ABSTRACT

Trauma, Shame, and Secret Making provides a descriptive, qualitative inquiry into a family’s unsuccessful attempts across generations to repress the memories of an early life trauma. Broad in its scope, Trauma, Shame, and Secret Making explores more than one hundred years in the life of a single family, offering students and professionals invaluable insight into the consequences of prolonged narrative suppression in the social life of people. The book models a converging interdisciplinary approach to inquiry across specializations spanning traumatology, family therapy, psychology, psychiatry and social work. The model is consistent with an evolving paradigm of medical, public health and social service practice based on biopsychosocial evaluation of all patients.

part I|28 pages

1876–1909

chapter 1|11 pages

Pierre Janet’s Inquiry Into Hysteria

chapter 2|8 pages

The Straw and the Camel’s Back

Rose (1876–1942)

part II|30 pages

1910–1945

chapter 5|9 pages

Rose and Her Children

Aileen (1910–1983) and Leonard (1914–1971)

part III|32 pages

1946–1979

chapter 8|9 pages

Aileen and Her Children

Joseph (1948) and Mary Anne (1951–2007)

chapter 9|8 pages

Moving On While Standing Still

part IV|30 pages

1980–1999

chapter 11|8 pages

The Generation That Might Not Have Been

Kat (1987) and Dimitri (1988)

chapter 12|8 pages

Reframing the Narratives of Children

part V|29 pages

2000 and Beyond