The body keeps the score: mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma
By Bessel van der Kolk

Reviewer
Elizabeth Aplin Level 4 ACA Member

Bessel van der Kolk is one of the world’s foremost experts on traumatic stress, with his professional life dedicated towards the understanding and healing of trauma. During his forty-year career as a psychiatrist, he has held the position of professor of the Boston University School of Medicine, is currently president of the Trauma Research Foundation, Brookline Massachusetts, and throughout his career has travelled widely, including to Australia to share his research.

Written in 2014 from a wide perspective, and appealing to a broad audience through an easy-to-read style, this book remains a source of very helpful research and observation that includes compassionate, heart-stopping stories of people whose lives were stultified by trauma, but who were able to have restoration into normal living through a variety of therapeutic approaches.

Van der Kolk writes from an autobiographical and historical perspective that spans the developmental progress of research into trauma, from Pierre Janet (1859–1947), who discovered and named ‘dissociation’ as the psychological process by which a person responds to overwhelming trauma, to the present use of body therapies in therapeutic trauma work.

On this journey, van der Kolk provides views of the medical system from within and without, including phases and trends led by research and through the influence of government, politics, wars, and drug and insurance companies.

And although trauma is complex, he presents it as simple to understand, and also as the root cause of many currently identified mental health disorders. Thus, he calls for more research on a proposed category of ‘developmental trauma disorder’ for inclusion in the DSM.

His study and interest have extended towards preventative trauma programs in schools, which have been incorporated into the education systems of European countries. He provides research data from these programs that supports their value through lowered national incarceration rates and healthcare costs.

Van der Kolk encourages the protective factors of selfregulation, a good support network, engagement in activities involving communal rhythms such as choir singing, marching, chamber music, walking and drama productions, free personal writing and drawing and the positive attachment effect of horses and dogs.

He also discusses, in detail, a range of therapeutic options including early intervention in education settings, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, internal family systems therapy, Pesso Boyden system psychomotor therapy, neurofeedback, therapeutic massage, mindfulness and yoga.

As a bestseller, this book has sold millions of copies, perhaps achieving the author’s intent of bringing light and societal change into the pervasive area of trauma.

If you work with clients who have childhood trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder and are interested in a deeper overall understanding of trauma or in adding a new therapeutic approach, this is an enjoyable, helpful and inspirational read. Van der Kolk charts a path of healing from trauma into “restoration of executive function, self-confidence and the capacity for playfulness and creativity”.