Encountering transgenerational trauma through analytical music therapy

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Transgenerational trauma is a theory asserting that traumatic experiences, including grief and loss, can be transferred from the initial generation of survivors to subsequent generations via complex post-traumatic stress disorder mechanisms. This applies to persecutory circumstances and genocidal events, which leave their mark and continue to resonate actively within the consciousness of descendants.

Method: This article explores the role of analytical music therapy in working with transgenerational trauma. Illustrations of this work are provided via two first-person, retrospective vignettes of the author’s self-experiences in analytical music therapy, rooted in the author’s Jewish cultural identity, and in the inherited experiences of ancestors who faced existential threats of ethnic persecution in Eastern Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The reflective process employed here serves to contribute to the development of a larger theoretical perspective on the role of music as a matrix for accessing, confronting, and working through elements of transgenerational trauma.

Results: Each vignette provides ways in which the author’s own transgenerational trauma – as it manifested in his everyday life in various ways – was accessed and engaged through the relational, creative spaces of analytical music therapy. Each vignette also addresses how certain transpersonal resources discovered within these working spaces – each one meaningfully reflecting certain expressions of Jewish mysticism and spirituality – were mobilized by the author with personal and professional impact.

Discussion: Clinical and cultural implications for future practice and research in this area are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Analytical
• epigenetic
• music
• therapy
• transgenerational
• trauma

Disclosure statement

The author reports no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this study.

Notes on contributors

Brian Abrams

Brian Abrams, Ph.D., MT-BC, LCAT, Analytical Music Therapist and Fellow of the Association for Music and Imagery, has been a music therapist since 1995, with experience across a wide range of clinical contexts. Prior to his current position at Montclair State University as Associate Professor of Music (2008-present) and Coordinator of Music Therapy (2010-present), he served on the faculty at Immaculata University (2004-2008) and Utah State University (2001-2004). He has published and presented internationally on a wide range of topics such as music therapy in cancer care, music psychotherapy, humanistic music therapy, and the interdisciplinary area of Health Humanities, including his role as one of five authors of a 2015 book by that title. He has also contributed to the establishment of several medical music therapy programs. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals, such as Music Therapy Perspectives, the Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, and Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy.