More than just the title, “the body keeps the score” is van der Kolk’s central premise, and a phrase that he repeats verbatim around half a dozen times over the course of the text. Over the course of history, trauma has been poorly understood, misdiagnosed, ignored, and discounted as an area of legitimate study. However, trauma affects a considerable number of people, whether through terrible experiences in adulthood like rape or violent combat, or through abuse or molestation in childhood. Van der Kolk has devoted his entire career to understanding what causes trauma, how trauma affects the brain and body, and how to treat a condition that literally rewrites a person’s ability to interface with themselves and the world around them.

Van der Kolk provides abundant scientific evidence from personal research and interactions with patients and from other scientists who have studied neuroscience and the human condition. He supports his thesis with anecdotes about specific patients, illustrations of brain scans, and anatomical diagrams that demonstrate how the brain reacts to trauma and how that subsequently can affect the rest of the body. Van der Kolk builds a strong case in support of his assertion that the brain and body retain a “memory” of traumatic experiences even if someone is not conscious of it.