Transgenerational psychoanalysis

 Many of these therapies function as brief therapy; that is: usually about five to six sessions maximum. This brief therapy can be done on its own or as a complement to a longer standard analysis.

 The french clinical psychologist and author, Bruno Clavier, in his book Les fantomes familiaux, brings a very interesting point of view to this theory. In the first chapter, he describes many young women who come to se him because « prince charming » seems always around the corner, mostly on the next internet meet-up or ad, only to remain forever unattainable and out of reach. (Yes, this is something I have often seen in my office too). But Clavier claims that a large majority of these women have a special « sweetheart » from years ago, someone that they either had a platonic or consummated relationship with, but whom for whatever reason fate distanced from them. According to Clavier, this old sweetheart from years ago is idealized and seen as the perfect « if only » and the man chosen as a husband or life partner is often taken as a last option, because « no-one better was around », or « he was a good provider » or « he wanted a family too » or « he wan’t terribly exciting but was just stable ». These women sometimes leave their husbands once the children have grown, sometimes they stay, but if they stay it is in a somewhat lifeless mariage. And sometimes they can’t bear to settle for one partner at all and prefer to invest their energy in their career and friends. 

 Clavier introduces the hypothesis that this behavior might have a trans-generational cause. He rightly points out that women marrying or choosing their partner for love is a very recent phenomenon. Our mothers married very young and were thrust into maternity almost as soon as they left their parental home, and as for our grandmothers generation… Even if our grandmothers may have officially made a « choice », arranged marriage was implicit. And explicit for all the generations that came before them. And the young woman in an arranged marriage would often fantasize about the innocent crush she had as a teenager or the glimpse she caught of some other « could be » Romeo who was so very different than her dry, often indifferent husband. 

 So the dissatisfied woman of today is suffering from sole kind of trans-generational « phantom »…? It is an interesting hypothesis, but one that seems to me to be a little bit far-fetched. Again, according to Clavier, the solution would be to unmask all this ancestral suffering, and the present hardships of the modern woman would just fade away. This is the same argument Freud made over and over again, that once the unconscious becomes conscious, all symptoms would often disappear. Yet in clinical practice we know this to be an unusually optimistic claim. 

 Nevertheless, Clavier’s book is very interesting. In each of the seven or eight chapters he describes a different set of symptoms such as the one above and sets out to explain them using trans-generational analysis. For instance, chapter two deals with the typical « Don Juan » figure of the charming but eternally unhappy womanizer. Much has been written about this but again, here we have a refreshingly new insight. 

 All that said, however, although looking at ancestry, cultural factors and genealogy in therapy is of huge and not to be underestimated value, it seems to me that Clavier’s thesis is far too simplistic at times. Especially the claim that if one profound and in-depth therapeutic approach failed, then another, flash « brief-therapy » can get rid of stubborn symptoms which years of work couldn’t undo. But this again opens up another discussion altogether: the validity of « brief-therapy » in itself…