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A Psychological, Historical Analysis of Post-Slavery Trauma and Post-Slavery Growth: Are They Viable Constructs?
Abstract
Around the turn of the 20 th century, two sociologists, W. E. B. Du Bois, and E. Franklin Frazier, produced separate narratives depicting the legacy of slavery. Du Bois documented both the apparent negative consequences as well the way many ex-slaves achieved “uplift” within a short period of time, following Emancipation. Frazier claimed that exiting slavery the ex-slaves were a broken and damaged community in dire need of assimilation. In the 1930s, when Black psychologists entered the picture, their contribution tended to favor and extend Frazier’s work, resulting in a series of studies documenting racial self-hatred and damage to the self-concept. Inspired by contemporary biological and genealogical research showing trauma can become embedded in DNA structures and transmitted from one generation to another, Joy DeGruy theorized that most African Americans suffer from a Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome [PTSS]. Missing from DeGruy’s theorizing was mention of theory and research on the way trauma can result in positive psychological outcomes or Post-Traumatic Growth [PTG]. The current work attempts to summarize theory and research for both PTSS and PTG, as each may apply to an analysis of the psychological legacy of slavery.
... The African slavery affected the future of the slave-descendants (Colosio, 2016), as was in West Africa, where slave descendants of the formerly enslaved mostly avoid talking about their slave ancestry for reasons such as potential implications for inheritance, leadership, land rights, ritual proscriptions, and social stigma ( Engmann, 2023). It also excluded these slave descendants from land ownership and marriage and were subjected to social stigma and marginalization (Jones, 2024), produced a damaged community of enslaved African Americans who suffered from a Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (Psychological, 2024) and whom their experiences under slavery and freedom have distinguished their experiences from those of enslaved Africans in other parts of the New World ( Miller, 2000). The efforts of Africa enslavers to supply foreign markets, however, meant the slaves were available for use within Africa (Mbow et al. 2024). ...
African slavery and Diaspora are strongly interlinked and effectively impacted on whole of Africa. This research explores that with emphasis on the African Sahel based on data provided by relevant research. This revealed some forms of locally inherited slavery, millions of Africans were brought outside the continent by international slave trade which created African Diaspora world widely. African slavery implicated on incidence of underdevelopment in Africa, affected its social and political structures, impacted on its definition as areas inhabited by pagans, made major transformations in its political economy, impacted on the spread of Islam in it, and influenced the vast majority of its urban complexes. Similarly, African Diaspora impacted and created and recreated identities shaped by linkages to homelands, initiated an emerging reconstruction of its image and role, produced an increasingly powerful constellation of Disparate and related groups that operate in the Sahelian region under a political economy of violence, promoted domestic insurgencies and armed conflicts, made ghettos of migrants as naturalized "black spaces" in the Mediterranean, and made African Diasporas in Indian Ocean societies very different from those in Atlantic Ocean societies. The combined implications of African slavery and Diaspora, on view of the author, was argued as "both have inspired imperialism to build strong and rooted and infinite interests in Africa"s human and natural resources, since it was a source of slaves prior to colonialism and natural resources during and post colonialism, and boundlessly, views itself having the authority on exploiting and controlling of Africa"s resources by militarily interventions and via humanitarian aid". These interventions have adversely retarded development of Africa. The research recommends the need to hasten African integration and unity against imperialist tendencies, developing a framework that challenges the dominant assumptions of processes of globalization promoted by the WTO, and the correction of the image of Africa as merely a home of natural resources.
Discusses the Sahel Population development and conflict problems
Intergenerational trauma increases lifetime susceptibility to depression and other psychiatric disorders. Whether intergenerational trauma transmission is a consequence of in-utero neurodevelopmental disruptions versus early-life mother–infant interaction is unknown. Here, we demonstrate that trauma exposure during pregnancy induces in mouse offspring social deficits and depressive-like behavior. Normal pups raised by traumatized mothers exhibited similar behavioral deficits to those induced in pups raised by their biological traumatized mothers. Good caregiving by normal mothers did not reverse prenatal trauma-induced behaviors, indicating a two-hit stress mechanism comprising both in-utero abnormalities and early-life poor parenting. The behavioral deficits were associated with profound changes in the brain metabotranscriptome. Striking increases in the mitochondrial hypoxia marker and epigenetic modifier 2-hydroxyglutaric acid in the brains of neonates and adults exposed prenatally to trauma indicated mitochondrial dysfunction and epigenetic mechanisms. Bioinformatic analyses revealed stress- and hypoxia-response metabolic pathways in the neonates, which produced long-lasting alterations in mitochondrial energy metabolism and epigenetic processes (DNA and chromatin modifications). Most strikingly, early pharmacological interventions with acetyl-L-carnitine (ALCAR) supplementation produced long-lasting protection against intergenerational trauma-induced depression. Sammy Alhassen, Siwei Chen, et al. use mouse models to examine the effects of prenatal and postnatal stress on metabolomic and transcriptomic pathways in the brain. Their results suggest that altered mitochondrial metabolism may underlie trauma-induced behavioral deficits, and that correcting metabolism with ALCAR supplementation may protect against intergenerational transmission of traumatic stress.
This article provides a summary of the evolving definition of trauma, including different forms of trauma and its impact on the health, behaviours and well-being of individuals and communities. Specifically, it discusses collective, historical and intergenerational trauma and the value of these concepts in understanding the health and social challenges we see within colonized Indigenous communities, particularly within Australian Aboriginal communities. The article argues that the current approach to addressing challenges within Australian Indigenous communities will have limited impact unless accompanied by a significant focus on understanding and addressing the level of trauma that permeates these communities. Programmes and initiatives that focus on reducing the rates of certain variables, such as rates of infant mortality, rates of incarceration or rates of school completion, are very important but are only treating symptoms unless the underlying trauma is addressed. Due to the ongoing devastation caused by many years of forced child removal, this is especially important for health, legal and welfare practitioners within the child protection system and the social work field if we are to break the cycles of family and cultural disruption.
Although most humans will experience some type of traumatic event in their lifetime only a small set of individuals will go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Differences in sex, age, trauma type, and comorbidity, along with many other elements, contribute to the heterogenous manifestation of this disorder. Nonetheless, aberrant hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity, especially in terms of cortisol and glucocorticoid receptor (GR) alterations, has been postulated as a tenable factor in the etiology and pathophysiology of PTSD. Moreover, emerging data suggests that the harmful effects of traumatic stress to the HPA axis in PTSD can also propagate into future generations, making offspring more prone to psychopathologies. Predator stress models provide an ethical and ethologically relevant way to investigate tentative mechanisms that are thought to underlie this phenomenon. In this review article, we discuss findings from human and laboratory predator stress studies that suggest changes to DNA methylation germane to GRs may underlie the generational effects of trauma transmission. Understanding mechanisms that promote stress-induced psychopathology will represent a major advance in the field and may lead to novel treatments for such devastating, and often treatment-resistant trauma and stress-disorders.
This paper reviews the research evidence concerning the intergenerational transmission of trauma effects and the possible role of epigenetic mechanisms in this transmission. Two broad categories of epigenetically mediated effects are highlighted. The first involves developmentally programmed effects. These can result from the influence of the offspring's early environmental exposures, including postnatal maternal care as well as in utero exposure reflecting maternal stress during pregnancy. The second includes epigenetic changes associated with a preconception trauma in parents that may affect the germline, and impact fetoplacental interactions. Several factors, such as sex‐specific epigenetic effects following trauma exposure and parental developmental stage at the time of exposure, explain different effects of maternal and paternal trauma. The most compelling work to date has been done in animal models, where the opportunity for controlled designs enables clear interpretations of transmissible effects. Given the paucity of human studies and the methodological challenges in conducting such studies, it is not possible to attribute intergenerational effects in humans to a single set of biological or other determinants at this time. Elucidating the role of epigenetic mechanisms in intergenerational effects through prospective, multi‐generational studies may ultimately yield a cogent understanding of how individual, cultural and societal experiences permeate our biology.
Although a robust literature describes the intergenerational effects of traumatic experiences in various populations, evidence specific to refugee families is scattered and contains wide variations in approaches for examining intergenerational trauma. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria, the purpose of this systematic review was to describe the methodologies and findings of peer-reviewed literature regarding intergenerational trauma in refugee families. In doing so we aimed to critically examine how existing literature characterizes refugee trauma, its long-term effects on descendants, and psychosocial processes of transmission in order to provide recommendations for future research. The results highlight populations upon which current evidence is based, conceptualizations of refugee trauma, effects of parental trauma transmission on descendants' health and well-being, and mechanisms of transmission and underlying meanings attributed to parental trauma in refugee families. Greater methodological rigor and consistency in future evidence-based research is needed to inform supportive systems that promote the health and well-being of refugees and their descendants.
The educational gradient in life expectancy is well documented in the United States and in other low-mortality countries. Highly educated Americans, on average, live longer than their low-educated counterparts, who have recently seen declines in adult life expectancy. However, limiting the discussion on lifespan inequality to mean differences alone overlooks other dimensions of inequality and particularly disparities in lifespan variation. The latter represents a unique form of inequality, with higher variation translating into greater uncertainty in the time of death from an individual standpoint, and higher group heterogeneity from a population perspective. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System from 1990 to 2010, this is the first study to document trends in both life expectancy and S25—the standard deviation of age at death above 25—by educational attainment. Among low-educated whites, adult life expectancy declined by 3.1 years for women and by 0.6 years for men. At the same time, S25 increased by about 1.5 years among high school–educated whites of both genders, becoming an increasingly important component of total lifespan inequality. By contrast, college-educated whites benefited from rising life expectancy and record low variation in age at death, consistent with the shifting mortality scenario. Among blacks, adult life expectancy increased, and S25 plateaued or declined in nearly all educational attainment groups, although blacks generally lagged behind whites of the same gender on both measures. Documenting trends in lifespan variation can therefore improve our understanding of lifespan inequality and point to diverging trajectories in adult mortality across socioeconomic strata.
The premise that "trauma" is transmitted across generations is central to the historical trauma discourse currently circulating in indigenous communities and professional networks in Canada. Historical trauma may be understood as the offspring of two older and apparently antithetical discourses: Native healing, and colonial professional critiques of indigenous family life. While the former has maintained a therapeutic focus on restoring intergenerational social relations, the latter has pathologized indigenous parenting and child-rearing practices. The emergence of historical trauma marks a global shift in the moral economy by which victimhood status, acquired through individual experiences of physical and especially sexual abuse, has come to wield greater currency than collective struggles against colonialism. Providers of contemporary indigenous healing programmes are drawing simultaneously on trauma discourse, which is seen to legitimate individual social suffering, and older therapeutic forms centred on sharing local social histories to restore intergenerational continuities and collective identity. But these invocations of historical trauma may continue the colonial discourse of mental health and social welfare professionals, who blamed indigenous parenting practices for children's social problems and failure to assimilate. Some contemporary mental health and child development professionals have invoked parents' and grandparents' transmission of historical trauma in ways which construct indigenous families as pathological, promote an oversimplified, universalizing understanding of Canadian colonialism, and divert attention from the contemporary continuation of colonial structures and relations.
Cognitive, coping, and trauma symptom predictors of posttraumatic growth (PTG; measured with the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory) were examined in a large convenience sample (n =1505) participating in a longitudinal Internet-based study following the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01. Results indicate that initial PTG levels (mean 9 weeks post-attacks) were generally associated with higher trauma symptoms (measured with the PTSD Checklist - Specific), positive changes in worldview (measured with the Changes in Outlook Questionnaire), more denial, and less behavioral disengagement (measured with the Brief COPE). Additionally, PTG had a curvilinear association with level of trauma symptoms, such that those reporting symptoms at intermediate levels reported the highest levels of growth. Levels of PTG declined somewhat over time with the exception of Spiritual Change. As expected, PTG levels at follow-up (mean 6.5 months post-attacks) were primarily predicted by initial PTG levels; however, decreases from baseline in trauma symptoms and increases from baseline in positive worldview, acceptance, and positive reframing were also associated with higher reported posttraumatic growth at follow-up. These findings suggest that there may be a range of traumatic experience most conducive to growth and they also highlight the important contributions of cognitive and coping variables to psychological thriving in short- and longer-term periods following traumatic experience.
Many people are exposed to loss or potentially traumatic events at some point in their lives, and yet they continue to have positive emotional experiences and show only minor and transient disruptions in their ability to function. Unfortunately, because much of psychology's knowledge about how adults cope with loss or trauma has come from individuals who sought treatment or exhibited great distress, loss and trauma theorists have often viewed this type of resilience as either rare or pathological. The author challenges these assumptions by reviewing evidence that resilience represents a distinct trajectory from the process of recovery, that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma is more common than is often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience.
This study of race, politics, and economics in Mississippi tells the story of two extraordinary personalities—Fannie Lou Hamer and James O. Eastland—who represented deeply opposed sides of the civil rights movement. Both were from Sunflower County: Eastland was a wealthy white planter and one of the most powerful segregationists in the U.S. Senate, while Hamer, a sharecropper who grew up desperately poor just a few miles from the Eastland plantation, rose to become the spiritual leader of the Mississippi freedom struggle. The author uses Hamer's and Eastland's entwined histories, set against the backdrop of Sunflower County's rise and fall as a center of cotton agriculture, to explore the county's changing social landscape during the mid-twentieth century and its persistence today as a land separate and unequal. The author, who spent nearly a decade in Mississippi as an educator, looks at the South's troubled ties to the cotton industry, the long struggle for civil rights, and unrelenting social and economic injustice through the eyes of two of the era's most important and intriguing figures.
Rationale
Intergenerational trauma refers to emotional and psychological wounding that is transmitted across generations. Latinxs—individuals who have migrated from Latin America to the United States or Canada and their descendants—are particularly vulnerable to intergenerational trauma due to legacies of colonialism, political violence, and migration-related stressors.
Objective
This scoping review aims to survey and synthesize the extant literature on intergenerational trauma in Latinxs, the ways that the literature conceptualizes and operationalizes intergenerational trauma, and the mechanisms of transmission that it proposes.
Method
We identified and screened 7,788 abstracts using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) statement and checklist.
Results
We synthesized 44 articles published between 1994 and 2020, including 10 qualitative and 34 quantitative or mixed-methods studies. Qualitative studies more frequently placed intergenerational trauma within frameworks of structural vulnerability and historical and political violence, whereas quantitative studies tended to conceptualize trauma as discrete events or individual-level distress.
Conclusions
Our findings suggest that current paradigms within this field are constrained by their focus on individual risk factors and parenting—particularly mothering—behaviors, at the expense of cultural, structural, and historical context. We highlight multiple gaps in the literature and call for further research that (1) geographically represents Latinx communities; (2) includes individuals with intersectional identities; (3) deploys culturally-adapted instruments and measures; (4) focuses on caregivers and factors outside the maternal-child relationship; (5) examines the concept of biological embedding; and (6) more thoroughly considers the impacts of historical trauma and structural violence on Latinx communities.
Despite their unique histories, environments, and lifestyles, historically subjugated populations consistently show poorer health outcomes compared to the general population. The theory of historical trauma, which argues that a collective trauma experienced by one generation can negatively impact the wellbeing of future generations , is a potential framework to understand the adverse health outcomes seen among populations with histories of subjugation. However, the biological pathways through which historical trauma actually impacts health have been unclear. In this paper, we present a cumulative, two pathway model that describes how historical trauma can impact health in contemporary generations. The first pathway suggests that personal exposure to trauma or stressors, which are more common among populations that have experienced historical trauma, can induce epigenetic modifications that can contribute to the development of poor health. The second pathway posits that poor health can occur through intergenerational epigenetic modifications in response to parental and grand-parental trauma or stressor exposures. Taken together, these pathways can provide insight into the higher rates of adverse health outcomes among individuals from populations that have historically endured collective trauma. Importantly, the potential reversible nature of epigenetic modifications suggests that these trauma-induced epigenetic effects are not necessarily permanent and that improvements in environmental conditions could reduce the high prevalence of poor health among historically disadvantaged communities.
After four centuries of bondage, the nineteenth century marked the long-awaited release of millions of black slaves. Subsequently, these former slaves attempted to reconstruct the basis of American democracy. W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the greatest intellectual leaders in United States history, evaluates the twenty years of fateful history that followed the Civil War, with special reference to the efforts and experiences of African Americans. Du Bois's words best indicate the broader parameters of his work:"the attitude of any person toward this book will be distinctly influenced by his theories of the Negro race. If he believes that the Negro in America and in general is an average and ordinary human being, who under given environment develops like other human beings, then he will read this story and judge it by the facts adduced." The plight of the white working class throughout the world is directly traceable to American slavery, on which modern commerce and industry was founded, Du Bois argues. Moreover, the resulting color caste was adopted, forwarded, and approved by white labor, and resulted in the subordination of colored labor throughout the world. As a result, the majority of the world's laborers became part of a system of industry that destroyed democracy and led to World War I and the Great Depression. This book tells that story.
This article is a reaction to the following three statements that were included in a brochure published by Division 29 (Psychotherapy) of the American Psychological Association (APA) and Celltech Pharmaceuticals:
"ADD/ADHD is generally considered a neuro-chemical disorder."
"Most people with ADD/ADHD are born with the disorder, though it may not be recognized until adulthood." "ADHD is not caused by poor parenting, a difficult family environment, poor teaching or inadequate nutrition."
The article reviews research that contradicts
the statements and concludes that the statements are not adequately supported by scientific evidence.
Elements of an Image – 1960sAsian American Success – Ideological and Political ImplicationsIncorporating Change and Dissent – 1980sConsistency Amidst ChangePolitical Implications of the 1980s ImageTilting the ScaleConclusion
Despite Robert E. Park’s prominence in American sociology, his early writings (before 1913) have been neglected. This article
argues that Park’s early writings illustrate an important transitional phase in twentieth-century sociological thought. As
sociology moved out of German romantic philosophy and toward rationalism and positivism, it had to come to terms with the
existence of evil in the world. Park’s essays on the Congo formulated a more complex perspective on modernity’s modes of evil.
Along with the Congo essays, Park’s Black Belt studies form a comprehensive portrait of the double-sided moral character and
socioeconomic effects of the Reformation. Park’s early writings adumbrate a Gothic sociology of horror, in which the civilizational
process erodes the many folk cultures that it draws into its basic forms—civil society and urban life.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Maryland at College Park, 1989. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-202). Photocopy.
This research examines place attachment among older residents of the all-Black towns of Oklahoma. Social-historical occurrences,
personal experiences associated with race, and expressed differences between social-historical groupings of older African
Americans influence the level of social and autobiographical insideness among the elderly residents. The findings extend current
conceptualizations of place attachment by showing that (a) place attachment is not a constant, even among long-term residents;
(b) social-historical factors can play an important role in the level of place attachment; (c) race can be a salient element
of place attachment; (d) experiences outside the community, such as racial discrimination, can influence the level of social
and autobiographical bonding to the community; and (e) subgroup identity within minority groups can be associated with variations
in community place attachment. The findings point to the value of carefully examining the issues of history and race in research
focusing on older minority group members.
- Calhoun L. G.
- Ernest J.
- Soh C. S.