The Body DOESN'T Keep The Score: Psychiatry's Biggest Lie | Dr. Michael Scheeringa, MD
July 24, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIn 2014, Bessel van der Kolk published The Body Keeps the Score, a book that has since sold over four million copies and become a cornerstone of modern trauma therapy. Its central claim—that trauma is literally stored in the body, shrinking brain centers and rewiring neurons—is now repeated by therapists, taught in training programs, and cited in courtrooms. Dr. Michael Scheeringa, a child psychiatrist with nearly three decades of PTSD research, argues that this entire framework is built on cherry-picked, misinterpreted, and sometimes fabricated evidence. In his own book, The Body Does Not Keep the Score, he systematically debunks 122 specific claims from van der Kolk’s work. The real story, he says, is not that trauma damages the brain, but that pre-existing vulnerabilities—largely genetic—determine who develops PTSD and who remains resilient.
The core flaw: cross-sectional studies mistaken for causation
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Opening: The Core Thesis** - Alex Clark introduces the central claim that Bessel van der Kolk's *The Body Keeps the Score* is built on flawed science, and that trauma is not stored in the body.
- 2 (03:10) **The "Mental Health Crisis" Myth** - Scheeringa challenges the narrative of a youth mental health epidemic, arguing it's based on flawed self-report surveys, not clinical diagnoses.
- 3 (04:37) **The Core Scientific Error: Cross-Sectional vs. Prospective Studies** - The key methodological flaw in "trauma changes the brain" claims is explained: correlation is not causation.
- 4 (06:43) **Cherry-Picked and Fabricated Evidence** - Scheeringa details how van der Kolk's book misrepresents, fabricates, or cherry-picks scientific studies to support its claims.
- 5 (08:31) **Resilience vs. Vulnerability: The Real Story of Trauma** - Most people are resilient after trauma, and PTSD is not the inevitable result of a horrific event.
- 6 (10:40) **What's Correct in *The Body Keeps the Score*** - Scheeringa acknowledges the book's one valid point: that PTSD is a real and important diagnosis.
- 7 (11:06) **The Problem with "Body-Based" Treatments** - The book's treatment claims are also unsupported, relying on placebo effects and ignoring more effective alternatives.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
4 million copies sold, taught in classrooms, quoted by every therapist in America — and it might all be wrong 👀
Dr. Michael Scheeringa — psychiatrist and PTSD researcher of nearly three decades — makes the case that 'The Body Keeps The Score,' the most influential trauma book of our time, is built on evidence that doesn't prove what people think it proves. He breaks down where the "trauma lives in your body" theory actually came from, what the research really shows about PTSD and memory, and why no one in modern psychology is willing to touch this.
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Our Guest:
Dr. Michael Scheeringa, MD
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