Trauma is often treated as something that happens only in the mind. Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk argues that it also lives in the body, and that recovery has to reach it there.

Readical Key Points

• The author's account of how trauma affects the brain and body, drawn from more than three decades of work with survivors and from research
• Examines approaches including EMDR, neurofeedback, yoga, mindfulness and theater
• A #1 New York Times bestseller, translated into more than forty languages
• Paperback, 464 pages, Penguin Books (first published by Viking, 2014)

Van der Kolk draws on his clinical work and on research in neuroscience to describe how traumatic experience can change the way people regulate emotion, hold attention and relate to others. He then surveys treatments that reach beyond talk therapy, from EMDR and neurofeedback to yoga, theater and mindfulness, and describes what he has seen them do for his patients.

The book serves readers trying to understand their own history or the history of someone close to them, and clinicians, students and caregivers who work with trauma. It is written for a general audience and is not a substitute for care from a qualified professional. The title states the argument; the book is the long case for it.

About the Author

Bessel van der Kolk, MD, is a psychiatrist and trauma researcher who founded the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, and has worked with survivors of trauma for more than three decades.

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