Common Bond Institute

SHC: Research

Social Health Care


Research and Analysis

Seeking a shared understanding for new models and methods

Transgenerational Trauma Conference

Unresolved communal trauma, victim identities, and the toxic energy of fear, animosity, and revenge that is passed on into future generations is seen as an underlying and potent fuel for the eruption of violence within and between communities in the past, present, and future. Understanding it’s dynamics, influences, and implications, and developing new ways to effectively treat it, are essential to healing and reconciliation, freeing ourselves of fear-based beliefs, establishing compassionate local and global relations, and achieving a true and sustainable culture of peace.

The Social Health Care program is directly linked with two major research and development initiatives organized by Common Bond Institute that study communal trauma and it’s transfer into future generations, as well as the development of new models and methodologies for healing trauma on the large group, societal level.

1) The Transgenerational Trauma Research Network is a professional network of permanent working study groups, with cross-cultural representation essential to universal understanding and culturally appropriate applications, cooperating on researching and addressing the dynamics of unresolved communal trauma, it’s inheritance into future generations, and implications for relationships within and between communities past, present, and future.
It is a recommended professional research project by the American Psychological Association.

2) Annual International Conference on Transgenerational Trauma: Communal Wounds and Victim Identities is an annual meeting place for Network study group members to come together regularly to share knowledge, explore critical issues and applications, and explore the development of new models and methodologies for treating communal trauma. It is endorsed by an international list of over 100 universities, institutes, and professional organizations.

The TT Conference provides:

  • A focused dialogue and deliberation
    Defining and addressing the dynamics of inherited, unresolved communal trauma from one generation to the next, including historical understandings, the development and perpetuation of communal victim identities, exclusive cultural membership and rites of belonging, and implications for present and future relations between communities – particularly war and violence.
  • A search for new models and methodologies
    Developing new culturally appropriate, practical models and methods at the societal level for healing and preventing communal trauma and it’s transfer into future generations.
    The SHC program, and the long established Catastrophic Trauma Recovery (CTR) model it is based on, offer one such approach to relief and recovery from pervasive communal trauma, and an opportunity to compare and report on it’s results relative to other current and historical responses. SHC expert team members make up one of the core study groups for this collaborative global research project. Data collected will be the subject of on-going analysis and shared through the Annual International Conference on Transgenerational Trauma to contribute to a growing body of knowledge, and help promote increased understanding and further development of practical approaches.

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