Unconscious Generational Transmission: A Psychoanalytic Perspective with Dr. Owen Hewitson

This talk will offer a psychoanalytic view of unconscious generational transmission - how an experience in one generation is transmitted to a later generation, how it is manifested in that generation, and the effects that this transmission produces. Models of trauma have tended to dominate models of transmission, so that transmission is often relegated to being an epiphenomenon of trauma. This presentation will argue the opposite: that transmission should be considered the primary and central phenomenon. It will propose that the problem of generational transmission is the origin story of psychoanalysis. It is no accident that one of its founding myths - that of Oedipus - is itself a story about unconscious generational transmission. A Lacanian model of transmission without trauma will be proposed, with the signifier - the primary organising element of the unconscious - as the vehicle for this transmission. Through clinical examples we will look at how an individual's efforts to establish a 'Family Line', a construction which renders sensical the subject's place in a generational lineage, are determinative of generational transmission as an unconscious process.

We will be meeting at 6PM London (10AM Vancouver / 1PM NYC / 19:00 Stockholm / 20:00 Beirut) on Thursday, April 2nd, for 90 minutes.

The event will be recorded and available for everyone who registers.

Owen Hewitson is a psychoanalyst in private practice. He is a member of the College of Psychoanalysts, the Guild of Psychotherapists, and runs LacanOnline.com. His PhD in psychoanalysis was on the subject of unconscious generational transmission, a topic which remains one of his major research interests, alongside his clinical work.

This event is hosted by Rendering Unconscious Center for Psychoanalysis

Artwork by KV Duong