Intergenerational Transfer of Trauma: The Unrecognized but Essential Mechanism

In my last post about the internal family systems therapy model, I discussed how some newer models (ones that come close to my own) seem to completely ignore the ongoing nature of repetitive dysfunctional family behavior even after the children grow up. Or as the book It Didn't Start with You by Mark Wolynn sometimes does, what happens with an adult child’s interactions with parents in the present.

I have championed the idea of the intergenerational transfer of dysfunctional family “rules” that are due to a previous group or individual trauma. I am very happy to report that this subject seems to finally be getting the attention it deserves. In my very first book, originally released way back in 1988, I proposed very specific mechanisms through which this occurs. 

While there is a genetic component to this such as changes in the body's stress response reactions (e.g., release of cortisol), why do we think these have to be permanent? If they were, then treatment or therapy would do precious little.

Perhaps the reason they do not change is that they are continually reinforced in the present. Neural plasticity tells us that brain circuits are strengthened or weakened depending on how much stimulation they get, and relevant interactions with parents do not stop at age 18, or even at age 3-5 as  some analysts used to think. Especially since the circuits are created and then reinforced (or not reinforced) by attachment interactions in the first place.

The subtitle of the book under review here is How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. The author mentions that in many many cases traumatized parents and grandparents avoid talking about what happened to them, mostly out of shame. I completely agree. However, that does not mean that there is nothing that can be communicated through a variety of other behaviors in ongoing interactions.

Wolynn gets ever so close to understanding what’s going on, but is IMO missing the continuous drama. When he notices that sometimes parents have not discussed the trauma, he in fact does wonder how then the trauma might be passed down. He over-emphasizes genetics.

It is true that if a mother were traumatized, that can affect how she interacts with a kid, which can itself be traumatizing. This can lead to epigenetic changes (genes being turned off and on) in the child that affects their reactivity and perhaps their proneness to certain medical and psychiatric disorders. But that’s as far as it goes. He mentions that epigenetic changes occur mostly through a chemical process called methylation, but seems to think they are not reversible. If a gene that regulates other genes can be methylated, it can be unmethylated.

He gives an example of a boy named Jessie who at the age of 19 suddenly developed severe insomnia accompanied by freezing, shivering and an inability to keep warm. He had no major problems sleeping before this. He had to drop out of college because of these symptoms. Doctors could find nothing wrong. Jessie later revealed to Schwartz that he had only recently became aware of the fact than an uncle he never knew he had froze to death – at the age of 19. 

So does this mean that this was some sort of genetic effect? Even the author seemed bit skeptical. Let’s face it: genes do not and cannot contain specific memories like dates when traumas occur. Maybe the father, whose brother it was, started acting strangely in some way when his son reached that age.

Wolynn also falls for an aspect of the heritability fraud when he agrees that all children grow up in the same family, so this must be a “shared” environment. But somehow he is also aware of the Murray Bowenesque understanding that parents can relate to each of their children much differently than to the others for a variety of reasons. This is especially common in so-called dysfunctional families.

Not to mention the fact that siblings can all be affected by the family trauma in very different ways despite the specific nature of the mother’s traumas and any resultant internal conflicts. And some of children may not affected much at all. He never addresses the clear contradiction in these ideas. What distinguishes those who do from those who don’t? Are their genomes that different? 

Another thing that Wolynn does not seem to be aware of is similar to the lack of understanding by Richard Schwartz in internal family systems therapy that I described in my last post. He does not quite seem to get that a lot of the people he writes about are not protecting themselves, but are in fact self-destructive. The case of “Elizabeth” on page 205 illustrates this clearly. According to the author, she felt rejected by her mother and so feared that everyone else was going to reject her. She would then feel left out and all alone.

But her response to this? Isolating herself. Left out and all alone. The very thing she claimed to fear! At her job she almost completely separated herself from co-workers and would barely talk to anyone all day.  She was not described as being anywhere near stupid enough to not see the rather obvious results of what she was doing.

In this case as a therapist, I would ask a modified version of the Adlerian question to find out who she was sacrificing herself for: If I had a magic wand and could make you accepted and popular, and prevented you from screwing that up, who might be negatively affected?