title: The texture of traumatic attachment: presence and ghostly absence in transgenerational transmission.
abstract: Work on the transgenerational transmission of trauma refers to unspoken stories across generations, but the actual mode of transmission has remained somewhat mysterious. Utilizing examples from her own life, the author illustrates how attachment patterns are a primary mode of transmission of trauma. When trauma revisits a person transgenerationally through dysregulated and disrupted attachment patterns, it is within the child's empathic attunement and search for a parental bond that the mode of transmission can be found. This will become the texture of traumatic attachment: how it feels to this child to feel connected to the parent.
authors.affiliation: Faculty member and supervisor at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.
authors.forename: Jill
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Salberg
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D016901:Intergenerational Relations; D008016:Life Change Events; D009769:Object Attachment; D010287:Parent-Child Relations
keywords: Transgenerational transmission; dissociative attunement; dysregulated attachment; ghostly absence; intergenerational transmission; relational trauma; trauma transmissions; traumatic attachment