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

Bruce Perry (Author), Maia Szalavitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 25, 2007

Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has treated children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, witnesses, children raised in closets and cages, and victims of family violence. Here he tells their stories of trauma and transformation.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. is the Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy, a Houston-based non-profit organization which promotes innovations in service, research and education in child maltreatment and childhood trauma. He has served as a consultant to the FBI and is the former Chief of Psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital, as well as former Vice-Chairman for Research in the Department of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. He lives in Houston, Texas and Alberta, Canada. Maia Szalavitz is an award-winning journalist who specializes in science and health. She is the author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids and Recovery Options: The Complete Guide with Joseph Volpicelli, M.D., Ph.D. She lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (December 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465056539
• ISBN-13: 978-0465056538
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and heartening, April 29, 2008

By 

Karen Franklin "Forensic Psychologist" (El Cerrito, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook--What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing (Paperback)

Assisted by a talented science writer, child psychiatrist Bruce Perry presents a series of heartbreaking stories of children severely damaged by trauma. But that's only one side of this remarkable book. The other side is how many of these profoundly damaged children were assisted to heal.

Perry explains his "neurosequential" approach that sequentially targets brain regions left undeveloped by abuse or neglect. He presents compelling cases to illustrate how the child's age at the time of the abuse or neglect will determine the gaps in neurological development and how his interventions sequentially target those developmental gaps. For children whose brains were stalled out in infancy, for example, therapy may start with healing touch or rhythm before moving on to higher brain activities.

The focus, always, is on the child's humanity. Perry explains the importance of listening and letting the child set the pace. He warns of the damage caused by well-intentioned but poorly trained therapists who push children to open up, or who administer punitive interventions in the guise of treatment. Healing is not about a specific technique administered in cookbook fashion but, rather, about love, and restoring shattered human connections.

This is an enlightening and heartening book and a real page-turner to boot. The neurological underpinnings of the trauma theory are presented in clear English accessible to anyone who can read. If you're a mental health professional, psychologist, or psychiatrist, you'll love this book. If you're a parent or a teacher, it's also for you. Whoever you are, it's for you. I guarantee you will be engaged and inspired.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and human, December 28, 2007

By 

Luke Meyers (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook--What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing (Paperback)

This is a powerful and insightful book. The patient stories are genuine and heart-wrenching, and the lessons about the human brain and its development ring true and offer refreshing and valuable perspectives on how the mind works. Dr. Perry shows, with a lucid honesty that belies any crass self-promotion, his therapeutic mastery. At the same time, the prose flows smoothly and I found myself easily drawn in to the very personal stories of these troubled children. In many cases I felt a palpable relief at the happy endings, in which a few basic insights into the core psychological issues led to a beneficial and effective course of therapy. I only wish the book was longer -- I devoured it quickly and could have happily read many more chapters! My only question now is who to lend it to first...

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hopeful book I won't quickly forget, March 3, 2008

By 

Dee - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook--What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing (Paperback)

This was a book I had a hard time putting down. The author is obviously highly intelligent and compassionate. After reading it, I want to read more by him, but it appears only articles--no books--are available. The book, without going into too much medicalese, explains how the brain is affected by trauma. The true life stories coupled with neurological explanations offer hope to those who have been traumatized and those who would understand them. I was astonished by the last chapter--or maybe it was one of the last?--that presented, for me, a novel way of influencing a child's peer group.