The Library is pleased to welcome Lenox author M. Gerard (Jerry) Fromm to discuss his new book, Traveling through Time: How Trauma Plays Itself out in Families, Organizations and Society at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 11, 2022.
Organized in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, Traveling through Time collects stories and reflections on the way traumatic experiences play out over time: the conditions that lead to trauma, the forms it takes, the ways it affects a person’s life and the lives of others. The book is about how the “big history” of societal trauma finds its way into the “little history” of families and work life. In his presentation, Dr. Fromm will tell us about the foundations of this work at the Austen Riggs Center’s Erikson Institute and illustrate his theme with vignettes from the book.
About the author: M. Gerard Fromm, Ph.D., is a distinguished faculty member of the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center and a fellow of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis. He was the first Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director of the Erikson Institute, and directed the therapeutic community program at Riggs for many years before that. Dr. Fromm has taught at, and consulted to, a number of psychoanalytic institutes across the country and has served on the faculties of the Yale Child Study Center and Harvard Medical School. He is president of the International Dialogue Initiative, an interdisciplinary group that studies the psychodynamics of societal conflict. He is also a past president of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and of the Center for the Study of Groups and Social Systems in Boston. Dr. Fromm has directed or served on the staff of group relations conferences in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel. In addition to an independent practice of clinical and organizational consulting, he is also a partner in College Health and Counseling Services Consulting. Dr. Fromm has presented and published widely, including the edited volumes Lost in Transmission: Studies of Trauma across Generations; A Spirit That Impels: Play, Creativity and Psychoanalysis; and (with Bruce L. Smith) The Facilitating Environment: Clinical Applications of Winnicott’s Theory. He is also the author of a book of clinical papers called Taking the Transference, Reaching toward Dreams: Clinical Studies in the Intermediate Area. He and his wife live in Lenox.