The Search for Psychological Models: Commentary on Papers by Stephen Seligman and by Robin C. Silverman and Alicia F. Lieberman

Seligman's and Silverman and Lieberman's Papers Each in its Own way addresses the question of how trauma is passed on from one generation to the next. On the basis of their observations of and therapeutic work with infants, young children, and their parents, these authors argue (a) that the transmission of trauma can be observed in the patterns of transactions that actually occur between parents and their children and (b) that these real experiences then shape and influence the children's intrapsychic phantasies and representations of relationships. In pointing to the actual patterns of early interpersonal experience as an important and legitimate source of data that can inform our understanding of how psychic processes become organized and develop, they join a growing number of researchers and clinicians, including this author, Stern, Beebe, Lachmann, Lyons-Ruth, Fonagy, and other recent attachment writers. They have extended our work by applying this stance to trauma and to the transmission of trauma from one generation to the next.

In essence, these authors are saying that trauma is passed on by traumatized parents traumatizing their own children in spite of conscious efforts on the part of the parents, as in the case of Laura, to protect their children. The authors provide compelling clinical examples to illustrate how trauma gets enacted in real behaviors by the parent and the observable effects these behaviors have on the child. They then offer a variety of conceptual models in an effort to articulate the conscious and unconscious processes going on in the parent and