Abstract
The impact of intergenerational transmissions of trauma and the dissociative states of mind that cross from parents to their children has become an important expansion of psychoanalytic theory. Clinical material will be discussed showing how the early death of a mother resulted in a haunting of the lives of many generations of mothers and daughters. Considerations of attachment rupture, trauma, envy, deadly and deadening aggression, and shame will be discussed as part of transgenerational transmission phenomena and how they are worked on in the analytic relationship. Envious attacks, while painful to tolerate, nonetheless need to be processed in order to transform transmissions from the past.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to…
1. Discuss how envy can be transmitted from parent to child to grandchild as an internal affect state.
2. Describe how trauma transmissions occur in the attachment relationship and how painful states of mind from the parent take residence in the child’s mind.
3. Identify how these transmissions can be heard in the treatment and worked with in the transference/countertransference analytic relationship.
Biography
Jill Salberg, Ph.D., ABPP is a clinical associate professor and clinical consultant/supervisor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is also faculty and supervisor at the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center and the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in NYC, as well as a member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR). She is in private practice in Manhattan and telehealth online. Dr. Salberg’s papers have been published in Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and Psychoanalytic Perspectives. She has authored multiple book chapters: Relational Traditions Vol. 5: Evolution of Process (2011), The Jewish World of Sigmund Freud (2010) and Answering a Question with a Question (2013). She is the editor of two books and a contributor to the former: Good Enough Endings: Breaks, Interruptions and Terminations from Contemporary Relational Perspectives (2010) and Psychoanalytic Credos: Personal and Professional Journeys of Psychoanalysts (2022). She has co-edited two books with Sue Grand, both of which won the Gradiva Award for 2018: The Wounds of History: Repair and Resilience in the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma and Transgenerational Trauma and the Other: Dialogues Across History and Difference (2017). She conceived of and co-edits a book series called Psyche and Soul: Psychoanalysis, Spirituality and Religion in Dialogue.
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