Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing
by Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. and Magdalena Smolewski, Ph.D.
by Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. and Magdalena Smolewski, Ph.D.
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Chapter 3<br />
contain some kind of secondary posttraumatic stress disorder, suggesting that since<br />
many Holocaust survivors suffer from PTSD, their offspring will also suffer from such<br />
a syndrome (Baranowsky, et al, 1998) … According to clinical experience <strong>and</strong> empirical<br />
research, this clinical population, compared to other people with emotional problems,<br />
seems to have specific disturbances more or less focused on difficulties in coping with<br />
stress <strong>and</strong> a higher vulnerability to PTSD (2000:4-5).<br />
Researchers use different terms to explain the process of the transmission of traumatic memories. Miller,<br />
Stiff <strong>and</strong> Ellis (1988) call it emotional contagion. Dixon (1991) talks about peripheral victims. McCaan<br />
<strong>and</strong> Pearlman (1990) discuss vicarious traumatization <strong>and</strong> Danieli (1982) describes trans-generational<br />
effects of trauma. Other related concepts include secondary survivor effect, the ripple effect <strong>and</strong> trauma<br />
infection (Remer <strong>and</strong> Elliot, 1988). Other researchers also make a distinction between primary <strong>and</strong><br />
secondary traumatic stress (Bolin, 1985).<br />
According to Figley <strong>and</strong> Kleber, secondary traumatic stress refers to the behaviours <strong>and</strong> emotions resulting<br />
from the knowledge of a traumatizing event experienced by a significant other of the actual victim of<br />
the trauma: “For people who are in some way close to a victim, the exposure to this knowledge may also<br />
be a confrontation with powerlessness <strong>and</strong> disruption … It is the stress resulting from hearing about the<br />
event <strong>and</strong>/or from helping or attempting to help a traumatized or suffering person” (Figley <strong>and</strong> Kleber,<br />
1995:78). In the underst<strong>and</strong>ing of this process, it is not necessary for a person to witness the trauma, as<br />
it is enough to know about it. As mentioned before, <strong>Aboriginal</strong> cultures are orally-based. Once the<br />
themes of trauma <strong>and</strong> suffering entered the cultural narrative <strong>and</strong> social story-telling, they simply stayed<br />
there as cognitive categories or, as Vecsey calls them, “mythemes” that “point repeatedly to the problem<br />
areas experienced by people, the situations where individuals <strong>and</strong> cultures feel uncertainty, ambiguity,<br />
tension, <strong>and</strong> fear” (Vecsey, 1988:17).<br />
To explain how traumatic memories of the past entered the present of the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people of today,<br />
an integrative view is proposed, similar to the one developed by Kellermann (2000), which stresses the<br />
interplay among different levels of transgenerational transmission, including physical, cultural, social<br />
<strong>and</strong> psychological factors, at the same time recognizing the fact that trauma is contagious. Kellermann<br />
grounds his therapeutic work in recent (for some, very controversial) genetic research, which suggests<br />
that parental traumatization may be transmitted in the same way as some hereditary diseases are passed<br />
on from one generation to another. According to Kellermann’s (2000) recent research, genetic memory<br />
codes of a traumatized parent may thus be transmitted to the child through electro-chemical processes<br />
in the brain. The neural organization of various memory systems in the parent would lead to a similar<br />
organization <strong>and</strong> constitution in the child. Since psychic trauma is assumed to have long-term effects<br />
on the neuro-chemical responses to stress in traumatized parents (van der Kolk, et. al., 1996), it may<br />
also lead to the same enduring characterological deficiencies <strong>and</strong> to a kind of biological vulnerability in<br />
the child. Children of Holocaust survivors, who are born to severely traumatized Holocaust survivor<br />
parents, would then be predisposed to PTSD (Kellermann, 2000).<br />
Although the theory of a genetic memory code is still a contentious one <strong>and</strong> is included in this study as<br />
food for thought, evidence for genetic transmission of trauma can also be found in reputable contemporary<br />
physiological research. Yehuda <strong>and</strong> others (2000) found that low cortisol levels were significantly<br />
associated with both PTSD in parents <strong>and</strong> lifetime PTSD in their offspring; whereas, having a current<br />
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