Dr Clara Mucci

Clara Mucci asserts, “We don’t just get a patient. We get someone who is the last part of a chain of family heritage.” This presentation examines the paths that intergenerational trauma takes as it transmits from one generation to the next. Within a framework of psychoanalytic and attachment theory, Clara Mucci elaborates how early relational trauma in the form of disorganised attachment is the most damaging means via which trauma from one generation passes to the next. This is explained by the primary care-giver’s incapacity to offer the emotional regulation that is necessary for healthy development. Furthermore, a parent who has adopted the defence of dissociation is likely to have a dissociating child. She proposes that secure attachment mediates against future traumatic effects, by enabling one to negotiate loss and process future traumas. Therapy for intergenerational trauma, she suggests, occurs in the form of enactment, where the trauma of past generations may become expressed. Clinical and theoretic material is drawn upon from her own practice and also from such authors as Giovanni Liotti, Dori Laub, Ilany Kogan, Philip Bromberg and Allan Schore.

Video lecture with slides – 44 mins

Past generations, trauma, loss and moving beyond the victim-persecutor dyad

This presentation builds on Clara Mucci’s theoretical discussion in Part I, and considers psychoanalytic treatment approaches for the effects of the traumatic experiences in the lives of parents, grandparents and ancestors. One clinical challenge is the decreasing clarity, symbolisation, narrative formulation of the original trauma as it passes from generation to generation. Somatic awareness or even psychosis may be the only way that it is expressed. Equally striking is a tendency towards victim-persecutor relational dynamics. We will look at the possibility of raising these effects to consciousness, easing symptoms and ultimately going beyond these dynamics into greater psychic freedom.

Video lecture with slides – 50 mins

About the Speaker

Clara Mucci is a psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapist practicing in Milan and Pescara, Italy. She is Full Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Chieti, where she taught English Literature and Shakespearean Drama.