ABSTRACT
Highlighting the importance of told, untold, and forgotten stories both in our own history and in previous generations is one of the central themes in French’s chapter. She links this to her personal story of returning on her own at the age of 18 to Canada, her birth country, for university where she spent her childhood before her family moved to London. Parallels are drawn between the search for a place of belonging and the immigration stories of both her maternal and paternal grandparents. The social, emotional, and psychological complexities resulting when intergenerational trauma, often shame-based, remains hidden is discussed with references to some of the contemporary literature on the subject. Ideas explored include whether we can fully make sense of the past when much of a family’s history cannot be traced as well as the challenges implicit in ‘finding our place’ without such narratives to orientate us. Ending with a clinical vignette, French illustrates how the themes she discusses feature in psychotherapy sessions with adolescents in inner city Sixth Form colleges where the student population is culturally and socio-economically diverse.
