The first sentence from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is one of the most quoted when family relationships are being discussed: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Tolstoy, a Russian mystic and novelist (1828-1910), went on to write almost 900 pages describing three generations of unhappy family members who tormented and tortured each other and themselves. Although he never used the term, this famous novelist demonstrated what therapists today call the “intergenerational transmission of trauma,” something an ugly divorce is certain to leave in its wake.
