A family therapeutic approach to transgenerational traumatization

The phenomenon of transgenerational traumatization has currently become widely recognized and described, although the task of disentangling the underlying interactional mechanisms remains a difficult one. These transgenerational mechanisms were first detected in families of the survivors of the Holocaust, but they may be equally prominent in families of parents who have been traumatized in other ways, for example, as victims of child neglect and abuse, as orphaned children, or during military service. In cases in which parents have themselves been subjected to early parental deprivation, one or more children may become projectively identified with a parent's (posttraumatic) "bad child"-self, whereas the parent him/herself has identified with--enacts the role of--the idealized internal "martyr" parent. A case study is presented describing the individual and family therapeutic treatment of a woman who, as a child, had been traumatically separated from her parents.