Traveling through Time

M. Gerard Fromm, PhD, is a distinguished faculty member of the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center and a fellow of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis. He was the first Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director of the Erikson Institute, and directed the therapeutic community program at Riggs for many years before that. Dr Fromm has taught at, and consulted to, a number of psychoanalytic institutes across the country and has served on the faculties of the Yale Child Study Center and Harvard Medical School. He is president of the International Dialogue Initiative, an interdisciplinary group that studies the psychodynamics of societal conflict. He is also a past president of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and of the Center for the Study of Groups and Social Systems in Boston. Dr Fromm has directed or served on the staff of group relations conferences in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel. In addition to an independent practice of clinical and organisational consulting, he is also a partner in College Health and Counseling Services Consulting. Dr Fromm has presented and published widely, including the edited volumes Lost in Transmission: Studies of Trauma across Generations; A Spirit That Impels: Play, Creativity and Psychoanalysis; and (with Bruce L. Smith) The Facilitating Environment: Clinical Applications of Winnicott’s Theory. He is also the author of a book of clinical papers called Taking the Transference, Reaching toward Dreams: Clinical Studies in the Intermediate Area.

• AcknowledgmentsPermissionsAbout the authorIntroductionPrologue Of Whom Shall We Speak: Psychoanalysis and DignityPart I: Trauma in FamiliesChapter 1 – Fear of Breakthrough: The Transmission of TraumaChapter 2 – Walking into the Wild: Traumatic Disillusionment and Identity CrisisChapter 3 - A Way of Looking at Trauma: Erik Erikson and the “Cogwheeling” of Life CyclesPart II: Trauma in OrganizationsChapter 4 – Minding the Gap: The Problem of College SuicideChapter 5 – Potential Space and Organizational TraumaChapter 6 – On the Mantelpiece: Organizational Trauma in Plain SightPart III: Trauma in SocietyChapter 7 – National Nightmare: The Legacy of Perpetrator TraumaChapter 8 – The Cure for Depression is Jihad: A Case StudyChapter 9 – Sky of Tears: Clinical Work after 9/11Chapter 10 – The Day I Died: Combat Trauma and Moral InjuryChapter 11 – We Don’t Speak of Fear: Large Group Identity and Chosen TraumaChapter 12 – The Stones Speak: Historical Trauma and Cultural HealingChapter 13 – Traveling through Time: A Group Intervention in Northern IrelandAfterword – When There Are So Many: Two Moments during the PandemicEpilogue - Anna Freud’s DrapesReferences Index

Traveling through Time is a vivid, nuanced, integrated portrayal of trauma as it exists across time and across social groups. Based on his deep professional engagement with familial, organizational, and societal trauma, Fromm brings to life the experience of the individual in each of those contexts. His psychoanalytic approach emphasizes the dignity of the individual and demonstrates the value of curiosity to understanding such important matters as moral injury and the fear of repetition of trauma, whether conscious or unconscious. He shows us that mourning is required to move beyond grievance to grief, to join past to present, and to create space for an adaptive future. This is a sophisticated book written in accessible language. It is a must read for anyone living or working with trauma.