ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the traumatic psychological effects of the Cultural Revolution around separation appear in the shared unconscious of Chinese couples and families. The couple relationship provides another arena in which intergenerarional traumas may emerge, often triggered by pregnancy and the birth of a child. In part, this results from the replay of the oedipal triangle, a powerful new mother–infant dyad that the couple must assimilate. Additionally, because the couple and family hold a central role in the surrounding societal structure, unprocessed or disowned socio-culrural traumas are deposited and carried forward in the couple relationship. Like a traumatising parent, the society that must be relied on for survival becomes unpredictable and frightening, sometimes rewarding and sometimes punitive. Rarely openly discussed and perhaps intensified by the collective silence, the traumatic psychological effects of the Cultural Revolution around separation appear in the shared unconscious of Chinese couples and families.
