Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering: Trauma, History, and Memory offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives that highlight the problem of traumatic memory. Because trauma fragments memory, storytelling is impeded by what is unknowable and what is unspeakable. Each of the contributors tackles the problem of narrativizing memory that is constructed from fragments that have been passed along the generations. When trauma is cultural as well as personal, it becomes even more invisible, as each generation's attempts at coping push the pain further below the surface. Consequently, that pain becomes increasingly ineffable, haunting succeeding generations. In each story the contributors offer, there emerges the theme of difference, a difference that turns back on itself and makes an accusation. Themes of knowing and unknowing show the terrible toll that trauma takes when there is no one with whom the trauma can be acknowledged and worked through. In the face of utter lack of recognition, what might be known together becomes hidden. Our failure to speak to these unaspirated truths becomes a betrayal of self and also of others. In the case of intergenerational and cultural trauma, we betray not only our ancestors but also the future generations to come. In the face of unacknowledged trauma, this book reveals that we are confronted with the perennial choice of speaking or becoming complicit in our silence.

Transgenerational Trauma and the Aboriginal Preschool Child: Healing through Intervention approaches trauma from transgenerational perspectives that go back to the early colonization of Australia, and describes what that event has historically meant for the country's Aboriginal population and its culture. This history has continued to propagate traumatically across subsequent generations. This book reveals the work underway at Gunawirra, a group in Sydney founded to work against transgenerational trauma in families with children aged 0-5. The group then began working with projects in more than forty country preschools throughout the state of New South Wales. Two intrinsic forms of healing that are an integral part of this ancient culture: Dadirri (deep listening), and The Dreaming, are foundational concepts for the treatment. While these concepts are core elements of the project, this book also employs fresh contemporary theory and case studies that present ways to effectively address the deeper psychological origins and presence of trauma in our present-day preschool children, and in traumatized children throughout the world. It gives special attention to the use of therapeutic measures based in psychoanalytic thought and related modes of responding to trauma. Through many moving examples the book unites-through art, stories of The Dreaming, and the ancient gift of listening-a powerful way of approaching present-day work with Aboriginal people and their children. The contributors' work is at the forefront of field research, clinical work, and theoretical interdisciplinary work. This book is essential to workers and teachers who deal daily with traumatized children in their communities and schools. In the usefulness of its model, the depth of its thinking, and the intensity of its methodology, Transgenerational Trauma and the Aboriginal Preschool Child breaks new ground in the treatment of trauma for people who care for children everywhere.

Exploring Indigenous Consciousness Disciplines in South Africa. What does happen in the mind of a trancing sangoma, the traditional healer of South Africa? Dr Ingo Lambrecht, a renowned clinical psychologist and a sangoma himself, explores this question, not only through his own personal experiences, but also through the words of powerful sangomas. This book skilfully interweaves personal experiences with scholarly research, into an unusual tapestry that carefully maps the specific trance states of sangomas. It explores some of the consciousness disciplines available to sangomas. The powerful sangomas not only share with Dr Lambrecht their own maddening pain during their spiritual initiation, but also speak of their effective techniques, practices and psi effects whilst in different trance states. The specific mapping of sangoma trance states is compared to other indigenous shamanic practices around the world. From this meticulous integrative work, a model of sangoma trance states emerges that has been endorsed by sangomas as being close to their own experiences of mastering their altered states of consciousness. A unique book.