Summary

“Revolutions in Understanding Mind and Brain” begins with a quote that suggests doubt is an integral part of personal awakening; and another that suggests that individual experience is as much a function of whole-world history as it is of an individual life. Author van der Kolk then prologues this chapter with a description of how, as a young medical student in the late 1960’s, he worked in a research hospital (The Massachusetts Mental Health Center, or MMHC) helping to organize recreational activities and monitor the progress of mentally ill young people.

In “Trauma Before Dawn,” the author describes how, on overnight shifts at the hospital, he had late night conversations with the patients in which they described various traumas that they had lived through– and how they seemed better afterwards. He then describes how the medical establishment at the...