The Ancestor Syndrome by Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger

In the About Me section of this blog, I mentioned that I am fascinated by the question of why people behave the way they do. Of course the answer is complex, multi-faceted, and ultimately unknowable. Nonetheless, I keep thinking about the question. I recently read Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger’s intriguing book: The Ancestry Syndrome: Transgenerational Psychotherapy and the Links in the Family Tree.  Though I don’t generally review non-fiction books, her theory grabbed my imagination.

For those who suffer or simply seek self-understanding, Schutzenberger advocates for a therapy that focuses on discovering important events multi-generationally. She is interested not only in the lives of one’s parents but in significant events across that person’s family tree. A quote on the first page by St. Augustine reveals her thesis, “The dead are invisible; they are not absent."

Schutzenberger believes that we all unknowingly repeat family patterns until we understand them. She states, “It seems the unconscious has a good memory, likes family bonds and marks important life events by repetition of date or age. This is the anniversary syndrome.”  Drawing on Sigmund Freud, J.L. Moreno, Carl Jung, and many other psychologists and philosophers, Schutzenberger outlines how events and traumas can pass between generations. Using case studies and examples from her practice, Shutzenberger argues that the study of one’s ancestors can often unlock the source of troubling feelings and finally stop the repetition of unhealthy behaviors.

It makes sense to me that family patterns can persist through generations. What Schutzenberger adds to the discussion is the theory that a person can unconsciously experience the emotional fallout of an injurious event that was initially experienced by an unknown ancestor. Shutzenberger’s most vivid examples are ones that involve trauma. She discusses the impact of African American enslavement, the Armenian genocide, and the Jewish Holocaust. “We continue the chain of generations, and, knowingly or not, willingly or unwillingly, we pay debts of the past: as long as we have not cleared the slate, an 'invisible loyalty' impels us to repeat and repeat a moment of incredible joy or unbearable sorrow, an injustice or tragic death. Or its echo.”  Her case studies are fascinating. She quotes Freudian analysts Nicholas Abraham and Maria Toruk, “The phantom is a formation of the unconscious that has never been conscious – for good reason.  It passes - in a way yet to be determined – from the parent’s unconscious to the child's."

What seems to permeate Schutzenberger’s work can be summed up by another Abraham and Toruk quote, “What haunts us are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.” This book may or may not be your cup of tea but it does add another fascinating dimension to the discussion of why people do what they do.