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.

Our personal data has been used to spy on us, hire and fire us, and sell us stuff we don't need. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder uses it to show us who we truly are.

For centuries, we've relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to study human behavior. Today, a new approach is possible. As we live more of our lives online, researchers can finally observe us directly, in vast numbers, and without filters. Data scientists have become the new demographers.

In this daring and original book, Rudder explains how Facebook "likes" can predict, with surprising accuracy, a person's sexual orientation and even intelligence; how attractive women receive exponentially more interview requests; and why you must have haters to be hot. He charts the rise and fall of America's most reviled word through Google Search and examines the new dynamics of collaborative rage on Twitter.

He shows how people express themselves, both privately and publicly. What is the least Asian thing you can say? Do people bathe more in Vermont or New Jersey?

Rudder also traces human migration over time, showing how groups of people move from certain small towns to the same big cities across the globe. And he grapples with the challenge of maintaining privacy in a world where these explorations are possible.

Visually arresting and full of wit and insight, Dataclysm is a new way of seeing ourselves—a brilliant alchemy, in which math is made human and numbers become the narrative of our time.

50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology uses popular myths as a vehicle for helping students and laypersons to distinguish science from pseudoscience.

Explore topics that readers will relate to, but often misunderstand, such as 'opposites attract', 'people use only 10% of their brains', and 'handwriting reveals your personality'.

Provides a 'mythbusting kit' for evaluating folk psychology claims in everyday life and teaches essential critical thinking skills through detailed discussions of each myth.

Engaging and accessible writing style that appeals to students and lay readers alike.