EMOTIONAL INHERITANCE

EMOTIONAL INHERITANCE is about those secrets that belong not only to us, but to our parents, grandparents, and other loved ones, and about the ways these impact our lives. It is these unburied secrets that often keep us from living to our full potential, create gaps between what we want for ourselves and what we are able to have, and haunt us like ghosts. This book highlights the tie between past, present, and future and asks: How do we move forward?

In the last decade, contemporary psychoanalysis and empirical research have expanded the literature on epigenetics and what is called "intergenerational transmission of trauma," referring to the way trauma is transmitted from generation to generation and held in our minds and bodies, sometimes in uncanny ways. The people we love and those who raised us live inside us; we experience their emotional pain, we dream their memories, and these things shape our lives in ways that we don't always recognize.

THE SECRETS THAT HAUNT US describes the many ways in which we can identify ghosts of the past that hold us back and interfere with our lives. For it is only by following the traces that ghosts leave, and identifying the links between our life struggles and the emotional inheritance we carry, that we can change our destiny.

To quote the editor, Tracy Behar: "Readers are increasingly interested in understanding trauma, and the science of epigenetics is starting to make its way into the mainstream. EMOTIONAL INHERITANCE offers an update to classics like Love's Executioner, Mating in Captivity, and The Body Keeps the Score."

Galit Atlas, PhD is a psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in Manhattan. She is a faculty member of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis. She is a faculty member of the National Training Programs (NTP) and the Four Year Adult training program of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) in NYC. As an essayist and author, Atlas has published numerous articles and book chapters that focus primarily on gender and sexuality. Her New York Times publication "A Tale of Two Twins" was the winner of a 2016 Gradiva Award. Atlas served on the board of directors of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. From 2011-2013 she co-chaired and moderated the on-line Colloquium Series for the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP). She is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Dr. Atlas is the recipient of the Andre' Francois Research Award and the NADT Research Award.