The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. is one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma. He is the founder and medical director of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts. He teaches psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and directs the National Complex Trauma Treatment Network.

Growing up in Holland shortly after the end of World War II, van der Kolk saw evidence of trauma around him from a young age, including in his own home, as his father had survived internment by the Nazis and his mother had experienced difficulties in her own upbringing. Van der Kolk’s interest in trauma sparked during his time “as a staff psychiatrist at the Boston Veterans Administration Clinic” (7) at the beginning of his career. At the clinic, he met a Vietnam veteran suffering from what would eventually be called posttraumatic stress disorder, an encounter that inspired van der Kolk both to reexamine his understanding of his own past and to want to help others suffering from the same difficulties.

Van der Kolk has spent the rest of his career to the present day trying to understand trauma, what causes it, what effects it has on the mind, brain, and body, and how to treat it effectively. Rather than adhering to a single approach or treatment, van der Kolk is highly open to new developments and ideas, always willing to engage with new avenues for helping people recover from trauma, particularly arising from combat, rape, or child abuse. Repeatedly throughout his career, van der Kolk learns of new techniques, approaches, and treatments from colleagues, investigates them, and incorporates them into his own practice if they prove effective.

Van der Kolk is an expert in his field, having been involved in numerous major studies involving trauma as well as lobbying for better and more accurate classifications of traumatized patients in an attempt to get them better help. He has fought pharmaceutical companies and those responsible for the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual, as its classifications and treatments still heavily favor prescribing medications that treat symptoms to alternative forms of therapy that would treat underlying causes. Van der Kolk’s approach is more human-focused, trying to understand who people are, how they came to have the difficulties they do, and how to help them address those difficulties in a meaningful way.