Table of Contents

Chapter 1. The Mind/Brain/Body Continuum; Chapter 2. How the Brain Helps Us to Survive: Salivating Dogs and Procedural Memory; - Pavlovian Conditioning and Behavior; - Memory Mechanisms and Survival; - Survival Behaviors: Fighting, Fleeing and Freezing; - Brain Pathways and Survival; - Animal Models of Trauma: Learned Resilience vs. Learned; Helplessness. Chapter 3. Trauma as Imprisonment of the Mind; - Cues and Traumatic Memory; - Internal Cues and Kindling; - Assaulted by the Past; - Memory and Dreams; - Frozen in the Past; - The Shattering of the Self; - Changing the Brain; - The Shaping of Personality and Psychopathology. Chapter 4. Conversion Hysteria and Somatic Dissociation. - The Experience of Dissociation; - An Abbreviated History of Hysteria; - Somatic Dissociation: The Body in Hysteria; - The Stigmata Enigma; - Stigmata in Clinical Practice; - R.S.D.: The Pathological Extreme of Stigmata. Chapter 5. The Origins of Life Trauma; - Concepts of Preverbal Consciousness; - Preverbal Memory; - The Fetus and Intrauterine Trauma; - Neonatal Intensive Care; - The American Way of Birth; - The Technology of Birthing; - Bonding, Nurturing and Brain Development; - Studies in Bonding; - The Physiology of Bonding. Chapter 6. The Trauma of Illness and Its Treatment; - An Abbreviated Autobiographical Account of the Making of a Doctor; - The Cultural Anthropology of Medical Training; - The Evolution of the American System of Medical Practice; - Science, Technology, Economics and Trauma; - Science and Technology: Our Cultural Holy Grail; - The Problems of an Imperfect Science; - The Doctor-Patient Relationship; - Changing the System. Chapter 7. Is Trauma Inevitable?; - Nature vs. Nurture, Genes vs. Experience; - Genes and Mental Illness; - Changing the Brain: Lessons from Brain Injury; - How Experience Changes Genes; - Redemption Through Repetition; - The Role of Endorphins; - The Thrill of the Race, The Thrill of the Risk; - Traumatic Reenactment and Classical Conditioning; - Violence and Society; - The Epidemiology of Violence in America; - Cross-Cultural Studies; - Lessons from Primates; - Lessons from the Laboratory; - Societal Implications; - The Trauma of Societal Rituals; - Violence in Entertainment. Chapter 8. Trauma is Bad for Your Health; - The Diseases of Stress; - The Diseases of Trauma; - The Diseases of Helplessness/Freeze/Dissociation; - Diseases of Abnormal Autonomic Regulation; - Diseases of Procedural Memory; - Diseases of Somatic Dissociation; - Diseases of Endocrine/Immune Regulation; - Diseases of Cognition and Sleep. Chapter 9. Healing Trauma: The Power of the Human Spirit; - Completion, Resolution and Extinction; - Dissociation as a Therapeutic Barrier; - Regaining Consciousness: Restitution of the Triune Brain; - Drug Treatment: Correcting the Chemicals, or Tightening; The Lid; - The Risks of Transformation. Chapter 10. Epilogue: Understanding Your Life

About the Author

Robert Scaer, MD, a board-certified neurologist with forty years of clinical experience, lives in Louisville, Colorado.