Review | Why, in Covid-19 era, bestselling ‘trauma bible’ is more relevant than ever
- In 2022, two years into the pandemic, we see trauma everywhere. It’s an overused word, but its physical effects are real, as The Body Keeps the Score explains
- As author Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist, suggests, curing the condition requires not just talk therapy but also the means to retrain sufferers’ bodies
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, pub. Penguin
Psychiatrist and trauma specialist Bessel van der Kolk believed America was on the verge of becoming “a trauma-conscious society” when he wrote the 2014 tour de force The Body Keeps the Score.
His book, densely packed with hard science, compelling storytelling and years of clinical experience, struck a chord, garnering accolades from eminent medical colleagues, the world’s top science journals and even modern master of mindfulness Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Despite its often harrowing accounts of sexual abuse and the brutal intrusions of war, it found a general audience, too, and a place on The New York Times’ bestseller list, one it has tenaciously held on to, in ever more buoying waves of relevance, for 180 or so weeks.
Two long years into the Covid-19 pandemic, it still periodically regains the No 1 spot in paperback non-fiction.