Bessel van der Kolk

Dutch-American psychiatrist whose forty-year career studying the effects of trauma on the body, brain, and human relationships has reshaped the modern field of integrative healing. Born in The Hague in 1943 to a family marked by the German occupation of the Netherlands, he has been a clinician and researcher at Boston University and Harvard, and is the founder of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts. His 2014 book The Body Keeps the Score — combining clinical case studies, neuroscience, and the somatic, contemplative, and creative therapies that traditional talk therapy cannot reach — has sold over three million copies, spent more than 200 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and become the foundational text of the contemporary trauma-informed movement that now shapes therapy, education, and contemplative practice.