressors in form of denial and dissociation.
Gertrude Hartman, a psychoanalyst, studies the second and third generations of Nazi officials (Hubel, 2019). She found the transmission of historical traumas was carried down by perpetrators. These perpetrators had used denial, splitting, projection and projective identification to defend against their past and in so doing passed in onto their children. These children developed distorted ego boundaries and an inaccurate sense of reality. Victims and perpetrators carry forth the burden – no one is left untouched by this collective suffering. Historical traumas embed themselves in the family, institutions, society, culture and collective values and beliefs. Collective traumas distort the narratives of society and collective identity and constrain the development of communities and cultures.
The children and grandchildren of Jewish survivors of the holocaust were often found to suffer from post-traumatic symptoms like anxiety and depression (Hubl, 2020). Researchers initially thought that these were transmitted environmentally i.e. children learned them from their parents. Rachel Yehuda has found that these are also passed down through epigenetic effects. Trauma is passed down the line and impact descendants well removed from the original trauma. These descendants are also found to be more likely to be re-victimised. Unresolved past is destiny, writes Hubel. It keeps repeating.
References
Hübl, T., & Avritt, J. J. (2020). Healing collective trauma: A process for integrating our intergenerational and cultural wounds. Sounds True.