Little murders, unkind cutting back, uneasy intimacy and connoisseurship gone awry are just a few of the provocative relational concepts Dr. Margaret Crastnopol describes and explores in her new book Micro-trauma: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Cumulative Psychic Injury (Routledge, 2015)

Trained in the interpersonal tradition, Dr. Crastnopol writes about how patients experience the slights that occur in their everyday interactions. These exchanges, in an earlier day, in a prior theoretical orientation, may have been dismissed as resistance, or interpreted mainly along the lines of drive theory or Oedipal conflict. Without dismissing the value of these prior viewpoints, or treating her patient reports as superficial or tangential, Dr. Crastnopol mines this material for its own clinical richness. In this interview we explore many of the book’s essential ideas, how Dr. Crastnopol came to write it, and even touch upon how where we practice geographically may influence our analytic work.

Pragmatic and clearly written, Micro-trauma is a valuable resource for all practicing clinicians.

Christopher Bandini tweets @cebandini.