title: Bearing the unbearable: ancestral transmission through dreams and moving metaphors in the analtyic field.
abstract: This paper explores how untold and unresolved intergenerational trauma may be transmitted through unconscious channels of communication, manifesting in the dreams of descendants. Unwitting carriers for that which was too horrific for their ancestors to bear, descendants may enter analysis through an unconscious need to uncover past secrets, piece together ancestral histories before the keys to comprehending their terrible inheritance die with their forebears. They seek the relational containment of the analytic relationship to provide psychological conditions to bear the unbearable, know the unknowable, speak the unspeakable and redeem the unredeemable. In the case of 'Rachael', initial dreams gave rise to what Hobson (1984) called 'moving metaphors of self' in the analytic field. Dream imagery, projective and introjective processes in the transference-countertransference dynamics gradually revealed an unknown ancestral history. I clarify the back and forth process from dream to waking dream thoughts to moving metaphors and differentiate the moving metaphor from a living symbol. I argue that the containment of the analytic relationship nested within the security of the analytic space is a necessary precondition for such healing processes to occur.
authors.forename: Judith
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pickering
mesh_terms: D004325:Dreams; D006801:Humans; D016901:Intergenerational Relations; D019365:Metaphor; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D014167:Transference, Psychology; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology