SETTLING THE SCORE

A pop psychology book is considered the definitive trauma text. But what if it's leading survivors down the wrong path?

- EMI NIETFELD

"YOU HAVE TO read this book," my new psychologist informed me. As a teenager, I was raped by a hostel employee. For years after, I spent every waking moment trying to avoid the gruesome memories-which instead haunted me at night.

I wanted nothing more than to share my story, certain that I'd feel immediate relief.

But my therapist stopped me. "Talking about it will retraumatize you," she said, suggesting that instead I tap on acupressure points while repeating a mantra. Both her admonition not to discuss the assault and her kooky alternative treatment came straight out of the book she said I had to read: The Body Keeps the Score.

It is impossible to exaggerate the book's popularity. Published in 2014, its author, Bessel van der Kolk, has become like the Colleen Hoover of psychology. It has sold more than 3 million copies and spent more than six total years on the New York Times bestseller list, often in the No. I spot. One psychologist I spoke with called it a "cult classic." It's required reading in many social work and psychology classes, from the University of Southern California to Rutgers.

Van der Kolk is a Dutch psychiatrist who specializes in post-traumatic stress. The Body Keeps the Score takes the decades-old consensus that chronic, extreme stress can alter the brain and damage the body and goes one step further, claiming that our flesh remembers traumas small and large. According to this theory, even if we have no conscious memory of harm, our muscles, viscera, and DNA bear the evidence. Therefore, our misfortunes can plague us with any manner of physical ailments, from neck pain to emphysema. Treatment, then, should focus on the body first, using techniques including yoga, community theater, or tapping acupressure points while reciting a mantra (called the "Emotional Freedom Technique").