Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society

Why some cope1

It asks why some people cope with trauma while others do not, and how trauma affects biology, beliefs about the world and functioning.

An information-processing disorder2

The paperback preface argues PTSD disrupts the processing and integration of experience, supporting its classification as dissociative rather than anxiety.

Intimate trauma hits hardest2

For children and women, trauma inflicted by parents and partners has the most profound long-term consequences, the preface says.

History and society1

Opening chapters include "The Black Hole of Trauma" and a history of trauma in psychiatry.

Memory and dissociation1

Van der Kolk's chapters on trauma and memory and on dissociation, plus "The Body Keeps the Score" on the psychobiology of PTSD.

Development and culture1

Chapters on childhood and adolescence, ageing, legal issues and trauma in cultural perspective.

Treatment1

Approaches from acute and preventive interventions to CBT (Rothbaum and Foa), medication and psychoanalytic therapy.

Starting from scratch2

The preface quotes Kardiner and Spiegel (1947): each investigator "considers it his sacred obligation to start from scratch".

A common disorder2

Community studies show PTSD is more common than expected; Ronald Kessler concluded depression and PTSD carry the major burden of mental disorder.

Premature verdicts2

The preface warns against naming a "treatment of choice" after one beats a waiting list in a preselected sample.

The Body Keeps the Score

Van der Kolk's 2014 bestseller for general readers, and the criticism it drew.

Trauma and Recovery

Judith Herman's 1992 account of trauma in its social and political context; she praised this volume.

PTSD

The condition, its diagnosis and current treatments.