Intergenerational transmission of resilience, resistance and trauma: Philosophical persistency in existential analysis

Abstract

Context

Resilience is implicitly thought to be a capacity that some have without having done much to obtain it, so that the notion of resistance to existential wounds, such as trauma among others, remains necessary. Resistance does not always cause healing and fulfillment, especially in child trauma, but it is legitimate to embark on it. All therapies consist in resuming a development, whatever the blockage that stopped it: existential or organic, current or archaic, due to a personality or temperament. They attempt thus an intergenerational neo-transmission.

Objective

This article defends five theoretical theses that are equally useful in practice and technique. They underline the strength of existential psychoanalysis, as each individual appears dissimilar in the face of a potential narcissistic wound, including trauma.

Method

Five paragraphs in the article first summarize a thesis in their title, and then explain its roots and extent. Their arguments rely on observational and epidemiological clinics, as well as psychodynamic and philosophical theories. In trauma, we parallel theory and technique with practice to approach knowledge. Helping survivors often excludes their confrontation to an experimental repetition, with or without some mathematical methodology.

Results

(1) Perceptions are not neutral. Any event, narcissistic wound or trauma is perceived by the subjects through their own vision of the world, which can then fracture. Subjects should reconstruct their perception of the world, but they do not always do that. (2) Resistance spontaneously evokes military fight or, in a psychoanalytical framework, a psychological obstruction by patients. The meaning of resistance in our case is different. Resisting a traumatic destruction is an emotional and intellectual effort to move beyond stupefying awareness. (3) Existence fragments the psyche, but not necessarily up to pathology. Trauma often dissociates fragments, whereas other experiences rarely so isolate. (4) The intergenerational transmission of internal images, from psyche to psyche, influences exposure to adverse events. It also exists, once the event occurred, an intergenerational transmission of vulnerability or resistance to trauma: it refers less to the fragmentation of psyche than to the transmission – or not – of associative praxis enabling a conversation between the individualized sectors of psyche. (5) All psychoanalyses move thoughts from fragments of the psyche to others. Associating these fragments frees thought and prevents mistakes. Associative effort on internal images makes identity truer. It frees from repetitions and alienating identifications. Otherwise, an alienated or poorly associative self would remain unaware of the close link of some dissociated fragments.

Conclusion

The ideas presented here emerged insistently throughout decades of interventions and diverse human practices (Europe, Middle East, Americas). While the most common therapies today are described by their own proponents as useless for persistent traumatic states, on the contrary, existential psychoanalysis appears appropriate to authentically base an existence. Furthermore, it treats symptoms: notably, it reduces the recourse to dissociative archaic defenses, whether expressed psychologically or physically. However, it aims elsewhere. Existential psychoanalysis seeks to reveal to subjects that they are abdicating their freedom if they consider received ideas about the world as free choices.