Brenner (psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College and director, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia psychotherapy program) studies the long-term effects of psychic trauma through the perspectives of time and depth. Drawing on his experience working with victims of childhood abuse and patients affected by genocidal persecution during the Holocaust, he examines the dynamics, symptoms and treatment of trauma. He uses case studies to discuss dissociation, persistence and intergenerational transmission of symptoms, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, among other topics. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Approaches to Psychic Trauma: Theory and Practice covers the many developments in the relatively new field of trauma therapy. It examines the nature of the wide variety of treatments available for traumatized people, describing elements they have in common and those that are specific to each treatment. Originating with the editor’s clinical experience working with patients from the former German Democratic Republic, contributors then discuss alternative therapies including ego psychology, self psychology, object-relations theory, attachment theory, psychoanalysis, and art therapies. Case studies further illustrate the application and practice. Approaches to Psychic Trauma presents a diversity of theories and tools centering on trauma and history, and through the microcosm of individual personalities one may have a close-up view of how historical events, as well as personal narratives and reactions to them, consciously and unconsciously affect the individual.

In 1976 twenty-six California children were kidnapped from their school bus and buried alive for motives never explained. All the children survived. This bizarre event signaled the beginning of Lenore Terr's landmark study on the effect of trauma on children. In this book Terr shows how trauma has affected not only the children she's treated but all of us.

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.

How art has addressed and transmuted trauma over the past half-century, from Louise Bourgeois to Glenn Ligon Trauma in all its forms--internal and external, individual and collective--has been an enduring theme in 20th- and 21st-century art. The proliferation of violent imagery, particularly since the expansion of mass media during and after World War II, has led to artworks that marshal consciousness of traumatic events and their cultural processing. These developments in art run parallel with the emergence of trauma studies, which confront the repercussions of traumatic events: the Holocaust, global conflict, sexual violence, systemic racism and gender discrimination. Psychic Wounds brings together artists from the mid-20th century to the present who have addressed trauma in their work. The book also contains an anthology of critical writings on trauma by curators, art historians and theorists, among them Robert Storr, Griselda Pollock, Huey Copeland and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Artists include: Gerhard Richter, Kazuo Shiraga, Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Glenn Ligon, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Carrie Mae Weems, Cindy Sherman, Bruce Nauman and Anicka Yi.

Colonial Trauma is a path-breaking account of the psychosocial effects of colonial domination. Following the work of Frantz Fanon, Lazali draws on historical materials as well as her own clinical experience as a psychoanalyst to shed new light on the ways in which the history of colonization leaves its traces on contemporary postcolonial selves. Lazali found that many of her patients experienced difficulties that can only be explained as the effects of “colonial trauma” dating from the French colonization of Algeria and the postcolonial period. Many French feel weighed down by a colonial history that they are aware of but which they have not experienced directly. Many Algerians are traumatized by the way that the French colonial state imposed new names on people and the land, thereby severing the links with community, history, and genealogy and contributing to feelings of loss, abandonment, and injustice. Only by reconstructing this history and uncovering its consequences can we understand the impact of colonization and give individuals the tools to come to terms with their past. By demonstrating the power of psychoanalysis to illuminate the subjective dimension of colonial domination, this book will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the long-term consequences of colonization and its aftermath.