Descendants of terror

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to approach transgenerational transmission aspects of the traumatic experience of terror in the large social group. The author makes use of the notion of chosen trauma, coined by Vamik Volkan, which shows how specific mental representations of a traumatizing historical event, shared by the large group, can be transmitted to descendants and eventually used by them as a linking factor of their large group. The above issues, along with the importance of reversal of helplessness and of inability to mourn, are discussed; relevant clinical material focusing on the interplay between large-group and individual transmission is presented.

Keywords:

• terror
• large group
• transgenerational transmission
• chosen trauma
• inability to mourn
• reversal of helplessness

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Grigoris Maniadakis

Author

Grigoris Maniadakis, MD, is a psychoanalyst, a full member of the Hellenic Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and a member of its Executive Committee. He works in private practice; he is also a supervisor at the psychoanalytic psychotherapy unit of the Athens University Department of Psychiatry. He has co-edited (with G. Chalkia) the Greek edition of the Dictionary of Kleinian thought and is Coeditor-in-Chief of this journal.