It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are

Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by kstenerud on Sunday May 01, 2016 @03:30PM (#11607526)

"A boy may have his grandpa’s long legs and a girl may have her mother’s nose, but Jesse had inherited his uncle’s fear of never waking"

Wait.. what??

How could Jesse inherit something from an uncle who had died before he was born?

This whole article feels too much like magical thinking.

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Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by ams6110 on Sunday May 01, 2016 @05:27PM (#11607925)

magical thinking

These two words describe most of psychology. It's not a science[1]. I've always thought that people who study psychology are just trying to figure themselves out.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-...

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Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by insickness on Sunday May 01, 2016 @04:29PM (#11607727)

There's evidence on experiments with mice that they inherit their parent's fears epigenetically.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/15/mice-inhe...

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Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by throwanem on Sunday May 01, 2016 @05:26PM (#11607921)

At least there's a plausible route and mechanism there. How do you see this applying to an uncle?

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Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by alanwatts on Sunday May 01, 2016 @04:29PM (#11607731)

Many people are naturally scared of spiders and snakes. Some evolutionary psychologists like Dr. Paul Ekman claim that some fears like these are coded into our genetics because of the many of our ancestors before us who were killed by them.

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Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by spangry on Sunday May 01, 2016 @09:53PM (#11608769)

What? Evolutionary psychologists believe in inherited memory?

I thought the idea was that fear of spiders (a heuristic in an arachnophobic's amygdala that they inherited genetically) was at some point adaptive for their ancestors. That is, people with a fear of spiders are around today because their ancestors had some random genetic mutation that caused them to exercise caution around spiders, which conferred a survival advantage in their particular context. In our context it's maladaptive (evolution is very slow), and so considered an irrational phobia.

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Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by alanwatts on Monday May 02, 2016 @11:56AM (#11612521)

>What? Evolutionary psychologists believe in inherited memory?

Inherited instincts and emotions.

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Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by nommm-nommm on Sunday May 01, 2016 @06:09PM (#11608086)

That doesn't explain phobias of totally non dangerous things though so it feels like a "just so story."

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Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by dominotw on Sunday May 01, 2016 @05:38PM (#11607972)

>How could Jesse inherit something from an uncle who had died before he was born?

Is it much different from elephants being born with 'genetic memory' of migratory routes that their forefathers took

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/13/conservat...

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Re:It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Sha... by kbutler on Sunday May 01, 2016 @07:07PM (#11608248)

That link just contains a throw-away mentiin if migratory routes "imprinted on their genetic memory", no evidence that it is factual.

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