The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook - What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Life, Loss and Healing - Hardcover

Perry, Bruce; Szalavitz, Maia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465056520 ISBN 13: 9780465056521

Publisher: Basic Books, 2007

Synopsis

A world-renowned child psychiatrist offers a groundbreaking new perspective on how stress and violence affect children's brains - and how they can be helped to heal. What happens when a young brain is traumatized? How does terror, abuse or disaster affect a child's mind - and how can that mind recover? Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers and victims of family violence. In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, he tells their stories of trauma and transformation through the lens of science, revealing the brain's astonishing capacity for healing. Deftly combining unforgettable case histories with his own compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, Perry explains what exactly happens to the brain when a child is exposed to extreme stress - and reveals the unexpected measures that can be taken to ease a child's pain and help him grow into a healthy adult. Through the stories of children who recover - physically, mentally and emotionally - from the most devastating circumstances, Perry shows how simple things like surroundings, affection, language and touch can deeply impact the developing brain, for better or for worse. In this deeply informed and moving book, Bruce Perry dramatically demonstrates that only when we understand the science of the mind can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.

About this title

Book Description:

"Fascinating and upbeat... Dr. Perry is both a world-class creative scientist and a compassionate therapist."-Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of Letters to a Young Therapist

About the Author:

Dr Bruce Perry is the founder of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston, Texas, and serves as an advisor to the FBI. He lives in Houston, Texas and Alberta, Canada. Maia Szalavitz is an award-winning journalist who specialises in science and health. She is the author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, and, with Joseph Volpicelli, of Recovery Options. She lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0465056520
• ISBN 13: 9780465056521
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288