Summary

“The Unbearable Heaviness of Remembering” begins with a quote suggesting that human bodies are the keepers of memory and that “remembering is no less than reincarnation” (186). Author van der Kolk then prologues this chapter by summarizing how, as a result of Freud’s focus on internal sources of mental suffering and of ongoing efforts by military and government to downplay and deny the effects of “shell shock” (the term then used for the trauma of war), the trauma that veterans were forced to see and live through was left undiagnosed. This, the author argues damaged not only the individuals involved but society as a whole.

In “The New Face of Trauma,” the author summarizes how soldiers returning from combat in World War II experienced both differences and the similarities in behavior and treatment from those who came home from...