ABSTRACT
This chapter presents vignettes of work with white clients, whose cultural specificity was an important key to their identity and their relational capacity. It illustrates intergenerational cultural trauma, collective cultural trauma, and personal cultural trauma. The fact that the reality of trans-generational trauma is recognised in French-speaking culture, in the field of psycho-genealogie, may have helped Michelle to metabolise this experience. Sal had lived a life of few responsibilities until his forties, when, faced with economic realities, he decided to settle down and get a job. Virginia was a British woman in her early forties. She was born in South Africa, and as a child had spoken Xhosa. Her family left South Africa when she was four years old, and she had no memory of that early time. A colonial upbringing imposes a radical schism on any child, particularly at the moment of entry into puberty.
