Genealogy, Psychology and Therapy: Uncovering Trauma

Fully revised and updated, Genealogy, Psychology and Therapy highlights the importance of genealogy in the development of identity,  and the therapeutic potential of family history in cultivating  wellbeing. 

The popularity of amateur genealogy and  family history has soared in recent times. We will never know any of the  people we discover from our histories in person, but for several  reasons, we recognize that their lives shaped ours. Key approaches to  identity and relationships lend clues to our own lives but also to what  psychosocial factors run across generations. Attachment and abandonment,  trusting, being let down, becoming independent, migration, health and  money, all resonate with the psychological experiences that define the  outlooks, personalities and the ways that those who came before us  related to others. This new edition builds on the original book, Genealogy, Psychology, and Identity,  by highlighting the work of Erik Erikson along with studies of the  quality of attachment, historical social conditions especially war,  forced migration, health inequalities and financial uncertainty, to  enable a more detailed understanding of trauma and its long shadow, and  to focus on how genealogy informs our identities and emotional health  status, exploring the transmission of trauma across generations. The  intergenerational transmission of trauma is examined using analysis of  real-life family examples, alongside an assessment of a narrative  therapy approach to healing. The book expands on how psychological  practices together with genealogical evidence may impart resilience and  emotional repair, and develops the discussion of the psychological  methods by which we interconnect in a reflective way with material from  archival databases, family stories and photographs and other sources  including DNA. 

Showing how people can connect with  archival material, using documents and texts to expand their knowledge  and understanding of the psychosocial experiences of their ancestors,  this book will be of interest to those researching their own family  tree, genealogists and counsellors, as well as students and researchers  in social psychology and social history.