Dr. Yael Danieli, Founder and Executive Director of The International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma (ICMGLT), was interviewed by Lisa Lipkin, Founder and Director of Story Strategies. 

Dr. Yael Danieli, Victimologist and a Traumatologist

• Dr. Yael Danieli is a clinical psychologist, a victimologist, and a traumatologist.

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Overview

A clinical psychologist but a victimologist and a traumatologist, Dr. Yael Danieli started the first program to help holocaust survivors and their children called the group project for holocaust survivors and their children. Over the years she’s had so many roles including being a consultant to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and to the office of the high commissioner for human rights and various governments on trauma and victim-survivors rights and optimal care. She’s a distinguished professor of international psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and right now she’s the founder and executive director of the International Center for Multi-Generational Legacies of Trauma.

 00:21- About Dr. Yael Danieli

• Dr. Yael Danieli is a clinical psychologist, a victimologist, and a traumatologist.
• She started the first program to help holocaust survivors and their children called ‘The Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children.’
• Over the years she’s had so many roles including being a consultant to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and to the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and various governments on trauma and victim-survivors rights and optimal care.
• She is a distinguished Professor of International Psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and right now she is the Founder and Executive Director of the International Center for Multi-Generational Legacies of Trauma.

02:56- What was the motivation behind helping children of traumatized parents?

• For her doctorate she was looking for something of significant meaning.
• She focused on the question of why we keep giving the world a chance after the horrible century (20th century) we had, and the only answer that she came up with is HOPE.
• The subject of her study was What Hope means to People, and she interviewed her students and colleagues and all kinds of people who faced seemingly minimal challenges such as missing a bus, all the way to surviving concentration camps, being in a prison, or being diagnosed with a terminal illness.

10:44- Conspiracy of Silence

• Initially, everyone believed, and it is usually the truth that the victims would not want to talk to her.
• These people opened their hearts and shared their stories with her. They couldn’t stop speaking as if they had waited all these years to find someone who really wanted to listen and learn.
• It is called the conspiracy in want of understanding how come a society that’s supposed to care for its members was not there to help or to show concern.

17:56- Is it universal that the victims are ready to talk to anyone but their children?

• Parents love their children they want to protect them from anything and everything.
• Victims generally want to protect their children and make sure that their world is free of that horrible terrifying human cataclysm.
• They hope that their children’s world will be a “normal” one without the knowledge of evil as they had no choice in experiencing.

32:29- What is the Big Book about?

• The big book is the International Handbook for Multi-Generational Legacies of Trauma.
• It was published in 1998 after many years of work because it commissioned at least 30 populations around the world, to teach the world about what they have learned from their own traumas.
• There are multiple organizations that are doing something similar. They try to organize these meetups and talk about multi-generational trauma.

 RESOURCES:

You can connect with Dr. Yael Danieli – LinkedIn

Profile

•  Dr. Yael Danieli is a clinical psychologist, a victimologist, and a traumatologist.
• She started the first program to help holocaust survivors and their children called ‘The Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children’.
• Over the years she’s had so many roles including being a consultant to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and to the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and various governments on trauma and victim-survivors rights and optimal care.
• She’s a distinguished professor of international psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and right now she’s the founder and executive director of the International Center for Multi-Generational Legacies of Trauma.