It is a well-documented yet not-well-understood fact that those who have suffered abuse in their lives have a greater likelihood of being abusive to others. Bringing together psychoanalytic and sociological perspectives, this lecture explores the phenomenon of the intergenerational transmission of trauma, examining the oftentimes hidden sources of traumatic repetition both by individuals and among large groups. Addressing both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and experiences of second and third generation Holocaust survivors, it asks what measures might be taken to disrupt this pattern—to interfere with the re-enactment of trauma by one individual toward another or by one people toward another—and proposes strategies for breaking the transmission of traumatic experiences from one generation to the next.
Jeffrey Prager is a Professor of Sociology at UCLA and former Dean and Faculty Member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. He is clinically trained in psychoanalysis and has a small private practice in Beverly Hills. He has published widely at the intersection of Sociology and Psychoanalysis, including an award-winning book Presenting the Past, Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Misremembering (Harvard University Press, 1998). He has authored several articles on the transmission of trauma across generations, including “Healing from History: Psychoanalytic Considerations on Traumatic Pasts and Social Repair,” and “Lost Childhood, Lost Generations: The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma.” He is currently working with an international group on efforts to disrupt traumatic transmission in post-apartheid South Africa, and his most recent publication considers, from this same perspective, the persistence of American racism.
Reception to follow.