47 pages • 1 hour read
Bessel van der KolkThe Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
PrologueChapter 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. He touches briefly on each of the areas he will address in the five main parts of the text, focusing on the origins of trauma and its treatment, the primary factors driving van der Kolk’s writing.
Van der Kolk also sets up two other aspects of the text that are critical to how he wants his research to come across. First, he explains his interest in trauma research, which has driven his entire career and affected his relationships with others and with himself. Second, he establishes his credentials in the field by citing the number of years he has worked in trauma research and the organizations who have supported him along the way. By invoking both the personal side and his expertise, van der Kolk signals that he cares deeply about his subject and knows it intimately well.
