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

From Publishers Weekly

In beautifully written, fascinating accounts of experiences working with emotionally stunted and traumatized children, child psychiatrist Perry educates readers about how early-life stress and violence affects the developing brain. He offers simple yet vivid illustrations of the stress response and the brain's mechanisms with facts and images that crystallize in the mind without being too detailed or confusing. The stories exhibit compassion, understanding and hope as Perry paints detailed, humane pictures of patients who have experienced violence, sexual abuse or neglect, and Perry invites the reader on his own journey to understanding how the developing child's brain works. He learns that to facilitate recovery, the loss of control and powerlessness felt by a child during a traumatic experience must be counteracted. Recovery requires that the patient be "in charge of key aspects of the therapeutic interaction." He emphasizes that the brain of a traumatized child can be remolded with patterned, repetitive experiences in a safe environment. Most importantly, as such trauma involves the shattering of human connections, "lasting, caring connections to others" are irreplaceable in healing; medications and therapy alone cannot do the job. "Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love," Perry concludes. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Although many parents fret over how to raise a more academically and financially successful child, Perry has learned a thing or two about how not to raise a prospective sociopath. Here he shares the stories of several children he has encountered in his decades as a child psychiatrist and expert on childhood trauma. Each child, from the seven-year-old who offered him sexual favors to the eponymous boy who spent his early years living in a dog cage, taught Perry something about the effects of early childhood trauma on brain development. His discoveries contradict the formerly held precept that children are emotionally resilient and will outgrow insults to their psyches. On the contrary, he says, severe and occasionally even not-so-severe emotional or physical abuse can chemically alter early brain development, resulting later in the inability to make appropriate, socially sanctioned behavioral decisions. Perry doesn't promote what he calls the "abuse excuse" for antisocial or criminal behavior; rather, he makes a powerful case for early intervention for disruptive children to prevent adult sociopathy. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (December 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465056539
• ISBN-13: 978-0465056538
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (189 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Child Psychology
  • #96 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 90 people found the following review helpful

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

By Karen Franklin

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful

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

By Luke Meyers

Format: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...

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Love does heal these children! February 3, 2007

By Connie L. Sirnio

Format:Hardcover

Thank you, Dr. Perry! Finally, what foster and adoptive parents knew all along...Love does heal these traumatized children! As a former foster parent, an adoptive and birth parent, and a child and family therapist, I am overjoyed to see these stories in print. It is a difficult task to find help and have professionals actually understand that this child sees the world differently for a neurodevelopmental reason, and not just because they are oppositional. Dr. Perry has shared this information in a way that anyone who reads it will think differently, with his incredible storytelling. It is so important for children with prenatal and postnatal trauma to be understood and to matter. Neurodevelopmental principles are not that difficult to put into place at home, school, or in the community. Children must experience success on a daily basis, at their individual neurodevelopmental pace. I have seen it work in many children.

Dr. Perry puts it very simple when he stated in this book:

"For years mental health professionals taught people that they could be psychologically healthy without social support, that "unless you love yourself, no one else will love you." Women were told that they didn't need men, and vice versa. People without any relationships were believed to be as healthy as those who had many. These ideas contradict the fundamental biology of human species: we are social mammals and could never have survived without deeply interconnected and interdependent human contact. The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation."

This book is a must read for anyone working with traumatized children, raising healthy children, or just raising each other!...

Connie Sirnio, MSW, LCSW

Child and Family Therapist

PsyD Learner in Clinical Psychology

Coos Bay, Oregon Read more ›

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

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

By Dee

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Drama in the Service of Social Restructuring February 19, 2008

By Not Moses

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Erik Erikson's -Childhood and Society-. Don Winnicott's -The Child, The Family and The Outside World-. Alice Miller's -For Your Own Good-. Three books about growing up in Western Culture. Three books the average guy could understand. Three watersheds.

This could be -- and -should- be -- the fourth.

I have been reading Perry's professional work for a decade. Along with Daniel Stern (-The Motherhood Constellation-) and Alan Schore (-Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self-), he stands with the giants of early life neurobiology, infant-mother bonding and socialization in the millennial era. For me, his work harks back an entire century to the simple and forthright illuminations of the recently rediscovered Pierre Janet.

I may routinely recommend the mass market work of people like Pia Mellody, Claudia Black and Scott Peck in -their- heydays; usefully dramatic expositions of vital concepts tend to flip my switch. This thing flipped it over, and over, and over again. A brief sample may help others to understand why:

"For years mental health professionals taught people that they could be psychologically healthy without social support... People without any relationships were believed to be as healthy as those who had many. These ideas contradict the fundamental biology of the human species: we are social mammals and could never have survived without deeply interconnected and interdependent human contact.

"The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation.

"In order for a child to become kind, giving and empathetic, he needs to be treated that way. Punishment can't create or model those qualities.... Although we do need to set limits, if we want our children to behave well, we have to treat them well."

Perry buttresses his case with presentation after presentation from casework involving neglected, invalidated, brainwashed, ignored and hoodwinked young humans "raised" in extremist religious cults, Eastern European orphanages, broken chromosome backwaters and even animal cages. He shows us how children raised in seemingly "normal" homes can have every reason to be as confused and disoriented as his more obvious worst-case-scenarios. And he shows us how developmentally appropriate re-parenting (more or less the fundament of the Adult Children of Alcoholics movement) can and will produce near miracles.

Social impact seems to require drama. Miller's work in the '80s crashed through the gates of denial on child abuse after decades of factually solid but less dramatic publication. Perry's first-hand experience with the surviving children of the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas, and the tragically mistaken "satanic cult" furball in rural Gilmer, Texas, make the most of memorable headlines from recent years.

Drama, however, is only a means to an end. The message is what matters.

And the message is simply -this-: The love of the mother is not merely significant, it is the Single Most Important Learning Experience in human life. Those who miss it, or suffer through some twisted version of it like Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy or parenting by those who experienced none of their own, are doomed to all the shattered trust, push-pull autonomy, corrupted initiative, shipwrecked identity and incapacity for intimacy Erikson promised us a half century ago.

If there is a potential fault here, it is that Perry's illustrations -are- both extreme and dramatic. Many may fail to see that less extreme and dramatic results of Miller's "poisonous pedagogy," Diana Baumrind's "permissive-abandoning parenting" and John Bowlby's "anxious attachment" are rapidly becoming our societal norms.

As Perry points out, "A person born in 1905 had only a one-percent chance of suffering depression by the age of seventy-five, but by their twenty-fourth birthday, six percent of those born in 1955 had an episode of serious depression. Other studies indicate that teen depression rates have increased by an incredible factor of ten in recent decades."

It is clear to those of us who work with these people that Janet was on top of it all a century ago. Few paid attention to his revelations about the "normal practice of destroying our children and our society" then. Let us hope more will pay attention now. Read more ›