In this second quest he has had limited success.
#The body keeps the score drivers
He advocates for policy responses that combat the economic and societal drivers of childhood adversity, and for better recognition by organised psychiatry of the mental health impacts of trauma. Van der Kolk presents childhood trauma as a “hidden epidemic”, swept under the carpet by society at large and by psychiatry in particular. They are more likely than their peers to experience and perpetrate violence as adults, to engage in self-damaging behaviour, and to experience cancer, heart disease, obesity and a range of psychiatric conditions. Once again, his focus is expansive, extending beyond traumatised individuals in isolation to the disruptions trauma creates in their intimate attachments.Ībusive family environments produce children who lack a secure sense of connection to others and suffer elevated risks of illness and re-traumatisation. Whereas early investigations of post-traumatic reactions focused on adult combatants in war, van de Kolk directs much of his attention to impacts of trauma and hardship earlier in life. Trauma in childhood becomes the second major focus of the book. Recovering a sense of personal agency and of bodily ownership – what he refers to as befriending the body – is a key to recovery. In trauma, he argues, people may lose a sense of body ownership to accompany their loss of self, felt connection to others, and even their sense of being fully alive. Van der Kolk explains at length how hormonal influences and the vagus nerve, which runs from brain to abdomen and regulates several internal organ functions, reverberate its effects throughout the body.
Trauma’s somatic signature extends beyond the brain. He presents traumatic reactions not simply as disturbances of fear and anxiety – how the amygdala becomes an over-sensitive “smoke detector” that triggers traumatised people into fight or flight reactions – but also as disruptors of interpersonal relationships and a stable sense of self. Van der Kolk begins his blockbuster with a discussion of the neuroscience of trauma, complete with explorations of brain anatomy and function and how they underpin reactions to extreme threat. Van der Kolk has substantial legitimacy as a researcher, and his interleaving of the personal and the scientific makes for an engaging read. However, its presentation of the science of trauma is unusually compelling, setting it above most works of popularisation. The book adopts several standard features of the popular psychology genre: case studies from the author’s clinical practice, autobiographical reflections, and sharp critiques of mainstream views to assure readers the author is not merely doing good but slaying dragons in the process. So what is all the fuss about? Bessel van der Kolk, a Dutch-born psychiatrist who has been a successful researcher and clinician in the Boston area since the late 1970s, wrote The Body Keeps the Score as a guide to the understanding and treatment of trauma. Six psychiatric concepts that have mutated: for better or worse They are doing so, at least in part, because the concept’s meaning has been stretched. People are seeing trauma everywhere and re-conceptualising their own experiences of misery and misadventure in its terms. Reckonings with sexual and racial trauma in the wake of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have combined to raise the cultural profile of trauma, Nicoll suggests.īut alongside this increase in cultural attention, there has been a broadening of what we take trauma to be. The pandemic may have contributed to this surge by bringing collective trauma to our doorsteps, she speculates, but the pre-pandemic upswing suggests other factors are also at play. On, writer Gina Nicoll notes that sales began to liven up around 2018 and then grew in spurts, reaching a peak in 2021. Post-traumatic stress disorder is old news, a staple of psychological chatter for over four decades, and the book doesn’t offer any quick fix solutions for self-helpers.Ĭlues to what has driven The Body Keeps the Score’s success can be found in its sales trajectory. Why a long, dense, and demanding book on the psychology and neurobiology of trauma should occupy so bright a spotlight for so long is not immediately obvious. It has reportedly sold almost 2 million copies. The book has spent more than 150 weeks on the New York Times best seller list for paperback nonfiction, including over half a year in the coveted #1 spot during 2021. Not so The Body Keeps the Score, a publishing phenomenon that has kept selling long after it first hit the shelves in 2014. If new books are lucky they enjoy a brief honeymoon of attention before ebbing away into oblivion. In a new series, we look at books that have become cultural touchstones.
0 kommentar(er)
