Volume 29 Number 1Fall 2022

epigenetics, Holocaust survival handbook, lost generations, molecular scars, post-traumatic growth phenomenon (PTG), psychohistory, resilience, transgenerational trauma 

This article explores the profound impact of transgenerational trauma, where historical traumas are transmitted across generations through psychological, neurobiological, and epigenetic mechanisms. Drawing on insights from research by scientists like Moshe Szyf and Michael Meaney, it examines how traumatic experiences leave molecular imprints on DNA, influencing gene expression in descendants. The concept challenges traditional nature/nurture debates, suggesting that therapeutic interventions can serve as “demethylators,” offering hope for breaking the cycle of inherited trauma and reshaping familial legacies through targeted psychological support.

Alice Miller, child abuse, Holocaust, intergenerational trauma, Jewish identity, Martin Miller, Nazi, Poland, transgenerational influence, Warsaw, World War II

The son of Alice Miller describes living through the trauma of being abused by his Nazi-sympathizing father while his mother, who became a famous opponent of child abuse, stood by without helping him.

allies, fathers, Hymen Stein, intergenerational trauma, legacy, Nazis, poem, psychobiography, Rumanian Jewish family, silence, World War II 

case thinking, China, Chinese context, Cultural Revolution, dream analysis, family history, historical void, intergenerational trauma, transgenerational transmission of trauma 

This paper probes my personal experience with transgenerational trauma. I provide a review of how trauma theory sheds light within a Chinese context and how doing research is my way of working through it.

citizenship, communism, Elovitz, family, historian, immigration, intergenerational trauma, politics, psychoanalysis, psychohistorian, secrets

I recount my immigrant family’s secrets related to their noncitizenship and my mother’s political radicalism, discussing how I became a historian to learn these secrets and then a psychohistorian to get past the prohibitions against knowing them.

caregivers, children, fantasy, intergenerational transmission, intrapsychic processes, object relational influences, psychohistory, resilience, transmission of Brazilians, transmission of trauma

What psychic gravitational forces are so strong that they pull us into a downward spiral? Conversely, what makes for resilience and the ability to withstand such powerful inertial forces and survive or even thrive? This article will examine the interaction between intrapsychic processes and object relational influences in affecting resiliency.

Bandera monuments, grandparents, hard life, intergenerational trauma, Petlyura pogroms, psychobiography, soul, transgenerational transmission

book object, dialogue, empathy, poetry therapy, psychohistory, reading, self object, transference, transformation

This article concentrates on the dialogical and reflective readings of fiction and the role of emotions in the personal and shared experience of reading. Reading consists of participating in the transitional experience of being in the moments of meeting between the conscious and the unconscious realms.

analyzing emotions, emotions, Erikson, examining life, identification, media as object relations, music, nature, psychohistory, television, transitional object

While analyzing my relationship with media, I focus on everything from television to my connection with objects representative of loved ones and ego ideals. I extrapolate the greater meanings of my emotional interactions with these objects and what this says about humankind in general.

Charlotte Brontë, dramas, emotional engagement, feelings, media, movies, object relations, projection, projective identification process, psychohistory, splitting, TV

Television serves as a distraction from the current state of the world. This paper analyzes how people project their feelings onto characters and engage in the projective-identification process. These projections extend beyond fictional characters and onto TV commentators as well. However, this engagement can create problems in real life. The author also explores the importance of women writers in her life and on her work.

attraction patterns, cognitive processes, differential perception, environmental influences, inanimate objects, meaning-making, media, object cathexis, object relations, pet rock, projective identification, psychohistory

The author addresses our attraction to and relationship with animate and inanimate objects in the world. To become attached, we must first experience the object of our interest as it mirrors something back at us. Our needs play a powerful role in what we find interesting and cognitive processes operate so we can project meaning onto people and things. Introspection ensures that we select those object-cathexes most beneficial to us.

Angelika Kauffmann, art, Catherine II, collecting art, Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, disposing of art, Käthe Kollwitz, love, making art, media, object relations, psychohistory

To understand and explain how others came to art, the author explores how he first decided to pursue art. The discovery of his background in collecting assisted him in discerning how others took similar paths. He discusses how artists Angelika Kauffmann and Käthe Kollwitz discovered their drive to create art and how collectors Catherine II as well as Dorothy and Herbert Vogel felt the urge to collect it.

antiques, artwork, attachments, cherished objects, loved ones, media, memoir, object relations, parents, psychobiography, treasure

Reliving the treasures in her life, the author recounts events in her life and the cherished objects that she associates with them. From her mother’s china to various pieces of art hanging in her house, she takes a personal and psychoanalytical look at her attachment to these sentimental items.

autobiographical memory, biology, emotion, emotional barometer, flow, meaning-making, media, mindfulness, music, object relations, performance, psychobiography, psychological mechanisms

This essay discusses the psychological mechanisms underlying the experience of emotion in musical performance from the perspective of an accomplished artist.

André Bazin, animated photographic images, cinematic medium, film, Freud, human psyche, Kinetoscope, media, object relations, oral fantasy, psychobiography, Thomas Edison

Focusing on an often overlooked aspect when analyzing film, this essay refers to the role of the cinematic medium itself that influences our film experience. This essay attempts to demonstrate how the form of representation explains cinema’s capacity to create identifications and interactions between the spectator and the contents on the screen.

anxiety reduction, comfort, companionship, connectedness, COVID, emotional attachment, family connections, isolation, loneliness, media, object relations, pandemic, psychobiography, television 

During a period of high anxiety and increased time away from loved ones, which can be the result of a pandemic, television can have a positive impact on people’s mental health and wellbeing. Television offers an array of genres that can meet a wide variety of personal needs. By providing familiar formats and characters, televised series can comfort, provide predictability, and calm anxious viewers. The medium can also enable a sense of connection to others and an alleviation of loneliness, either through engagement with the series’ characters or synchronous viewing with friends and family from the safety of home.

American intentional communities, Athens, cultural identity, festschrift, Howard Stein, identity, Pericles, psychodynamics, psychogeography, Sparta, unconscious

Centre and Circumference, festschrift, Howard Stein, intersubjective creativity, Love and Life, music, poetry, psychohistory, Time and Memories, Work and Society 

downsizing, festschrift, Howard Stein, humanistic values, International Psychohistorical Association, managed care, psychoanalytic, psychohistorian, Seth Allcorn, Trump phenomenon, unconscious motivation 

editor, festschrift, Howard Stein, The Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, money, music, psychoanalytic anthropology, The Psychoanthropology of American Culture, psychodynamic, psychohistory 

authoritarianism, democracy, Nazi Germany, Polish government after 2015, psychohistorical perspective, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Right-wing, Trump presidency

The Right-wing political situation in Poland after 2015 will be discussed. The authoritarian methods will be explored, and comparisons will be made to how other authoritarian systems followed the same strategy in Nazi Germany, the U.S. during Trump’s presidency, and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

leaders, lies, poetry, politics, psychohistory

athletes, baseball, countertransference, interview, psychoanalysis, psychobiography, psychology, sports psychanalyst, Thomas Ferraro, unconscious 

childhood and life passage, conscious and unconscious lives, coping mechanisms, enriching humanity, identity development, international movement, psychobiographical research, psychobiography, Psychobiography Research and Publication Group, psychohistory, Psychohistory Forum

autobiography, book review, Lore Reich Rubin, Memories of a Chaotic World. Growing Up as the Daughter of Annie and Wilhelm Reich, psychobiography