Uprooting in the bodies: loss of context and generational transmission of traumas

pérdida de contexto y transmisión transgeneracional de los traumas

Abstract

Our work aims to study the vicissitudes of a family in which the traumas associated with migrations produce different kids of effects over three generations. An early process of uprooting opens up dramatic cultural and social gap between the old and the new. The loss of context is accompanied by a lasting nostalgia for food, weather, language, that leads to failed attempts at recreating that which was “endearing” in the community of origin. The intrapsychic and interpersonal processes at play, are characterized by libidinal stagnation and its effects on the body. The erotic components failed to perform their integrative function, the self-preservation drive becomes subverted, and the drive towards the preservation of the species loses its goal and ends up interfering with the continuity of the lineage. The overadaptation present in the different generations brings with it a core which has been deprived of all affect, supported by both normal and pathological defenses – the latter ones given rise to very precarious forms of psychological survival. At the family level, over time, we can identify a different modes in the processing of pain and loss, ranging from character disorders to other negative outcomes such as infertility, addictions, and even death.