Settling the score on Bessel van der Kolk's history of misconduct, malpractice, and fabrication
The good, the bad, and the ugly of the world’s most popular book on trauma: "The Body Keeps the Score".
CW: Discussions of trauma, PTSD, war crimes, rape, abuse, abortion, medical malpractice. If any of these topics are triggering to you, please take care of yourself and come back for the next article.
Note: I am not a mental health professional and everything is my own opinion based on my research. This article is not intended to incite hate towards any particular individual, but for the purposes of consumer education and consumer protection.
While I critique the world of self-help books, I recognize their need to fill the gap where our basic needs aren’t provided for, particularly when it comes to mental healthcare. And while I would never classify Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score” as a self-help book (I would classify it as a Psychology book), it is widely being used in the world today to serve as a self-help book for individuals navigating trauma.
A couple of years ago, I was one of those individuals. I have CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and have gone to therapy on and off since I was 14. Two years ago, I was (and remain) in the middle of one of those off times and I was looking for resources to help fill the therapy void. I decided to pick up “The Body Keeps the Score” because it seemed to be the ultimate book about trauma.
The book itself took me over a year to read and throughout reading it I discovered the good, the bad, and the ugly within the book. From the good insights it provided me into helping me understand my own mind and body. To the bad of van der Kolk sympathizing with war criminals and rapists. And finally to the horrible realization after reading the book that the author himself has a dark history of misconduct and workplace abuse.
The good: gathering understanding
I do think that it’s fair that I mention the fact that I learned a lot in this book. In fact, if you open my copy, you’ll find notes on nearly every page (not all notes are positive, but we’ll get to that later). A lot of those notes had been underlining things that made me feel seen and helped me understand my brain and body more.
It made me more aware of the reasons why my brain reacts the way it does in certain situations. It made me understand the connections of why my memory works the way that it does (and why it usually doesn’t work at all). And, the most valuable part for me, was that it made me understand the way my body reacts to trauma (specifically in regards to migraines, nausea, etc).
At the end of the day, it made me feel like my world made a little more sense.
The bad: morality of trauma
When I opened the book and saw that the first chapter was titled, “Lessons from Vietnam Veterans”, I was skeptical. And as I continued to read on, that skepticism was only validated. Van der Kolk started his work with trauma with Vietnam veterans, which makes sense as this was the first time that PTSD was recognized as a medical diagnosis.
To be clear, I’m not against veterans receiving mental health treatment. In fact, I think it’s a grave (and intentional) oversight on the U.S. government’s part to turn humans into machines built to follow orders to kill and then to dispose of them once they’ve served their purpose. It’s intentional on the U.S.’s part to not provide them necessary care to help individuals deal with the trauma they experienced or to hold them accountable for the trauma they caused. But that’s a topic for another day.
What bothered me the most about van der Kolk’s chapter on Vietnam veterans was the way that he recounted these experiences. The whole first chapter was built to create sympathy for individuals who share with van der Kolk how they murdered children and raped women. Instead of taking on the weight and horrors of these individual’s actions, van der Kolk instead attempted to make his readers feel sorry for these individuals because this trauma was ruining their lives.
These individuals are war criminals who violated international law. This goes beyond trauma and into guilt. They did horrible things, and it’s not something that someone else did to them. One could argue that they were brainwashed by the U.S. government, which is true (to learn more about how the U.S. systemically brainwashed their troops into weapons, read “Kill Anything That Moves” by Nick Turse). However, that doesn’t negate the fact that these men murdered and raped innocent civilians.
Dangerous rhetoric continued throughout the book, specifically in regards to trauma connected to abortion. He talked about a time in which he was working at a Catholic hospital and that having “guilt over abortions” (24) was one of the reasons why women were receiving electro-shock therapy.
The fact that individuals committing actual war crimes were portrayed as dealing with “trauma” and individuals having an abortion were portrayed as “guilty” gives us a perfect example of van der Kolk’s perception of morality.
Going off of potential treatment methods for PTSD (note: van der Kolk did acknowledge that electro-shock therapy is not one), I found the section about EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to be also troubling. EMDR is a specific form of therapy for PTSD that uses repetitive movements such as following a finger with your eyes or continuous tapping to help patients relive traumatic moments to then have a safe place to process those moments.
This is a treatment I personally went through for little over a year. While there are undoubtedly people who have benefitted from this therapy, it was detrimental for me. One treatment is not a universal answer for everyone. However, van der Kolk presents it as such. He states that it’s more effective than Prozac (which from personal experience, I found Prozac to be far more helpful) and that EMDR is a “cure” for PTSD.
The idea of a “cure” came up a lot in this book and van der Kolk said time and time again that he “cured” his patients. This is a dangerous word when it comes to mental health. Mental illness and your mental health in general is something you always live with. While there can be treatments and medications to help an individual navigate and live with their mental illness, there is no such thing (at least right now) of a treatment that erases your mental illness completely.
The final aspect of the book that I found suspicious was rhetoric consistently used to undermine the helpfulness of medications:
“Mainstream trauma treatment has paid scant attention to helping terrified people to safely experience their sensations and emotions. Medications such as serotonin reuptake blockers…increasingly have taken the place of helping people to deal with their sensory world” (217).
“Medications only blunt sensations and do nothing to resolve them or transform them from toxic agents into allies” (103).
While I recognize that I’m not a mental health professional and that medication isn’t the end-all-be-all answer for everyone, not recognizing it as a potential tool to help individuals is dangerous and further perpetuates the harmful stigma surrounding mental health medication that can help save lives.
The ugly: misconduct, malpractice, and fabrication
Throughout the book “The Body Keeps the Score”, you get little clues and insights that could lead you to believe that while Bessel van der Kolk may be seen as an expert in trauma, his actual work with patients may not have been best.
In the section where he’s discussing EMDR, he states that “EMDR can help even if the patient and the therapist do not have a trusting relationship. This was particularly intriguing because trauma, understandably, rarely leaves people with an open trusting heart” (255).
I’m not sure if this is from his personal experience, but it’s certainly telling about his care of creating a comfortable environment for his patients. You should always have a trusting environment with your therapist. If they push you to do things you’re not comfortable with in your therapy session, find a new therapist.
I’m willing to take a guess that van der Kolk does share this from personal experience based on his professional record which involves creating a hostile work environment, patient complaints of professional misconduct, and fabricated research.
In the past twenty years, van der Kolk suffered three blows to his career. The first was that he was fired from his own Trauma Center that he founded due to allegations that he had bullied and denigrated his own employees. While the details were unfortunately never released to the public, the severity of them must have been large to have caused him from being fired from his own organization.
The second blow was a patient complaint of Professional Misconduct sent to the Board of Registration in Massachusetts. The nature of the complaint was due to rude or discourteous behavior, and patient neglect and abandonment.
In the complaint, the former patient outlined her experience. The patient initially sought treatment due to the trauma she experienced while she was a student at university. She was abducted and held captive by individuals. In her complaint, the patient writes, “Because of the heinous nature of the acts, the brutality with which they were committed, and the assaults made on me mentally, physically and spiritually…my mind was unable to effectively process the events which occurred.”
Connected to her trauma, she wanted to file a police report. Initially van der Kolk helped her, but then warned her that it could ruin her career and damage her reputation. She dropped him as a therapist, but still went to van der Kolk’s Trauma Center to see a new one. This new therapist proceeded to drop her as a patient because her PTSD wasn’t “acute” enough to be covered at the Trauma Center.
And the third blow was when his scientific integrity went under scrutiny in the past. In fact, van der Kolk was dropped as an expert witness in a case due to the fact that one of his research partners at Harvard fabricated their research.
In an email, the attorney in the case stated: “It is my understanding that Dr. van der Kolk is no longer affiliated with Harvard. His appt at Harvard ended shortly after my deposition of him. The fact that his major research asst. -- Danya Vardi -- plead guilty to fabricating research and that van der Kolk testified in a deceptive manner are matters of public record.”
The end: so what now?
Today, “The Body Keeps the Score” remains on bestseller lists and widely popular amongst people looking for answers. While I can’t deny I found some answers in this book myself, the behavior of the author, Bessel van der Kolk, can’t be ignored.
There’s always an argument to separate the art from the artist. However, when the artist profits off of the art, this argument is no longer valid. And even though some insights in this book could be helpful, they can be found elsewhere.
Instead of picking up “The Body Keeps the Score”, here are some alternatives that are recommended by mental health professionals:
You are pretty misinformed and have a political ax to grind that has nothing to do with this subject. in addition, you don't even have the facts right regarding the scientific fraud from the Danya Vardi case. Not only was she not the "lead research assistant" (she wasn't even a research assistantm nor was she ever paid), but her data was under a different doctoral advisor at a different institution. It is unfortunate, but she was a disturbed woman, who despite talent, was dishonest, to say the least. She was "hanging out" at the Trauma Center, trying to get subjects and data to further her own career. EVERYONE severed ties with her once her deception was uncovered. Your allegations of reasons for severing ties with MGH are also incorrect. In fact, there is much false information in this blog. Not sure what trauma history is in your own past to make you lash out with so much false information, but I wish you healing and a life with less ill-directed anger.