trauma

nationality

Hungarian

innovator in the field of

psychoanalytic theory

occupation / innovator as

psychoanalyst

French

scientist

is capable of being passed down across generations without ever being spoken. It is passed on as a kind of gap and resides as a silent presence or 'phantom'.

Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok's work on trans-generational haunting suggests that symptoms are transmitted from one generation to the the next when a shameful and therefore unspeakable experience is barred from consciousness or kept secret. The trauma is communicated without ever having been spoken, and resides within the next generation as a silent presence or 'phantom'. Should the child have parents 'with secrets' [. . . ] he will receive from them a gap in the unconscious, an unknown, unrecognized knowledge. [. . . ] The buried speech of the parent becomes a dead gap, without a burial place, in the child. This unknown phantom comes back from the unconscious to haunt and leads to phobias, madness and obsessions. Its effects can persist through several generations and determine the fate of an entire family line. (Rashkin 1988: 39)

Nicholas AbrahamThinkers

Nicholas Abraham