Functioning of Family Traditions
Halbwachs in his book On Collective Memory discusses how memories of the family function. He states that “In addition to regulations that are common to a whole society, there existing customs and modes of thinking with each particular family that equally impose — and even more forcibly — their form on the opinions and feelings of their members... Similarly, in the most traditional societies of today, each family has its proper mentality, its memories which it alone commemorates, and its secrets that are revealed only to its members. But these memories, as in the religious traditions of the family of antiquity, consist not only of a series of individual images of the past. They are at the same time models, examples, and elements of teaching. They express the general attitude of the group; they not only reproduce its history but also define its nature and its qualities and weaknesses” -
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