Beyond the family of origin | Rediscovering yourself and society in family history

Medical anthropologist Kai Bowen has conducted research on "neurasthenia" in China. In the 1980s, Kai Bowen, as one of the first researchers to come to China, witnessed the suffering Chinese people expressed in physical forms such as headaches and exhaustion after collective trauma. In psychoanalytic terms, this is called "somatization," a "primitive" psychological defense mechanism. Coupled with the analysis of the political context, many scholars believe that this stems from the anxiety and fear repressed in the subconscious. It is only safe to talk about the symptoms known as neurasthenia.

Twenty years after that classic study, Kaibowen said in an interview that he did not believe that everything should be pathologicalized. It is even said that in today's world, these are precious. He believes that a Chinese mother will not say "I love you" like an American, but will express her love in the food prepared for you and running around. This is the virtue of Chinese society, in stark contrast to the over-psychological, over-individualistic world (Shayla Love, Science and Chinese Somatization). This kind of statement has a slightly "Orientalism" color, that is, the East as an ideal contrast. But it can be regarded as a reflection on the excessive proliferation of individual psychological explanations.

This article will start from the family of origin, talk about collective trauma and intergenerational trauma, interspersed with liberation psychology, community psychology and other concepts and practices that try to break through the limitations of traditional psychology. Finally, I will introduce Xia Linqing's method of "Dou Room Starry Sky" as a way to connect personal and family life experience with social and historical experience.

The origin of the family of origin

The term "family of origin" has become an integral part of popular discourse, giving almost all-encompassing explanations for its own pain and limitations. It is undeniable that the family of origin, as a space for an individual's early socialization, has a very profound impact on a person's social skills, interpretation style, etc. However, the origin of the term "family of origin" is a symptom of over-psychologicalization, and just clinging to the term family of origin will bring about a series of problems:

• To what extent are we limited by the so-called family of origin? On the other hand, to what extent can we break through the limitations of the family of origin?
• In addition to the limitations and pain that the family of origin will bring, what kind of wealth has it brought us? Could the slogan "Bad parents" prevent us from seeing the full picture of the family experience?
• The family of origin allows us to understand ourselves to a certain extent, but can this general term help us understand the family of origin itself? How is the family of origin formed?
• The words accompanying the original family almost completely explain our origin, but outside of the family, what are the influences of the times, cities, and schools we live in?

The word "problem" in Chinese is very rich. It just expresses that these are questions that we need to explore and problems that we need to solve. So, to enrich the discourse of "family of origin", I introduce two words here: collective trauma and transgenerational trauma.

collective trauma

Collective trauma often follows massacres, terrorist attacks, and other catastrophes. But collective trauma is not just a response to a crisis. Long-term institutional oppression can also lead to collective trauma, such as slavery in the United States and the systematic exclusion of Jews in Europe.

Much like many children who grow up in a poor environment do not develop PTSD but develop developmental trauma. Many experiencers of collective trauma also have no problems with PTSD, and traumatic events and oppression have had more subtle effects on them.

In the book Making the Best Use of Things, there is a good example. In 1953, Zhao Xiangyuan's father was sent to prison. She was only 15 years old when her father was taken away. Losing the family's source of income, she and her mother "the living area has changed from 40 square meters to 14 square meters", "Xiangyuan knows the meaning of hard life and poverty. . . . thrift trained in this struggle. It became a lifelong habit of Xiang Yuan, and even when her living conditions finally improved, she continued to pile up cloth heads and pieces." (Wu Hung, "Memories of Healing", "Making the Best Use of Things")

Xiang Yuan grew up in that era of material scarcity and uncertainty, and also suffered the real influence of his father's imprisonment, so he naturally developed a living habit that is too frugal in our opinion. Many elderly people in their families are very frugal, and it is very difficult for us to understand. I think this is the mark left by the times and family on them.

I personally benefit from this insight as well. As an undergraduate, I took the opportunity of oral history and life story courses to organize my grandfather's memoirs and family history. And I rediscovered this valuable material during a trauma-informed course I attended late last year. To take an intuitive example, my grandfather smoked a lot when I was a child, and this habit originated in 1967, when he was arranged to live in a large hotel with other people who were dismissed as "capitalist roaders". , Chengri wrote the examination, and was very depressed, and then began to have the habit of smoking.

Our response to trauma is a kind of "survival" behavior, which needs to be understood in the context of social history at that time . And this "survival" behavior gradually lost its adaptability after the passage of time, but still maintained its inertia. Therefore, we often regard it as a kind of morbidity, but this view is also one-sided. As with each of our personalities, it's hard to say that every facet of our character can be turned into an advantage, but it's those edges that make up our edges. Even the "useless" part reflects our unique existence and the values we hold dear. Xiangyuan's reason for hoarding things started out because of worries about his future life. She has been stockpiling soap since the 1960s. Some of her colleagues don’t wash much and don’t need much soap, so they give her shopping books. She was afraid that when her children grew up, they would worry about soap every month like herself, so she bought soap and saved it, hoping to keep it for her children when they got married. The act of surviving in this way reflects the deep love of the mother. Over time, she didn't expect her children to be out of use, but she kept them because of the emotional value they contained.

It is important to emphasize that collective trauma transcends the clinical point of view and implies that if social and community problems are not addressed, trauma will continue to occur. Facing collective trauma requires not only individual psychological care, but also collective action . Franz Fanon discovered during the Algerian War that clinical treatment of Algerians is almost ineffective as long as the horrors of war continue indefinitely. He therefore emphasized the social roots of trauma and plunged into the liberation movement. He also encouraged the oppressed to unite and to fight the trauma.

For this section, the psychology of liberation is a great theoretical resource. They believe that the role of the psychologist should be to accompany and assist the oppressed in their journey of liberation and transformation . For details, you can also see this " Liberation Psychology and Action Research " that I translated last year. Critically oriented community psychology and liberation psychology, together with the community and society as the object of intervention, also break through the limitations of individual psychology. study ".

intergenerational trauma

Collective trauma and intergenerational trauma present a complete chain. If the problem comes from the family of origin, where does the family's problem come from? Family members of the first generation, as witnesses to collective trauma, pass on the suffering to future generations in the form of intergenerational trauma .

The discovery of intergenerational trauma stems from the treatment of children of Holocaust survivors. Further research found that the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors were three times as likely to be referred to psychiatry as the corresponding population group. Studies of Holocaust survivors have led to an assumption that is very familiar to the Chinese, that traumatized parents, who have not experienced complete mourning for the trauma, have high expectations for their children as a component of their ego. part. To a large extent, this is because parents do not want their children to have the same defects as themselves. Studies of survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide have seen refugees from Cambodia refuse to talk about their trauma, and children learn silence and a refusal to ask for help in this family environment.

In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire coined the term "dual personality." The oppressed struggle with misery, unknowingly, or especially want to be the oppressor. Oppression is reproduced in the process. As the saying goes, "daughter-in-law becomes mother-in-law", if this is the production process of a so-called "evil mother-in-law", it reflects "dual personality". The internal mechanism is that women are oppressed by their mother-in-law as the spokesperson of the patriarchy, and in this power relationship, the oppressed internalizes the message of the other party. In extreme cases, when she becomes a mother-in-law, it is time to become an oppressor.

When looking at intergenerational trauma from a postmodern perspective, we can transform or enrich the notion of "parents as perpetrators/oppressors". It's like wishing too much for their children to be successful, and the oppression they bring stems from their lack. And although there is an inhuman part here, there is also a deep love here. Of course, understanding does not mean agreeing. How to free each other from oppression is the key.

In China, "inheriting the lineage" is the "theoretical basis" of patriarchal oppression. In Mr. Liang Jun's article, I saw that in a participatory training class, the leader first asked "what to pass on and to whom", and then "what is the benefit to the 'passer'", and finally in the Everyone was caught off guard and asked, "What's wrong with the 'Preacher'", "It was like touching the pain of the participants all at once, it was like 'frying the pot' at that time, they told a lot of examples in life, quite a lot' The feeling of being filled with grief and indignation pushed the 'benefit of inheriting the lineage', which was still talked about, to the other extreme." (Liang Jun, "Quiet and Profound Change", included in "Action Research and Social Work") The change brought about by this conversational practice is what Freire calls "arousal of consciousness." It is an important moment to understand that you are being oppressed and see the source of the oppression.

On the other hand, not only do we pass on trauma, we also pass on wisdom and resilience . The other side of trauma that both collective narrative practice and community resilience models see, our resilience and resilience.

“After the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, I flew to Boston to work with a group of humanitarian workers. … After a brief introduction, we started asking them an 'open-ended' question to encourage them to express their thoughts Some people started talking about what they were thinking, and for various reasons, their feelings of fear and anger increased. So I turned the conversation to the issue of resilience. I asked them: 'How did you overcome this? Now What can help restore Boston?' Warm feedback like a stream of generosity of neighbors, religious faith, deep love, and praise for the spirit of Bostonians." (Elaine Miller-Callers, "Chapter 7 The Community Resilience Model (CRM)", "Rebuilding Resilience to Trauma")

Whenever there is disaster and trauma, there is struggle and healing . In narrative terms, we have to do double listening, not only listening to the stories we have organized, but also listening to the "side stories" that are not valued by us. Beneath the story of trauma is the story of how we persevered to get to where we are today.

Regarding collective narrative practice, you can read my previous article " Anthropology + Community Work + Psychological Counseling = Collective Narrative Practice ". There is also an article by Gezi talking about inheritance and blessing from the perspective of Tibetan Buddhism - "Understanding the inheritance and blessing of Tibetan Buddhism from the perspective of intergenerational trauma ".

social field of home

Professor Huang Xuanying of the Chinese University of Hong Kong pointed out the phenomenon of "psycho-boom" in contemporary China, especially among the new generation of middle class, where physical and mental healing and personal growth are particularly prevalent. On the other hand, Professor Xia Linqing of Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan has to cut the role of psychotherapist and is determined to be a social educator. Taking psychodrama as an example, she saw its trend of decontextualization and commercialization, and pointed out that it was necessary to return to Moreno's original meaning, using psychodrama as "a method of action detection to advance social experiments". Xia Linqing refused to simply stick the labels of medical records and social problems on personal and marriage and family experience, but instead used the experiential learning method of storytelling to make the family and life experience of classmates visible . (Xia Linqing, "Chapter 8: The Starry Night in the Dorm Room~Family Experience in the Sun Valley", "Starry Night in the Dorm Room") During this process, it was discovered that family relationships are "the carrier of the power of social relationships."

Whether it is the relationship between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, the separation of husband and wife in historical events, or the life course of parents as workers, all of them inevitably shape the unique appearance of Taiwanese families. Such social and historical dynamics are "transposed" into the family, which also has an impact on Taiwanese youth. profound impact. The same is true in the mainland. If these great social, historical and cultural changes affect the family and are only summed up as "the problem of the original family", we can understand very little.

Even intergenerational trauma is only one facet of family history. In "Ritual Changes and Social Changes: A Javanese Case," Geertz recounts a vivid example of a funeral that shows the cultural and political divisions of the family.

In Java at the time, Masyumi was an Islam-based party, while Pomai was a staunchly anti-Muslim group. Kaman was an active Pall Mall member, where his nephew, Sent Jain, died suddenly. Traditional Javanese funerals have strong Islamic characteristics because of the fusion of religions, so it is practically impossible to hold non-Islamic funerals. But Modin, who was in charge of the funeral, was asked by the leaders of Masyomi not to attend the funerals of the members of Pomeranz. Without the participation of religious people, Pajain's funeral could not have been carried out. During the reluctant march, the deceased's aunt collapsed and cried. This is an extremely rare situation in Javanese funerals, where a detached "don't care" is created for the mourners. It also made others involved in the funeral extra anxious. There were also many conflicts at the funerals that followed, making family relations extraordinarily strained. Kaman's wife has not recovered after three months.

In the continuous re-reading of my family history and the questioning of my family members, I was also able to re-understand from my family experience how heavy the small field that gave birth to me was carrying. Take my grandfather's worry about me. He wanted me to stay by his side since he was a child, and he felt very sad that I had to go to another city now as an adult. These feelings are very heavy.

In those days, my grandfather went to work in the city, and the children were raised by her mother in the countryside. I can only come back on my bike every weekend to see my kids. In the 1960s, I was even more worried that I would hurt my family. And my uncle secretly brought sweet potatoes to my grandfather at that time. He was discovered by the rebels, but he was not frightened. He still sent the sweet potatoes to my grandfather. My grandfather wrote, "It hurts to see such an innocent and lovely child and I can't be with my son." So what a comfort to him to be able to be by my side and watch me grow up what.

Dou Shi Xing Xing not only looked back at his family history, but also re-understood his own experience by referring to each other .

In trauma-informed classes, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to witness each other in a safe space. Jingwen talked about his grandfather in a class, saying that after he left for the United States, he said he might never see him again. Jingwen comforted his grandfather and said that it was only in the past month that he could see it again when he came back. Unexpectedly, the flight was cancelled due to the epidemic. When I came back, I was separated from my grandfather forever. Halfway through, Jingwen couldn't help crying, and I couldn't help but feel sore in my nose and moist in my eyes. I suddenly really understood how sad my grandpa felt every time he said goodbye to me. Because I always thought that my grandfather was very healthy, but he was worried that he would go away someday. Maybe our parting is the last time in this life.

It wasn't enough or good enough, but I started to try to be around him more, to listen to stories I hadn't heard before.

references

Wu Hung, Making the Best of Everything: Contemporary Art of the Common People, Shanghai People's Publishing House

Elaine Miller-Callers, Rebuilding Resilience to Trauma: A Model of Trauma and Community Resilience, Southwest Normal University Press

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture, Yilin Press

Yang Jing, Xia Linqing, etc., "Action Research and Social Work", Social Sciences Literature Publishing House

Xia Linqing, "Starry Night in Dou Shi: The Social Field of Home", Navigation Foundation

Xia Linqing, "Dou Shi Xing Xing: The Social Field of "Home", Journal of China Agricultural University (Social Science Edition), https://www.psychspace.com/psych/view

YoviaXU, is there widespread "intergenerational trauma" in China? What is the reason for this? The answer, Zhihu, https://www.zhihu.com/question/32084237/answer/63662711

Shayla Love, Science and Chinese Somatization , https://undark.org/2017/10/02/science-chinese-somatization/

Wikipedia, transgenerational trauma, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma

Wikipedia, collective trauma, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_trauma