Silence and Memories of War: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Family Secrecy

• Author: Paul C. Rosenblatt,Peter Rober
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12174
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Published date: 01 March 2017

Silence and Memories of War: An Autoethnographic

Exploration of Family Secrecy

PETER ROBER*

†

PAUL C. ROSENBLATT

‡

A personal journey and a scientific challenge, this is an autoethnographic study about

my own family’s secrecy. I knew my grandfather had been a German prisoner of war dur-

ing World War II. We all knew. But nobody talked about it. Then one day I decided I

wanted to do systematic research on the issue of family secrecy around my grandfather’s

war experiences. Researching one’s own family can be called autoethnography. It could be

said that autoethnography is an approach to research that aims to describe and systemi-

cally analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) to understand social and cultural phe-

nomena (ethno). This scientific approach is quite new in the field of family therapy . This

study has been an important personal quest, but it also led to important reflections on

silences in families, on my own professional development, and on methodological issues

concerning autoethnographical research. For one thing, it highlights some of the positive

aspects of family secrecy and silences, and invites us—when confronted with family secrecy

in clinical practice—to carefully consider the potential destructive and life-giving aspects

of the silence.

Keywords: Family Therapy; Secrets; Family of Origin; Experiences of War; Silence

Fam Proc 56:250–261, 2017

PRELUDE

In June 2014, my father turned 80. The whole family celebrated at his house. At a

certain moment he took me aside and said: “I have to show you something.” We

went to his study and he showed me a magazine article. “It is about war memories.

Maybe this is interesting for the research on your grandfather.” He was referring to

the research I did on my mother’s father, who had been a German prisoner of war

during World War II.

ABOUT FAMILY SECRECY

I

1

knew my grandfather had been a German prisoner of war (POW) during World

War II. We all knew. But nobody talked about it. As a child, however, I could not stop

*Institute for Family and Sexuality Studies, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

†

Context, UPC KU Leuven, Kortenberg, Belgium.

‡

Department of Family Social Science, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter Rober, Context, UPC KU Leuven,

Leuvensesteenweg 517, 3070 Kortenberg, Belgium. E-mail: peter.rober@med.kuleuven.be

1

As this paper is a work of autoethnographic research on the first author’s family, personal pronouns

like “I”, “me”, “we”, and “us” refer to the first author and his family. The second author guided the process

from a distance, helping with overview and asking questions from an outsider perspective that enriched

the research process.

250

Family Process, Vol. 56, No. 1, 2017 ©2015 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12174