Whether we love our parents or not, we all carry traces of them in our behavior. If our parents are highly aware and conscious individuals, there’s no harm in this. However, in the opposite case, we might unknowingly pass on the problematic behaviors our parents imparted to us to our own children, and we could even be responsible for this spiral of intergenerational transmission continuing for generations.
Unfortunately, Mertcan's father, Mr. Semih, was unknowingly suffering from this situation as well. He constantly mistreated Mertcan, belittled him, and, worst of all, he kept comparing him to other people. This situation had caused trauma for Mertcan. If we assume that Mr. Semih's father was also such a person, then this was clearly a case of ‘‘intergenerational trauma transmission.’’ However, Mertcan, in an epic fashion, traveled beyond generations to the 17th century and solved the problem at its roots. When he returned, he encountered a completely different Mr. Semih.
When Mertcan traveled to the 17th century, he discovered that the behavior of his father at that time, who was actually his great-great-grandfather Selim Pasha, mirrored that of his own father, Mr. Semih, in his own time. Selim Pasha would scold, beat, belittle his son Merdan, and compare him to others. With the help of Sirby, Mertcan realized that these were behavior patterns passed down through generations. He then managed to break the cycle by showing mercy and kindness to his son, who was actually his ancestor, little Selim. By doing this he ensured that he would be remembered as a loving and a good father, thus severing the chain of intergenerational trauma. Moreover, before achieving this, despite his hatred for his father in his own time, Mertcan found himself almost behaving like Mr. Semih when given the opportunity to face his son as a ‘‘father.’’
Studies on the transmission of intergenerational trauma show that this transfer primarily occurs during childhood, when a child’s values and personality are developing and the family serves as a role model. During this process, the way parents raise their children, the relationship between parent and child, how trauma is processed by the parents, and how children experience the transmitted trauma all play a significant role.
Just before writing my novel, I became intrigued by psychiatrist Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory. According to Bowen, a person needs to differentiate themselves from their family of origin. He argues that individuals with a low level of differentiation tend to act according to the pressures of their family or environment, constantly doing what others want and avoiding the expression of their own thoughts. If they don’t receive approval from others, they feel bad about themselves. In contrast, individuals with a high level of differentiation can listen to the thoughts of their family or environment but act independently, without losing their own ideas and feelings. They are not dependent on others' approval, yet they can still maintain healthy relationships. Bowen suggests that families are emotional systems capable of transmitting belief systems, anxieties, values, and behavioral patterns across three generations.
I believe that these transmissions of trauma are far too significant to be reduced to just the level of a family or lineage. In my view, an entire nation can collectively be subjected to the transmission of trauma. The shopkeeper who looked at Mertcan with disdain felt very familiar to him, as he had been subjected to that same gaze thousands of times before. Now, if every individual in Türkiye encounters such behavior throughout their life and, in response, either starts behaving the same way or begins to display anxious behaviors like Mertcan, could an entire nation be transmitting shared trauma to future generations? Or, beneath this disdainful attitude, could there lie the imprint of a thousand years of Turkish ancestors being dragged from war to war, massacre to massacre, famine to famine, and migration to migration? Could these traumatic experiences have shaped their behavior and been passed down through generations?
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