The Nature of Trauma and Dissociation

recognizing ancestral baggage in the client’s history of trauma

Eurocentric theory and attitude are challenged when we work with family origins, cultural context and intergenerational trauma of the Afro-Caribbean population and such approaches can cause a further trauma – that of non-recognition. This presentation considers how we can recognize and witness the inherited effects of slavery and colonialism in the narratives of Afro-Caribbean psychotherapy clients to acknowledge the impact of trauma on those gone before so we can work towards integration in the present.