Multigenerational Trauma of Repression in the Family Emotional System

The research problem is associated with several issues in the study of collective trauma that remain relevant and debatable in the social sciences: the problem of the complex impact of family traumatic experience on several generations of a family [Hinton, Good, 2016; Danieli, Norris, Lindert, Paisner, 2015]; a question about the mechanisms of transgenerational transmission of traumatic experience [K. Baker, A. Varga, 2015]; the question of how emotionality, in particular, openness / expressiveness and emotional closeness, determines social interaction and the nature of intergenerational transmission. [Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Keltner, Tracy, Sauter, Cordaro, McNeil, 2016; Barrett, 2011; Collins, Feeney, 2004; Gaia, 2002; Kulikov, Shepherd, 2009; Kazantseva, 2011]. The aim of the study was to identify the key features of the trauma of Stalinist repression in the third and fourth generation in connection with family styles of behavior, socio-demographic indicators and characteristics of family history. The research included a quantitative (questionnaire survey) and a qualitative (expert interview) stage. The hypotheses of the study included the possibility of using of a multifactor model for the study of typologically similar Holocaust trauma [Danieli, Norris, Lindert, Paisner, 2015] to study and describe the multi-generational trauma of Stalinist repression in the third and fourth generation of descendants. It was assumed that, using a study of the third and fourth generation of descendants of victims of Stalinist repressions, post-traumatic behaviors in families similar to those identified in the study of the multi-generational Holocaust trauma, but among post-traumatic adaptation styles of family behavior related to modern life strategies of the descendants of the repressed, can be identified , in the Russian context, the “fighter” style prevails. At the qualitative stage of the study, the question was raised whether certain types of emotional behavior of descendants, revealed as a result of quantitative research, are observed in psychotherapeutic practice and how are they characterized? As a result of the research, the hypotheses were partially confirmed: a check of the factors identified by J. Danieli on the Russian sample yielded a negative result, and the Russian sample is more likely to be divided into “emotional conformists” and “unemotional fighters”. The more open the expressions of feelings in the family, in the parent-child relations, the less inclined the next generations to confront with others and the fighting position, and, conversely, the more closed and suppressed emotional manifestations, the more severely, non-conformist the descendants are towards society and authorities. Identified styles - “emotional conformists” and “non-emotional fighters” - are found in the expert experience of psychotherapists working with manifestations of multi-generation trauma in problematic client stories. The topics and categories that clarify the psychological content of these styles were identified. A comparative analysis of the results of the quantitative and qualitative stages of the study allowed us to conclude that the differences observed in family experience between the two distinguished psychological types goes according to indicators of emotional openness and closeness. It is not the attitudes, rules, messages, or even family secrets that affect descendants in the third or fourth generation, but the pattern of the prohibition of emotions is especially stable in the multi-generational trauma of repression. For monitoring and investigation of multi-generational trauma in Russian conditions, it is important to form a survey instrument taking into account this factor, since there cannot be a single instrument for assessing even typologically similar traumas.