ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the question of silencing and imposition in family storytelling. Stories of shared experiences told and not told within the immediate family may be quite different than stories told or not told about family history, including parents’ childhoods. There are at least two ways to think about how family stories can go awry. One is that some stories are simply never allowed to be told; they are silenced. The other is that some stories may be allowed to be told only in certain ways; they are imposed. Despite a substantial literature on the intergenerational transmission of traumatic symptoms, there is very little research on the actual process of families telling stories around events that are emotionally threatening to share. Adolescents who know more of their family history, and tell stories about their parents’ childhoods that are coherent and richly detailed, show a higher sense of self and well-being than adolescents who do not know these family stories.
