Descendant Selfies and Autobiographical Selves in an Age of Eco-Anxiety: Who Do You Feel They Will Be?

In a previous article in Genealogy, Ancestral Selfies and Historical Traumas: Who Do You Feel You Are? I explored the phenomenon of ‘historical trauma,’ a psychological disturbance that can be triggered by identification with ancestors who experienced suffering and tragedy. I considered how historical trauma emerged from the human ‘storying’ mind, a concept that is partly constructed by children and young people absorbing family and cultural stories. Through this process, we gradually develop an ‘autobiographical self’ that temporally extends to events before our birth. In this article, I consider the possibility of ‘future trauma’ emerging from an autobiographical self that can additionally extend into an imagined future beyond our death, through projected identification with descendants. It is proposed that such an identification is related to a recent rise in ‘eco-anxiety’, a condition which is being widely reported on a global scale.