Abstract
Social trauma is a clinical as well as a sociopsychological category: (1) as a clinical category it defines a group of posttraumatic disorders caused by organized societal violence or genocide where a social group is the target of planned persecution and therefore not only the individual but also its social environment is afflicted. Therefore, the concept of social trauma also describes (2) the shadowing of the original trauma on long-term social processes, be it on the family, group, or inter-group level.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
References
Alexander, J. C., Eyerman, R., Giesen, B., Smelser, N. J., & Sztompka, P. (2004). Cultural trauma and collective identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bohleber, W. (2007). Remembrance, trauma and collective memory. The battle for memory in psychoanalysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 88, 329–352.
Bohleber, W. (2010). Destructiveness, Intersubjectivity, and trauma: The identity crisis of modern psychoanalysis. London: Karnac.
Brave Heart, M. Y. H., & DeBruyn, L. M. (1998). The American Indian holocaust: Healing historical unresolved grief. American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research, 8(2), 56–78.
Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative and history. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Danieli, Y. (Ed.). (1998). International handbook of multigenerational legacies of trauma. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media.
Dekel, R., & Goldblatt, H. (2008). Is there intergenerational transmission of trauma? The case of combat veterans’ children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 78(3), 281–289.
Delić, A., Hasanović, M., Avdibegović, E., Dimitrijević, A., Hancheva, C., Scher, C., … Hamburger, A. (2014). Academic model of trauma healing in postwar societies. Acta Med Acad, 43(1), 76–80.
Fassin, D., & Rechtman, R. (2009). The empire of trauma: An inquiry into the condition of victimhood. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 2007).
Fonagy, P. (1999). The transgenerational transmission of holocaust trauma: Lessons learned from the analysis of an adolescent with compulsive-obsessive disorder. Attachment and Human Development, 1(1), 92–114.
Fonagy, P. (2010). Attachment, trauma, and psychoanalysis: Where psychoanalysis meets neuroscience. In M. Leuzinger-Bohleber, J. Canestri, & M. Target (Eds.), Early development and its disturbances: Clinical, conceptual and empirical research on ADHD and other psychopathologies and its epistemological reflections (pp. 53–75). London: Karnac Books.
Fonagy, P., & Allison, E. (2014). The role of mentalizing and epistemic trust in the therapeutic relationship. Psychotherapy, 53(3), 372–380.
Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E. L., & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. New York: Other Press.
Fromm, M. G. (Ed.). (2012). Lost in transmission: Studies of trauma across generations. London: Karnac.
Fromm, M. G. (2020). Psychoanalytic approaches to social trauma. In A. Hamburger, C. Hancheva & V. Volkan (Eds.), Social trauma. An Interdisciplinary Textbook (pp. 69–76). New York: Springer.
Grand, S. (2000). The reproduction of evil: A clinical and cultural perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Grand, S. & Salberg, J. (2020). Trans-Generational Transmission of Trauma. In: A. Hamburger, C. Hancheva & V. Volkan (Eds.), Social trauma. An Interdisciplinary Textbook (pp. 209–215). New York: Springer Nature.
Hamber, B. (2009). Transforming societies after political violence: Truth, reconciliation, and mental health. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media.
Hamburger, A. (2015). Refracted attunement, affective resonance: Scenic-narrative microanalysis of entangled presence in a holocaust Survivor’s testimony. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 51(2), 239–257.
Hamburger, A. (2017a). Genocidal trauma. Individual and social consequences of the assault on the mental and physical life of a group. In D. Laub & A. Hamburger (Eds.), Psychoanalysis and holocaust testimony: Unwanted memories of social trauma (pp. 66–91). London: Routledge.
Hamburger, A. (2017b). Scenic narrative microanalysis. Controlled psychoanalytic assessment of session videos or transcripts as a transparent qualitative research instrument. In D. Laub & A. Hamburger (Eds.), Psychoanalysis and holocaust testimony: Unwanted memories of social trauma (pp. 166–182). London: Routledge.
Hamburger, A. (2018a). Ferenczi on war neuroses. In A. Dimitrijević, G. Casullo, & J. Frankel (Eds.), Ferenczi’s influence on contemporary psychoanalytic traditions (pp. 65–71). Milton Park, New York: Routledge.
Hamburger, A. (2018b). After babel—Teaching psychoanalysis on a former battlefield. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 27(1), 1–9.
Hamburger, A. (2018c). New thoughts on genocidal trauma. In A. Hamburger (Ed.), Trauma, trust, and memory: Social trauma and reconciliation in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and cultural memory (pp. 13–22). London: Routledge.
Hamburger, A. (2020a). The complexity of social trauma diagnosis and intervention. In A. Hamburger, C. Hancheva & V. Volkan (Eds.), Social trauma. An Interdisciplinary Textbook (pp. 55–68). New York: Springer.
Hamburger, A. (2020b). Videotestimony research. In A. Hamburger, C. Hancheva & V. Volkan (Eds.), Social trauma. An Interdisciplinary Textbook (pp. 343–354). New York: Springer.
Hayner, P. (2010). Unspeakable truths: Transitional justice and the challenge of truth commissions. London: Routledge.
Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—From domestic abuse to political terror. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Hesse, E., Main, M., Abrams, K., & Rifkin, A. (2003). Unresolved states regarding loss and abuse can have “second generation” effects: Disorganized, role-inversion and frightening ideation in the offspring of traumatized non-maltreating parents. In M. F. Solomon & D. J. Siegel (Eds.), Healing trauma: Attachment, mind, body and brain (pp. 57–106). New York: Norton.
Hirschberger, G. (2018). Collective trauma and the social construction of meaning. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1441. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01441
Kansteiner, W., & Weilnböck, H. (2008). Against the concept of cultural trauma. In A. Erll & A. Nünning (Eds.), Cultural memory studies (pp. 229–240). Berlin: de Gruyter.
Kelly, K. V. (2018). Heroes at home: The transmission of trauma in firefighters’ families. In M. G. Fromm (Ed.), Lost in transmission (pp. 203–213). London: Routledge.
Khadem, A. (2014). Cultural trauma as a social construct: 9/11 fiction and the epistemology of communal pain. Intertexts, 18(2), 181–197.
Kira, I. A. (2001). Taxonomy of trauma and trauma assessment. Traumatology, 7(2), 73–86.
Kirmayer, L. J., Kienzler, H., Afana, A. H., & Pedersen, D. (2010). Trauma and disasters in social and cultural context. In C. Morgan & D. Bhugra (Eds.), Principles of social psychiatry (2nd ed., pp. 155–177). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kogan, I. (2002). Enactment in the lives and treatment of holocaust survivors’ offspring. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 71(2), 251–272.
Kogan, I. (2012). The second generation in the shadow of terror. In M. G. Fromm (Ed.), Lost in transmission: Studies of trauma across generations (pp. 5–19). London: Karnac.
Kucmin, T., Kucmin, A., Nogalski, A., Sojczuk, S., & Jojczuk, M. (2016). History of trauma and posttraumatic disorders in literature. Psychiatria Polska, 50(1), 269–281.
LaCapra, D. (1996). Representing the holocaust: History, theory, trauma. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
LaCapra, D. (2001). Writing history, writing trauma. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
LaCapra, D. (2004). History in transit: Experience, identity, critical theory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Lamparter, U., Wiegand-Grefe, S., & Wierling, D. (2013). Zeitzeugen des Hamburger Feuersturms 1943 und ihre Familien [Eyewitnesses of the 1943 Hamburg firestorms and their families]. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Laub, D. (1992a). Bearing witness or the vicissitudes of listening. In S. Felman & D. Laub (Eds.), Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis and history (pp. 57–74). New York: Routledge.
Laub, D. (1992b). An event without a witness: Truth, testimony and survival. In S. Felman & D. Laub (Eds.), Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history (pp. 75–92). New York: Routledge
Laub, D. & Lee, S. (2003). Thanatos and massive psychic trauma: the impact of the dead instinct on knowing, remembering, and forgetting. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 51(2), 433–463.
Laub, D. (2005a). Traumatic shutdown of narrative and symbolization: A death instinct derivative? Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 41(2), 307–326.
Laub, D. (2005b). From speechlessness to narrative: The cases of holocaust historians and of psychiatrically hospitalized survivors. Literature and Medicine, 24, 253–265.
Laub, D. (2009). On holocaust testimony and its reception within its own frame, as a process in its own right. History and Memory, 21(1), 127–150.
Lyons-Ruth, K. (2003). Dissociation and the parent-infant dialogue: A longitudinal perspective from attachment research. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 51, 883–911.
Marcus, P., & Rosenberg, A. (1988). Healing their wounds: Psychotherapy with holocaust survivors and their families. New York: Praeger.
Mitchell, S. (2009), Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
Mucci, C. (2018). Beyond Individual and Collective Trauma. New York: Taylor and Francis. [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Prager, J. (2008). Healing from history: Psychoanalytic considerations on traumatic pasts and social repair. European Journal of Social Theory, 11(3), 405–420.
Prager, J. (2011). Danger and deformation: A social theory of trauma Part I: Contemporary psychoanalysis, contemporary social theory, and healthy selves. American Imago, 68(3), 425–448.
Ray, S. (2008). Evolution of posttraumatic stress disorder and future directions. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 22(4), 217–225.
Rinker, J., & Lawler, J. (2018). Trauma as a collective disease and root cause of protracted social conflict. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 24(2), 150.
Rüsen, J. (2020). The wounds of history—About the historical dealing with traumatic experiences. In A. Hamburger, C. Hancheva & V. Volkan (Eds.), Social trauma. An Interdisciplinary Textbook (pp. 43–54). New York: Springer.
Sotero, M. (2006). A conceptual model of historical trauma: Implications for public health practice and research. Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice, 1(1), 93–308. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1350062
Strous, R. D., Weiss, M., Felsen, I., Finkel, B., Melamed, Y., Bleich, A., & Laub, D. (2005). Video testimony of long-term hospitalized psychiatrically ill Holocaust survivors. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162(12), 2287–2294.
Thomas, N. K. (2009). Obliterating the other: What can be repaired by “truth” and testimony? International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 6(4), 321–338.
Thornton, R. (1987). American Indian holocaust and survival: A population history since 1492. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Trezise, T. (2008). Between history and psychoanalysis: A case study in the reception of holocaust survivor testimony. History and Memory, 20(1), 7–47.
Volkan, V. D. (1991). On “chosen trauma”. Mind and Human Interaction, 4(1), 3–19.
Volkan, V. D. (1997). Bloodlines: From ethnic pride to ethnic terrorism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Volkan, V. D. (2020). Chosen traumas and their impact on current political/societal conflicts. In A. Hamburger, C. Hancheva & V. Volkan (Eds.), Social trauma. An Interdisciplinary Textbook (pp. 17–24). New York: Springer.
Volkan, V. D., Ast, G., & Greer, W. F. (2002). The third Reich in the unconscious: Transgenerational transmission and its consequences. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Weilnböck, H. (2007). Das Trauma muss dem Gedächtnis unverfügbar bleiben. Trauma-Ontologie und anderer Miss-/Brauch von Traumakonzepten in geisteswissenschaftlichen Diskursen. Mittelweg, 2, 2–64.
Worthington, E. L., & Aten, J. D. (2010). Forgiveness and reconciliation in social reconstruction after trauma. In E. Martz (Ed.), Trauma rehabilitation after war and conflict (pp. 55–72). Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media.
Young-Bruehl, E. (2012). Civilization and its dream of contentment: Reflections on the unity of humankind. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 32, 543–558.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hamburger, A. (2021). Social Trauma: A Bridging Concept. In: Hamburger, A., Hancheva, C., Volkan, V.D. (eds) Social Trauma – An Interdisciplinary Textbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47817-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47817-9_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-47816-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-47817-9
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)