ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 looks specifically at the impact and legacies of intergenerational experiences of living with abuse and neglect focusing upon the work of the psychoanalysts Erik Erikson, John Bowlby, Donald Winnicott and Melanie Klein, in particular. Feminists who eschew psychological explanations of domestic violence and advocates for the contributions made by the discipline all emphasize the pervasive nature of domestic violence. Further, all sides of the debate consider violence and abuse to be aberrant rather than typical. However, until relatively recently, there has been a division between those who examined the transmission of violence across generations, paying attention to ‘cycles of violence’, and those who focused on how to care for child witnesses to violence through protection of both the children and their mothers. Research to explore the transmission of violence across generations has been mostly focused on the impact of living with family violence during childhood on the (potential) perpetrators. Relatively little attention has been related to how survivors’ early experiences of witnessing domestic violence and abuse has impacted on their relationships in adulthood. There is, now, an increasing interest in children’s resilience following traumatic and violent events and the long-term impact of childhood trauma on adult mental health per se and/or the risk of childhood trauma leading to substance and/or alcohol abuse in adolescence and adulthood.
