Plenary Presentation:
• Benjamin Abelow:
Religion as a Response to Childhood Trauma: Transgenerational Transmission, Cultural Healing, and Psychotherapy
(60 min)

Abstract: 

In this presentation, I show that religions often portray, in the language of symbol and metaphor, patterns of mass childhood trauma, especially trauma from corporal punishment, abandonment, and neglect. These portrayals suggest that the religions (1) arose on a psychological template from childhood—analogous to a shared, waking, post-traumatic dream — and (2) may have persisted culturally because the underlying traumas continued to be widespread. I discuss the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), the Eastern karmic traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism), and an ancient Greek myth associated with the Eleusinian mystery religion (the rape of Persephone).

Some of these religions embed post-traumatic behavioral repetitions and compensatory “happy endings.” Teachings about hell, which themselves can be traumatizing, may represent a symbolic variant of the transgenerational transmission of trauma. Sociologically, one can speculate that, in the face of mass childhood trauma, religions have promoted societal coherence by providing a shared post-traumatic focus, the alternative being a plethora of idiosyncratic, incompatible, socially centrifugal post-traumatic distortions and delusions. Understanding these ideas may point to a route for cultural healing, as well as a transferential “entry point” for individual self-exploration and psychotherapy. Though my focus is not political, this framework offers insight into the apocalyptic Christian influence within the U.S. government and military. Methodologically, this approach can provide an explicit framework for empirically demonstrating psycho-historical causation. Time permitting, I will also comment briefly on two “secular myths” associated with the systematically repressive child-rearing culture of late-modern Germany: Schopenhauer’s philosophy of Will, and Nazism.

Short Bio of the Presenter: 

Benjamin Abelow has a B.A. in European history from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine, where he also served as Lecturer in Medicine. For the past 25 years he has studied how religions and myths can reflect patterns of endemic childhood trauma in their cultures of origin and persistence. His peer-reviewed writings can be found on Academia.edu (https://independent.academia.edu/BAbelow), and he is now completing a book for a general non-fiction audience. He also has published two medical texts and a book on the geopolitics of the Ukraine war, all viewable on Amazon. He can be reached by email, .