annual-mental-health-2019-keynote

10 / 11

6th World Congress on
Mental Health, Psychiatry and Wellbeing
March 20-21, 2019 | New York, USA
Find More Information @ March 2019 Conference Series LLC Ltd 35
conferenceseries LLC Ltd
If I leave home, who
will take care of mum?:
Intergenerational
transmission of parental
trauma through
projective identification
Using the construct of
projective identification and
integrating it with the body of
literature on intergenerational
transmission of unsymbolized
parental trauma, I describe the
case of an adult daughter that
illustrates intergenerational
transmission of unsymbolized
parental trauma. It is
suggested that the daughter
has unconsciously identified
with the disavowed feelings
of anxiety projected into her
by her mother. The daughter’s
projective identification of
her mother’s unresolved past
traumas prevents her from
leaving the parental home
for the first time, despite
being 35 years old. In turn, it
is thought that the mother’s
unconscious grasping onto her
daughter is an attempt to avoid
the confrontation of her own
unprocessed fears implanted
into her by her own mother,
thus linking three generations
of disavowal. As a way of
extending the existing theory,
it is proposed that when there
are long-term and inexplicable
experiences of anxiety
that coalesces around the
intergenerational transmission
of parental trauma, the term
‘intergenerational transmission
of traumatic anxiety’ can be
used to describe it.
Biography
Zelda G. Knight Ph.D. is a graduate of
Rhodes University and an experienced
practicing psychotherapist as well as a
Professor of Psychology at the University
of Johannesburg. She has been a leading
academic for more than two decades and
has taught and supervised research for
the same length of time in the field of
psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She has
published widely in international journals
and academic books, including produced
two recent edited books on psychoanalysis.
She has presented numerous papers at
international conferences worldwide and
given several keynote addresses at such
conferences.
Zelda G Knight
University of Johannesburg, SouthAfrica
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EMERGENCYMENTAL HEALTHANDHUMAN RESILIENCE 2019, VOLUME 21
DOI: 10.4172/1522-4821-C2-028
KEYNOTE FORUM | DAY 2