title: Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past: A Practical Guide for Understanding and Working with Traumatic Memory
author: Peter A. Levine Ph.D.
description: In <i>Trauma and Memory,</i> Peter Levine provides insight into how memories and the brain circuits involved in maintaining these memories empower trauma to influence how we think, feel, and interact. Levine has been a heroic pioneer in explaining how the damaging emotional memories associated with trauma are locked in our body. His paradigm-shifting intervention model, Somatic Experiencing, has been at the forefront of clinical interventions focused on moving trauma-induced implicit feelings, locked in the body, into an explicit understanding. Levine explains how the intransigent and omnipotent power of the implicit memories of trauma can be diffused and transformed.Stephen W. Porges, PhD, author of <i>The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation<br /></i><br /> Memory has many layers, and Peter Levine has contributed his own unique and powerful way of thinking about how we can understand these systems and optimize their unfolding after trauma. This book offers clinical wisdom drawn from decades of direct experience, demonstrating how a clinicianwith focused attention and essential timingcan move unresolved, non-integrated memories into a resolved, integrated form that enables a coherent narrative to emerge and the individual to become liberated from the prisons of the past.Daniel J. Siegel, MD,author of <i>Mindsight, The Mindful Therapist,</i> and <i>Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology<br /></i><br /> Only after we become capable of standing back, taking stock of ourselves, reducing the intensity of our sensations and emotions, and activating our inborn physical defensive reactions can we learn to modify our entrenched maladaptive automatic survival responses and, in doing so, put our haunting memories to rest.Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD, author of <i>The Body keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Healing of Trauma</i><br /> <i></i><br />In yet another seminal work Peter Levine here deconstructs traumatic memory, making it accessible tohealing and transformation. He helps ustherapist or clientmove from a limiting past to where we belong: the empowered present.Gabor Mat, MD, author of <i>In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts:</i> <i>Close Encounters with Addiction</i> and <i>When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection<br /></i><br /> Arguably, much of our lives are spent at the mercy of the automatic brain; this is onlyaccentuated for those who have experienced severe trauma. In writing with such depth andinsight about the psychobiological dynamics of procedural memory, master therapist PeterLevine offers therapists important tools for the transformation of traumatic memory. Moreover,the writing and rich examples make this book accessible so that professionals andnonprofessionals alike can benefit from its wisdom.Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT, author of <i>Wired for Love; </i>founder of the PACT Institute <br /><br /> With this book, Dr. Levine has made another significant contribution to the treatment of trauma. Drawing on established neuroscience he explains, in clear and accessible terms, the various kinds of memory, their neurological bases, and their role in the treatment of trauma. This book is invaluable for clinicians wishing to improve their skills, laypeople wanting a deeper understanding of the way the mind and brain work to create and heal trauma, and scientists looking to understand the implications of modern neuroscience for the treatment of trauma by the body-oriented psychotherapies.Peter Payne and Mardi Crane-Godreau, PhD,<i> </i>researchers at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College
zlib_text: The room grew steady.
  Where the hell was I?
  Then the fogs were slowly broken, and some of that which is called
  memory returned to me. I recalled nights and nurses and needles.
  Every time things would begin to clear a bit, someone would come in and
  jab me with something. That's how it had been. Yes. Now, though, I was
  feeling halfway decent. They'd have to stop.
  Wouldn't they?
  The thought came to assail me: Maybe not.
  Some natural skepticism as to the purity of all human motives came
  and sat upon my chest. I'd been over-narcotized, I suddenly knew. No
  real reason for it, from the way I felt, and no reason for them to stop
  now, if they'd been paid to keep it up. So play it cool and stay dopey,
  said a voice which was my worst, if wiser, self. So I did.
  A nurse poked her head in the door about ten minutes later, and I
  was, of course, still sacking Z's. She went away.
  By then, I'd reconstructed a bit of what had occurred.
  I had been in some sort of accident, I remembered vaguely. What
  had h