The Sorrow of Ghosts: The Emergement of a Traumatized Parent Ego State

Abstract

The author articulates some understandings about transactional analysis’s theory of the Parent ego state and discusses its involvement in the transmission of intergenerational trauma and wounds. She includes an overview of the literature about the Parent ego state and offers some contemporary understandings of working with intergenerational trauma. A contemporary approach to the Parent interview is introduced as a means of working with historical trauma. A case study describing a relational unfolding of trauma in the Parent ego state is offered, and a clinical reparative sequence is suggested.

Keywords:

• Intergenerational trauma
• transmission
• Parent interview
• intersubjectivity
• relational transactional analysis
• phenomenological

Disclosure Statement

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Carole Shadbolt

Carole Shadbolt, MSc (psych), Certified Transactional Analyst and Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy), Dip. Supervision (Metanoia), CQSW, Dip. App. Soc. Sci., lives and practices in the United Kingdom. In a career of over 30 years, she originally trained as a social worker and worked both as a generic social worker and later as a psychiatric social worker at the Maudsley Hospital in South London. She went on to train as a transactional analyst and is a qualified practitioner registered with the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy. A relational psychotherapist by instinct, Carole is a founder member of the International Association for Relational Transactional Analysis. She can be reached at Hawthorne, Horseshoe Lane, Chadlington OX7 3NB, United Kingdom; email: [email protected].