4- MAT Book Review:
“The Body Keep the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma”
by B. van der Kolk
Benjamin Pelz
COU5364- Crisis Counseling
Dr. Lowrie
12/07/2020
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Summary/Abstract
Roughly speaking, “The Body keeps the score” is in its first half a textbook for
understanding traumatization and in its second part a practice bus for the treatment of trauma
sequelae. On the one hand, the chapters deal with self-contained subject areas and are almost
always explained by means of van der Kolk’s protagonists and studies. At the same time, the
book follows a stringent structure in terms of content, such as the author’s gain in knowledge
and scientific development:
1. understanding of traumatizations (theoretical content)
2. basics and classification of trauma therapy
3. practical implementation of body-based trauma therapy
1: Understanding of traumatization (theoretical content)
How the autonomic nervous system, the different regions of the brain react to trauma,
is described in a clear and well-founded way. Furthermore, van der Kolk uses neuroscience,
developmental psychopathology and interpersonal neurobiology to explain how trauma leads
to physiological changes. Traumatized people release increased amounts of stress hormones
and are therefore severely restricted in their everyday life, which changes their perception in
the long term. “Traumatized people tend to see their trauma in everything that happens in their
environment” (p. 26). Van der Kolk speaks of a failure of the imagination, a loss of mental
flexibility and explains the consequences for memories. Traumatization thus does not become
a past event but interferes with the here and now in a way that can be experienced again and
again. “If the problem in PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is dissociation, the treatment
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goal must be association: the integration of the dissociated elements of the trauma into the
ongoing narrative of life, so that the brain can recognize that ‘that was then and this is now.
(S. 218)
Plea for body-related trauma therapy (bottom-up)
Traumatized people often have a disturbed body feeling, often sleep, appetite, state of
excitement, digestion are affected. “Therefore every trauma treatment, if it is to be effective,
must deal with these basic bodily functions”. (p. 71) The patient must learn to make friends
with his own body: “Angry people live in an angry body. (p. 123) According to van der Kolk
it is therefore central: to register sensations in one’s own body, to describe them (pressure,
warmth, tingling, muscle tension …) and finally to find out and use which sensations for the
patient are connected with joy and relaxation (through breathing, gestures, movement).
