1st Edition
Trans-Generational Trauma After the Chinese Cultural Revolution Transforming Wounds into Work Across Three Generations
Based on interviews with three generations of three families, this book clarifies why the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976) had a uniquely traumatic impact on those affected, and shows the forms this trauma has taken in the lives of their second and third generations at both inter-subjective and intra-psychic levels.
As a psychoanalytically-oriented, qualitative study of the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, this book investigates the role played by the beliefs, practices and narratives which were ideologically formative during the Cultural Revolution, showing their role in the trans-generational transmission of trauma and how they still prevent a collective means of dealing with this trauma today. Instead of a collective remembering, a collective repression prevents the symbolisation of memory on a societal level, and families serve as a space for this unresolved trauma. In this context, psychoanalysis is shown to be an effective way of interrupting and healing the transmission of trauma across the generations. Within a longer historical framework, the book also explores the Cultural Revolution as a defensive compulsory repetition of the traumas that China had previously experienced on a political and cultural level.
Bearing witness to a personal process of transforming a wound into work, this first-person account offers in-depth understanding and guidance for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts engaged in interrupting and healing trans-generational trauma.
Part One 1. Introduction Part Two: Theoretical Framework 2. Trauma Theories in Psychoanalysis 3. A Selective Survey of Literature on the Trans-Generational Transmission of Trauma Part Three: My Investigation 4. Research Field: The Cultural Revolution and its Cultural and Social Uniqueness 5. My Field Work in China 6. Case 1 - Hua's Family: Guo, Hua and Rui 7. Case 2 - Qing's Family: Hong, Qing and Yang 8. Case 3 - Ying's Family: Lan, Ying and Mei 9. Discussion and Conclusion
Biography
Yao Lin is a psychotherapist in private practice, a psychoanalyst in training as a candidate of the International Psychoanalysis Association and received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research at the University of Bremen.
'This book on the trans-generational transmission of trauma after a social catastrophe is the best this reviewer has read. It is based on thorough psychoanalytic, qualitative research, it is scholarly written, and it presents a high level of reflection and analysis. It is much-needed now as we see massive traumatization of people in several places around the world. Deep insights into the societal conditions before, during and after the cultural revolution are presented. Traumatization is placed in a historical, societal and cultural context seldom seen in studies on traumatization.
The insights and conclusion are valid for other contexts than the Chinese, such as those we see today in Ukraine, Sudan, and Palestine-Israel.
Yao Lin's book is a profoundly and highly valuable contribution for those who work with traumatized persons and their descendants, and for societies who need to heal historical wounds.'
Sverre Varvin, professor emeritus, Oslo Metropolitan University; training analyst, Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society
'Yao Lin brings inspiration to the topics of trauma and transgenerational processes which usually create silence and soul murder. The use of her own subjectivity and countertransference mixes with her expert scholarly knowledge of trauma and transgenerational psychoanalytic literature. The combination of the felt first-person story and a solid academic knowledge base creates a compelling narrative that will be a must-read for students of psychic trauma from all disciplines. Her creativity and sensitivity to cultural and individual experience is abundant.
The reader of this volume steps into a world that will be compellingly new and full of terrifying details, and simultaneously feel invited into deep listening and bonding across cultures and individuals. Healing takes place in this book on all levels of psychic suffering. Personally, I am grateful in the deepest way for the lessons of humanity revealed in Lin's courageous writing. Her work reinforced my desire to be a psychoanalytic witness to human suffering and to believe it can be accomplished.'
Nancy R. Goodman, PhD, training and supervising analyst, Contemporary Freudian Society and IPA; The Power of Witnessing: Reflections, Reverberations, and Traces of the Holocaust, co-editor, Routledge, 2012
'Based on original intergenerational research, Lin's book carefully traces the intimate dimensions of Maoist China's traumatic history. Admirably crafted, Lin's analysis of the discourses of three generations succeeds in highlighting important points and the repetition of patterns that would have remained invisible without the careful collection and analysis of these biographies. Well-written and with the ability to make the very complex Chinese history clear to a non-specialist readership, Lin's work is important in two crucial ways. First, it is important for Chinese society and the Chinese people, to whom this now silenced history belongs. But this book is also an intellectual achievement because of the way in which it brings together theories of the human subject from both the Western and Chinese traditions. By proposing an intellectual analysis that is dialogical rather than confrontational, it advances our understanding of human life in a conversational way. In doing so, this book opens the way for a new generation of intercontinental thinkers.'
Jean-Baptiste Pettier is professor for the anthropology of East Asia at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
