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Bessel Van der Kolk

2014

New York

3

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma: by Bessel van der Kolk, MD Page 1 The Permanente Journal/ Summer 2015/ Volume 19 No. 3 e118 BOOK REVIEW This valuable book is an informative primer about the ways traumatic life events affect us as human beings. The impact of physical and emotional trauma on brain, mind, and body is examined thoroughly by the author, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, through numerous real life examples that arouse our clinical interest. In our modern age, when we so often hear the term “posttraumatic stress disorder,” this book takes us back in time to its historic origins and the past efforts of some of the icons of psychiatry who attempted to explain and treat trauma in dealing with their patients. What becomes clear very quickly is that individuals can be forever branded with a historic score that travels with them for the remainder of life. The body indeed …