Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., born in 1943 in The Hauge, Netherlands. After taking pre-med studies at the University of Hawaii, he earned an M.D. at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine in 1970 and a psychiatric residency at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center of he Harvard Medical School in 1974. Van der Kolk has made trauma research his life’s work, focusing on research on post-traumatic stress and treatments. This work is described in great depth throughout his best-selling book, The Body Keeps the Score, which as published in 2014. It is one of four books van der Kolk has authored on trauma and treatment. He has also published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles on the topic.

Van der Kolk has previously served as the president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, the co-director of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, and the medical director and founder of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 2018, he was accused of misconduct and forced out of the Trauma Center. Van der Kolk vigorously defended himself against the accusations, and the Trauma Center closed later in 2018 after multiple staff members resigned in support of van der Kolk. Currently, van der Kolk is a professor of psychiatry at the Boston School of Medicine and serves as the president of the Trauma Research Foundation, which he also helped found.

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