The Vast Silence
Exploring Loss, Grief, and Healing in the Irish Diaspora
Recorded Saturday 11 June 2022
With Siobhán McGee, Jane Haberlin, Dr Oonagh Walsh, Dr Michael O’Loughlin and Kerri ní Dochartaigh
CPD Credits: 4 hours
From colonial occupation to partition, from the Famine to the Troubles, Ireland has experienced much turmoil and loss. Countless people died in the great hunger, and since 1700, 10 million have emigrated for survival. The scattering of Irish people across the world means that many of us (10m in England) are the descendants of those who experienced the anguished loss of family, history and land. The proposition of this conference is that this has led to distinct manifestations of intergenerational trauma running through the diaspora.
READ MORE...We know from the growing psychotherapy literature on intergenerational trauma that the unprocessed distress of our parents, grandparents and ancestors finds its way into the minds and bodies of our descendants. This transmission of emotional impact from one generation to the next is thought to be a consequence of occlusion – the hiding of shameful oppressions, humiliation and loss. So long as these affects remain dissociated they will emotionally disturb and unconsciously seep into the inner selves of the next generation. Such feelings are all the more harmful because they are not connected to memory or meaning.
Our goal on this day will be to explore emotional issues that may be particular to people of Irish heritage, which are expressed directly or indirectly in therapy, particularly shame, depression and grief. We will consider what is helpful in in working with those experiences in the consulting room. And, beyond that, we will also be exploring how reclaiming the land, language and the wisdom of the ancient Ireland can transform Irishness into a source of strength, personal knowledge, healing and connection.
CPD – An optional certificate of attendance for up to 4 hours of CPD, based on completion of a multiple choice questionnaire, will be available soon.
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SPEAKERS
Siobhán McGee, Jane Haberlin, Professor Oonagh Walsh, Dr Michael O’Loughlin, Kerri ní Dochartaigh, ,FULL PROGRAMME
Introduction by chairperson Jane Haberlin
“I am English, as my Da often reminded me, ‘by accident of birth’. My Irishness is neither visible in my voice or my name. I understand the feelings of guilt and shame felt by those leaving Ireland and the envy towards those who do not to be a co-created relational dynamic encapsulated in the stinging gibe of being called a ‘Plastic Paddy’ – a term which expresses the contempt for the cultural appropriation of Irish identity by the non-native Irish. I am interested in the complex mythologizing of the Irish Diaspora, often represented in the vein of loss, tragedy, secrecy and the romance of heritage. For a culture so accomplished at the written, sung and spoken word, it is fascinating that so much about the emigrant experience has been unspeakable, a vast silence of untold stories, not only of trauma and shame but also accomplishment and flowering.” – Jane Haberlin
Dr Oonagh Walsh
Ancestral Voices: Trauma and adaptation across generations in Ireland
The course of Irish history has been both turbulent and rich. Its citizens have been shaped by catastrophic events such as the Great Famine (1845-51), as well as a complex culture that has evolved as a means of navigating an often challenging, if not explicitly hostile, world. This paper examines the role of the Famine in precipitating significant modifications in the Irish population that are both biological and cultural (expressed through epigenetic change, an increased religious and social conformity, large-scale migration, and fundamental shifts in marriage patterns), and situates the Irish case in a broader global context of heritable adaptation.
Q&A
Dr Michael O’Loughlin
The Consequences of Familial and Cultural Occlusions Across Generations: The case of Ireland’s Great Hunger
Access to historicity and ancestral lore appears vital to cultural formation. If that access has been barred, and if cultural traumas are rendered unspeakable, the risk is high that emotional occlusions will pass down the generations. This presentation will focus on both familial and cultural occlusions of the kind that result from colonial oppression, unmetabolized trauma, and hidden stories. He will draw on his own autobiography, on Irish history – particularly on The Great Hunger – and on developments in psychoanalytic postcolonial theory to explicate the melancholy that can result from such events. In conclusion, he will explore possible clinical solutions.
Q&A
Kerri ní Dochartaigh
Drawing Their Lines on my Insides
How do we learn to live alongside the ghosts of our collective past? How do we honour the suffering of the land we came from in a way that still leaves room for hope? How do we take the first steps away from trauma towards a path of proper healing?
Kerri ní Dochartaigh in conversation about her book Thin Places and the ways we might make peace with the past, root ourselves safely in the present and plant seeds of hope for the future.
Q&A
Siobhán McGee
Aligning the Cauldrons
Trauma and in particular oppression, works to disconnect a people from their power and wholeness. Going underground often becomes the only possibility for survival or potent resistance. The land, like any Body, has stories to tell. Reconnection can emerge through a practice of deep listening, opening portals of relationship and descent to these subterranean passageways. In this session, Siobhán invites us to explore the possibilities for healing that can emerge from reweaving the threads, rekindling the fires and stirring the cauldrons of an ancient wisdom lineage that sits beneath the land, poetry, and ancient myths of Ireland.
Q&A
Panel Discussion