Mapping Social Memory: A Psychotherapeutic Psychosocial Approach

“This unique book pushes us to rethink notions of time, place and selfhood that we Moderns take for granted. Nigel Williams takes full advantage of his novel location at the intersection of psychotherapy, social theory and psycho-social research to explore inter and transgenerational experiences of the loss and recovery of memory. Drawing on clinical case studies, biographical interviews, dream workshops and his own subjectivity he writes beautifully about the sometimes barely tangible traces of historical traumas within intergenerational and cultural dynamics.”
- Paul Hoggett, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy, UK


This book is grounded in psychosocial research that explores the complex intergenerational transmission of memories within families and the transgenerational social issues that form a part of those memories. The author demonstrates that the organising framework of moving back and forth between inter- and transgenerational processes is key to mapping those relationships leading to the ideas of generational companionship, a multigenerational self and intergenerational mentalisation. Drawing on sociological and psychoanalytic approaches, it provides a framework for thinking about continuity and discontinuity in the lives of individuals and in the longer sweep of the generations. The role and potential for a psychosocial approach in deep-level problem solving is addressed through chapters on psychotherapy and on psychosocial interventions. Social imagination in personal and social healing is a core theme, as is the study of the relationship between creative and destructive forces that play out in human life. The book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of psychosocial research and psychotherapy as well as in memory studies, history, genealogy and social theory.

Nigel Williams is a psychotherapist, sociologist and academic at the University of the West of England, UK, with forty years’ experience in practice and many years of experience training psychotherapists in psychodynamic approaches to therapy and psychosocial approaches to research. He is co-editor with Anne-Marie Cummins of Further Researching Beneath the Surface (2018).