TY - JOUR
T1 - Multigenerational legacies of trauma
T2 - Modeling the what and how of transmission
AU - Danieli, Yael
AU - Norris, Fran H.
AU - Engdahl, Brian
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 American Orthopsychiatric Association.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - To operationalize the theory of Trauma and the Continuity of Self: A Multidimensional, Multi-disciplinary, Integrative Framework (Danieli, 1998), we created a testable model using factors in Holocaust survivors' lives that may have affected their offspring's adaptation. A web-based sample of 422 adult children of survivors completed a 3-part inventory assessing multigenerational legacies of trauma. To explain the severity of the child's reparative adaptational impacts, we conducted hierarchical regression analyses (Phase 1) and path analyses (Phase 2). We hypothesized that these impacts followed largely from the (child-reported) intensities of parents' victim, numb, and fighter posttrauma adaptational styles. These styles, in turn, followed from family history and post-Holocaust family milieu. With all effects of family history and milieu on offspring specified as indirect (through parents' victim styles), the initial path model fit the data well with one exception: Broken generational linkages had direct as well as indirect effects. While survivors' Holocaust experiences-especially internment-had significant indirect effects on their children, each component of post-Holocaust family milieu had one or more associations with mothers' and fathers' victim, numb, and/or fighter styles. The strongest relationships emerged for broken generational linkages-a risk factor for negative effects-and sociocultural setting (living in Israel rather than North America)-a protective factor. Because the healing processes that underlie observed effects of family milieu are malleable, survivors' and offspring's suffering might be reduced through efforts to recapture meaning, purpose, identity, connectedness of past, present and future, and attachments to community and place.
AB - To operationalize the theory of Trauma and the Continuity of Self: A Multidimensional, Multi-disciplinary, Integrative Framework (Danieli, 1998), we created a testable model using factors in Holocaust survivors' lives that may have affected their offspring's adaptation. A web-based sample of 422 adult children of survivors completed a 3-part inventory assessing multigenerational legacies of trauma. To explain the severity of the child's reparative adaptational impacts, we conducted hierarchical regression analyses (Phase 1) and path analyses (Phase 2). We hypothesized that these impacts followed largely from the (child-reported) intensities of parents' victim, numb, and fighter posttrauma adaptational styles. These styles, in turn, followed from family history and post-Holocaust family milieu. With all effects of family history and milieu on offspring specified as indirect (through parents' victim styles), the initial path model fit the data well with one exception: Broken generational linkages had direct as well as indirect effects. While survivors' Holocaust experiences-especially internment-had significant indirect effects on their children, each component of post-Holocaust family milieu had one or more associations with mothers' and fathers' victim, numb, and/or fighter styles. The strongest relationships emerged for broken generational linkages-a risk factor for negative effects-and sociocultural setting (living in Israel rather than North America)-a protective factor. Because the healing processes that underlie observed effects of family milieu are malleable, survivors' and offspring's suffering might be reduced through efforts to recapture meaning, purpose, identity, connectedness of past, present and future, and attachments to community and place.
KW - Children of survivors
KW - Holocaust
KW - Multigenerational legacies of trauma
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U2 - 10.1037/ort0000145
DO - 10.1037/ort0000145
M3 - Article
C2 - 26765546
AN - SCOPUS:84954357173
SN - 0002-9432
VL - 86
SP - 639
EP - 651
JO - American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
JF - American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
IS - 6
ER -