Psychotherapeutic Work with Intergenerational Trauma

A relational systems approach to intergenerational trauma

How does trauma get passed from one generation to the next? In this presentation, Dr Doris Brothers offers an explanation that is based on the concept of “traumatic attachments.” This reflects her relational systems understanding of trauma as the destruction of the certainties that pattern psychological life. Arising out of the need to restore a sense of certainty about psychological survival, traumatic attachments tend to coalesce into patterns of relating which are so inflexible and resistant to change that they profoundly affect parent-child interactions over generations. The thesis is illustrated via clinical case history.