The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook

by Bruce D. Perry

Cutting explained

Could this be an extreme dissociative response, which had essentially caused her brain to OD on its own opioids?

Goth is good!

Addiction and trauma

Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD),

Summary of brain development

The most traumatic aspects of all disasters involve the shattering of human connections. And this is especially true for children. Being harmed by the people who are supposed to love you, being abandoned by them, being robbed of the one-on-one relationships that allow you to feel safe and valued and to become humane—these are profoundly destructive experiences. Because humans are inescapably social beings, the worst catastrophes that can befall us inevitably involve relational loss.

Indeed, at heart it is the relationship with the therapist, not primarily his or her methods or words of wisdom, that allows therapy to work.

What works and doesn't work

For countless generations humans lived in small groups, made up of 40 to 150 people, most of whom were closely related to each other and lived communally. As late as the year 1500, the average family group in Europe consisted of roughly twenty people whose lives were intimately connected on a daily basis. But by 1850 that number was down to ten living in close proximity, and in 1960 the number was just five. In the year 2000 the average size of a household was less than four, and a shocking 26 percent of Americans live alone.

Brain development is use-dependent: you use it or you lose it. If we don’t give children time to learn how to be with others, to connect, to deal with conflict, and to negotiate complex social hierarchies, those areas of their brains will be underdeveloped.