I am very excited about this recently published book by Dr.
Bessel Van der Kolk. Initially, I did
not think that another book could be placed alongside Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery as a “go to” text on
the intricacies trauma and its effects.
However, I am now going to refer to The
Body Keeps the Score as the new, much needed, reference book for anyone
interested in the effects of trauma and the varied ways to address its impact
on people’s lives.
Not only is this book full of information but it is also
written in a format that makes for interesting and engaging reading. It is not written like a research paper,
although the research is well documented.
I was able to read it for hours at a time, not something I can usually
do with research articles.
In The Body Keeps the
Score, Dr. Van der Kolk relates the history behind today’s current focus on
trauma in veterans and survivors of interpersonal trauma. He tells stories from his own years working
for the Veteran’s Administration and finding that the psychotic episodes that
veterans were being diagnosed as having (and for which they were heavily
medicated) were actually flashbacks of experiences that had occurred in the
jungles of Viet Nam. This eventually led
to post traumatic stress disorder being included in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual when it first arrived in the 1980s. Dr. Van der Kolk, however, does not tread
lightly around the issues surrounding the DSM and its later iterations. Instead, he is very critical of the process
of creating the DSM and its subsequent use by insurance companies, something for
which it was never designed.
Dr. Van der Kolk also describes how after extensive research
came out about childhood trauma and its long term impacts he and his colleagues
came to the conclusion that a new diagnosis of Development Trauma Disorder
needed to included. This was a request
that was denied by the American Psychiatric Association in 2011 even after the
results of the Adverse Childhood Experience study were made an integral part of
current trauma research. This has
resulted in a loss of research and funding that would assist in addressing the
needs of children who have suffered from chronic trauma and continue to be
misdiagnosed and heavily medicated in lieu of much needed trauma treatment.
In addition to extensively covering the effects of trauma on
children, Dr. Van der Kolk also addresses the controversy surrounding repressed
memories and the misguided notions still prevalent in the psychiatric world
that repressed memories are not factual.
He provides anecdotal and research based evidence that validates the
experiences of people who have regained memories of childhood abuse.
The most helpful part of this book, and it is really hard to
narrow down the best part, is Dr. Van der Kolk’s review of the most helpful
trauma therapies. His devotion to body
based modalities is evident and he strong advises against talk therapy as it
generates activation/arousal responses that are not helpful until the person is
able to trust their body’s responses. He
states that it is through body based modalities that a trauma survivor will
eventually gain “self-ownership of their body.”
I am sure that many survivors with whom we work would appreciate knowing
that this is a possibility.
I highly encourage anyone who is interested in the field of
trauma studies and/or works with survivors of trauma to add this book to their
library
