47 pages 1 hour read

Bessel van der Kolk

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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014

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Prologue

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue Summary: “Facing Trauma”

The Body Keeps the Score opens with an overview of the text to come. Van der Kolk introduces all of the various threads that he will cover, stating: “I wrote this book to serve as both a guide and an invitation” (4). He provides a brief explanation of his own interest in psychiatry and mentions that he has been working in the field of trauma for over 30 years, often with support from a variety of major medical and granting organizations.

Van der Kolk includes a brief clinical explanation of what trauma is, how it affects the mind and body, and which areas of research address it: neuroscience, developmental psychopathology, and interpersonal neurobiology. He offers the suggestion that “Research from these new disciplines has revealed that trauma produces actual physiological changes” (2). Van der Kolk notes several avenues by which people commonly become traumatized—combat, abuse, and sexual abuse in particular—and mentions some of what he will cover in the rest of the text, including the treatment methods that he will cover in Part 5. 

Prologue Analysis

In the Prologue, van der Kolk sets up the technical aspects of his text, laying out basic definitions and providing some insight into the text’s structure.