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The cover of The Body Keeps the Score

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel van der Kolk, 2014

A psychiatrist shows how trauma lives on in the brain and body long after the danger has passed, and why healing needs safety, connection and the body, not talk alone.

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11 parts, about 30 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Shows with brain scans how trauma shuts down speech and time sense, so flashbacks feel like the present and insight alone cannot stop them
  • Links childhood abuse, neglect and attachment to adult illness, using the study of adverse childhood experiences and cases from the author's practice
  • Surveys roads to recovery through the body, including EMDR, yoga, breath, rhythm and relationships, and compares them with talk therapy and drugs

Who it is for

  • Survivors of trauma and the people who love them
  • Therapists and teachers who work with hurt children
  • Readers curious how stress lives in the body

What the summary covers

  1. Trauma Leaves an Imprint2 min
  2. What the Veterans Taught Me3 min
  3. Speechless Horror2 min
  4. The Smoke Detector and the Watchtower3 min
  5. Safety Lives in the Body and in Relationships3 min
  6. How Childhood Draws the Map3 min
  7. The Hidden Epidemic3 min
  8. How Trauma Is Remembered2 min
  9. Owning Your Self4 min
  10. Roads Back to the Body3 min
  11. Choices to Be Made2 min

Recommended by

  • Judith HermanProfessor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
    Dr. van der Kolk’s masterpiece combines the boundless curiosity of the scientist, the erudition of the scholar, and the passion of the truth teller.
  • Daniel J. SiegelClinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA
    When it comes to understanding the impact of trauma and being able to continue to grow despite overwhelming life experiences, Bessel van der Kolk leads the way in his comprehensive knowledge, clinical courage, and creative strategies to help us heal.
  • Norman DoidgeCanadian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
    The Body Keeps the Score is clear, fascinating, hard to put down, and filled with powerful case histories.
  • Rachel YehudaDirector of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at Mount Sinai
    In this inspirational work which seamlessly weaves keen clinical observation, neuroscience, historical analysis, the arts, and personal narrative, Dr. van der Kolk has created an authoritative guide to the effects of trauma, and pathways to recovery.
  • Stephen W. PorgesProfessor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    In The Body Keeps the Score we share the author’s courageous journey into the parallel dissociative worlds of trauma victims and the medical and psychological disciplines that are meant to provide relief.
  • Jack KornfieldPsychologist and teacher in the Vipassana movement
    This is masterpiece of powerful understanding and brave heartedness, one of the most intelligent and helpful works on trauma I have ever read.

About the author

  • Bessel van der KolkDutch American psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at Boston University
    • He was born in the Netherlands in 1943, during the German occupation.
    • He earned his M.D. at the University of Chicago in 1970 and finished his psychiatric residency at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School, in 1974.
    • He began studying traumatic stress in 1978 while treating Vietnam War veterans with PTSD.
    • He founded the Trauma Center and directed it from 1982 to 2000.
    • He has been Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine since 1996.
    • He served as president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies in 1990 and 1991.
    • He did the first studies of the effects of SSRI drugs on PTSD.
    • He initiated the process that led to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, a Congressionally mandated initiative that now funds about 150 centers.

Read it alongside

  • Pushes backBad Therapy

    Bessel van der Kolk argues that traumatic memories are stored as bodily fragments the mind may hold no story for; Abigail Shrier, citing McNally and Loftus, argues that a bodily reaction does not prove a hidden memory and that memory is open to suggestion.

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