By Maria Popova
“A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity,” William James asserted in his revolutionary 1884 theory of how our bodies affect our feelings. Two generations later, Rilke wrote in a beautiful letter of advice to a young woman: “I am not one of those who neglect the body in order to make of it a sacrificial offering for the soul, since my soul would thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.” And yet in the century since, we’ve made little progress on making sense — much less making use — of the inextricable dialogue between the physical body and the psychoemotional interior landscape we shorthand as “soul.”
Nowhere is this relationship more essential yet more endangered than in our healing from trauma, and no one has provided a more illuminating, sympathetic, and constructive approach to such healing than Boston-based Dutch psychiatrist and pioneering PTSD researcher Bessel van der Kolk. In The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (public library), he explores “the extreme disconnection from the body that so many people with histories of trauma and neglect experience” and the most fertile paths to recovery by drawing on his own work and a wealth of other research in three main areas of study: neuroscience, which deals with how mental processes function within the brain…
Share This Post!
Adults With a History of Childhood Trauma Can Benefit From Recommended Depression Treatments, Contrary to Current Theory
The Lancet Psychiatry, neurosciencenews.com Patients with major depressive disorder who experienced trauma during childhood see symptom improvement following psychopharmacological intervention, psychotherapy, or a combination of both. The results of a new [...]
Post-Traumatic Growth: What You Need to Know
by Nicole McDermott Trauma—either as a one-time event or prolonged exposure— can cause a wide range of mental health issues including flashbacks, sleep disturbances, anxiety, grief and substance misuse. Healing from [...]
PTSD and Suicide After Natural Disasters
by César A. Alfonso, MD Everyone in Puerto Rico (PR) was affected by Hurricane Maria, which made landfall on September 20, 2017 as the largest scale natural disaster in the US [...]
Behavioral Health Conditions in Children and Youth Exposed to Natural Disasters
Supplemental Research Bulletin, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration This Supplemental Research Bulletin focuses on mental health and substance use (behavioral health) conditions in children and adolescents following exposure to [...]
Many Refugees Dealing with Trauma Face Obstacles to Mental Health Care
By Erica Zurek and Alander Rocha Refugees are arriving in the U.S. in greater numbers this year after resettlement counts reached a 40-year low under President Donald Trump. These new arrivals, like [...]
The Dangerous Impact of Racial Trauma on the Black Community
By Maia Niguel Hoskin Psychologists use the term trauma to describe an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Racial trauma, or race-based traumatic stress, [...]