The Body Keeps the Score opens with an overview of the text to come. Van der Kolk introduces all of the various threads that he will cover, stating: “I wrote this book to serve as both a guide and an invitation” (4). He provides a brief explanation of his own interest in psychiatry and mentions that he has been working in the field of trauma for over 30 years, often with support from a variety of major medical and granting organizations.

Van der Kolk includes a brief clinical explanation of what trauma is, how it affects the mind and body, and which areas of research address it: neuroscience, developmental psychopathology, and interpersonal neurobiology. He offers the suggestion that “Research from these new disciplines has revealed that trauma produces actual physiological changes” (2). Van der Kolk notes several avenues by which people commonly become traumatized—combat, abuse, and sexual abuse in particular—and mentions some of what he will cover in the rest of the text, including the treatment methods that he will cover in Part 5.