Micro-trauma: A psychoanalytic understanding of cumulative psychic
injury explores the "micro-traumatic" or small, subtle psychic
hurts that build up to undermine a person's sense of self-worth,
skewing his or her character and compromising his or her
relatedness to others. These injuries amount to what has been
previously called "cumulative" or "relational trauma." Until now,
psychoanalysis has explained such negative influences in broad
strokes, using general concepts like psychosexual urges,
narcissistic needs, and separation-individuation aims, among
others. Taking a fresh approach, Margaret Crastnopol identifies
certain specific patterns of injurious relating that cause damage
in predictable ways; she shows how these destructive processes can
be identified, stopped in their tracks, and replaced by a healthier
way of functioning. Seven different types of micro-trauma, all
largely hidden in plain sight, are described in detail, and many
others are discussed more briefly. Three of these
micro-traumas-"psychic airbrushing and excessive niceness," "uneasy
intimacy," and "connoisseurship gone awry"-have a predominantly
positive emotional tone, while the other four-"unkind cutting
back," "unbridled indignation," "chronic entrenchment," and "little
murders"-have a distinctly negative one. Margaret Crastnopol shows
how these toxic processes may take place within a dyadic
relationship, a family group, or a social clique, causing
collateral psychic damage all around as a consequence. Using
illustrations drawn from psychoanalytic treatment, literary
fiction, and everyday life, Micro-trauma : A psychoanalytic
understanding of cumulative psychic injury outlines how each
micro-traumatic pattern develops and manifests itself, and how it
wreaks its damage. The book shows how an awareness of these
patterns can give us the therapeutic leverage needed to reshape
them for the good. This publication will be an invaluable resource
for psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health
counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and for
trainees and graduate students in these fields and related
disciplines. Margaret Crastnopol (Peggy), Ph.D. is a faculty member
of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and a
Supervisor of Psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute
of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology. She is also a
Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary
Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. She writes and teaches nationally and
internationally about the analyst's and patient's subjectivity; the
vicissitudes of love, lust, and attachment drives; and varieties of
micro-trauma. She is in private practice for the treatment of
individuals and couples in Seattle, WA.
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