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If one rates societies' levels of civilization, material surplus will be a determining factor. Civilization is the product of surplus where reasoning,
tolerance of truth, and love for children exceed the need for power to acquire food and especially water. Micro-Trauma sets out to examine the interpersonal struggles from underlying competitive states in adults. In fact, the words developmental trauma do not appear until the end of the book. They are also the product of economics, a struggle for supplies in which the parent competes with, rather than provides for, the child's needs, materially and emotionally, and then blames the child for its failure. Here I would borrow Shengold's apt term soul murder,1 which is well described by the following words: “First you break our legs, then you curse us for limping.”2
Most insight-oriented patients are not the victims of intense, deliberate traumatization. However, recent research on nonhuman mammals has shown that even three hours of separation per day of a newborn from its mother, over an extended period of time, prevents formation of the epigenetic code needed to turn off separation anxiety. Lifelong attachment problems result, including lowered self-esteem, rejection sensitivity, and, ultimately, isolation and depression. These discontinuities in bonding are caused not by ignorance alone, but by an incapacity for empathy—the result of the caretaker's own early traumatization.
The author lays out seven chapters exploring seven categories of micro-trauma, each bearing her invented name for the inflicted trauma. The first of these she names “Unkind Cutting Back and Its Navigation.” Here and in the following chapters, she reveals her high level of civility, which reflects understanding as opposed to blame—which is, after all, the hallmark of psychoanalysis. She also allows for being wrong.
I found only one instance where the author's labeling misled her, and that was in chapter 5, “Psychic Air Brushing and Excessive Niceness