Multigenerational Dissociation: A Framework for Building Narrative

Abstract

This paper presents the concept of Multigenerational Dissociation (MGD), a behavior pattern that occurs in families in which violence and abuse are re-enacted from one generation to the next, accompanied by denial that the trauma occurred, or if it did, that it was destructive. While revictimization, reenactment, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma are discussed extensively in the literature, MGD helps to view them within a broad historical framework. This is useful for conceptualizing cases therapeutically, and it can also contribute to research on dissociation and recovered memories of trauma and abuse by demonstrating the value of narrative clinical data. Case material is used to illustrate how MGD occurs in people’s lives and affects their memories, demonstrating how it becomes a frame within which to convey the dynamics of how traumatic experiences are remembered. This also demonstrates that when clinicians contribute their own narrative data to research on traumatic memory, the science is more accurate, relevant, and comprehensible to clinical and nonclinical researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• childhood trauma
• clinical work
• dissociation
• family
• intergenerational trauma
• recovered memories
• revictimization

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A portion of this article was presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation in Atlanta, Georgia. I want to thank Jima Rice, PhD, for her assistance during the preparation of this article.