Unconscious Transmissions of Trauma and Involvements into Guilt on to the Next Generations

Abstract

The psychoanalytic term of transference not only describes an ongoing event between analyst and client in therapeutic processes but points to a formative phenomenon in all human relationships. Those transmissions have great influence on intergenerational relations in a good or bad sense. Freud called this kind of transmission an emotional heritage. The questions which are raised concern the differences between generations and what connects them together as well as the role of conscious and unconscious transmissions in this process. First the mechanisms of unconscious transmissions of experiences from the parents to their children are described. Afterwards the effects of the unwilling transmission of (extreme) traumata or involvements into guilt to victims’ or perpetrators’ offspring are discussed.