ABSTRACT
This chapter explores various ways that the curse is passed down through the generations through secrets which are sequestered in the layers of the deep unconscious through Holocaust trauma, post-slavery syndrome, and economic inequality. These memories, fixed ideas, phantasies, and dissociated affects are perhaps the most obvious aspects of trauma that one may think are inherited and become the source of repetition compulsion, yet one may easily overlook that the defences are also ‘incorporated’(Abraham and Torok, 1994). These defences are often dissociative in nature, and the research of Liotti (2004) points to a link between intergenerational trauma, disorganised attachment, and dissociation. The chapter ends with a study of post-slavery syndrome and its relationship to intergenerational trauma and transference dynamics.
