Healing transgenerational trauma

Recently, the vocabulary and practices of psychology and psychotherapy have become so widespread that they are now widely known and recognized for helping people overcome, heal, and find relief from emotional pain and wounds, overwhelming emotions, toxic behavioral patterns, and personal and inherited trauma.   We propose a dialogue in which, drawing on the stories of the characters from three films in the program, we will examine and analyze the characters’ development through the lens of psychotherapeutic knowledge in the treatment of transgenerational trauma.   The discussion will focus on the case of Rachel Taparjan, director of the film “So Familiar.” Through her film, she documents her journey of self-understanding as she uncovers her biological family, having been adopted at a young age by a family in the United Kingdom. The turbulent stories of her biological family seem to permeate the director’s life without her having consciously known them, as if they had been activated as an epigenetic legacy of transgenerational behavioral patterns.   And each of the other two films in the thematic program “Can Transgenerational Trauma Be Healed?” highlights different aspects of the theme. “If Pigeons Turned to Gold” depicts a difficult journey—from desperate searching to the director’s eventual regaining of balance—as she strives to help her brother, only to be confronted with the impossibility of rescuing him from alcoholism. “Grandmother’s Last Letters” traces the history of an extended Soviet family spread across several states of the Union, and the relationship among family members is marked not only by geographical distance but also by recent dramatic historical events in the region, as well as by post-Soviet interstate conflicts, which are passed down as a silent legacy.   Together, these perspectives promise an essential conversation about how documentary film and psychotherapy can serve as valid sources for discovering new ways of understanding and developing our ability to cope with inherited trauma.   The central questions of DocTalk are:   How are transgenerational traumas identified, and how do they differ from other traumas? Can transgenerational traumas be healed?