TITLE:
The Transgenerational Cycle: From Memory to Molecule and from Molecule to Memory—The Multilayered Transmission of Trauma
AUTHORS:
Wioletta Rebecka
KEYWORDS:
Transgenerational Trauma, Historical Trauma, Epigenetics, Indigenous Healing, Collective Memory, Decolonial Psychology, Trauma Transmission, Intergenerational Transformation
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.16 No.12,
December
4,
2025
ABSTRACT: Transgenerational trauma refers to the transmission of psychological, biological, and social wounds across generations. Emerging at the intersection of psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and decolonial studies, it reveals that trauma is not merely remembered—it is embodied, inherited, and enacted within families, communities, and nations. While Western psychology has traditionally interpreted transgenerational trauma through unconscious identification, attachment disturbances, and systemic family dynamics, recent advances in epigenetics have expanded this understanding. Research by Rachel Yehuda and colleagues demonstrates that exposure to extreme stress can alter gene expression, particularly within cortisol regulation and glucocorticoid receptor pathways, leaving a biological imprint of fear and survival that may be passed down to subsequent generations. Trauma thus becomes both psychic and molecular—a living bridge between memory and biology. Indigenous and non-Western epistemologies, however, have long understood that ancestral wounds reside not only in the mind but also in the body, spirit, and land. Among the Lakota, Dagara, Māori, and Andean peoples, trauma is a relational balance that has been ruptured, calling for communal mourning, ritual reparation, and the restoration of harmony between humans, ancestors, and the natural world. These frameworks offer essential epistemic correction to the Eurocentric medicalization of suffering, reframing healing as a collective and ecological process rather than an individual recovery. This paper traces the evolution of transgenerational trauma theory from Holocaust studies to contemporary epigenetic science and Indigenous cosmologies, arguing that healing must coincide across biological, psychological, social, historical, and spiritual dimensions. Integrating personal narrative with theoretical synthesis, this proposal presents a decolonial and integrative model of transgenerational healing, in which inherited wounds become sites of ethical responsibility, collective remembrance, and restored relational continuity.