Michael Scheeringa, MD

“Self-inflation is the rule in life,” wrote Robert Trivers; hence his conclusion that we fool ourselves so as better to fool others. This explains a lot of why smart folks truly believe in toxic stress, ACEs, and complex PTSD despite the obvious lack of scientific evidence.

Newest meta-analysis of childhood maltreatment and brain structure—actually a mega-analysis across 25 sites. Across 150 brain regions, testing abuse, neglect, and sex separately, the authors report numerous significant differences. With roughly 600 statistical tests, that is hardly surprising. They acknowledge the key limitation in one sentence: “Cross-sectional data preclude causal inferences about childhood maltreatment effects on neurodevelopmental trajectories.” Yet the conclusion shifts with certainty to causal language: e.g. “...childhood maltreatment has widespread effects on brain structure.” That gap between what the design can establish and what the conclusions claim is the norm in trauma research. The language was incurious about a diathesis stress interpretation or about pre-trauma prospective findings which contradict that conclusion. This may be a more fundamental problem in psychology than replication or p-hacking: the interpretation of evidence. Childhood Maltreatment and Deviations From Normative Brain Structure: … sciencedirect.com/science/ar…

We’re told Pat Ogden—founder of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy—is one of the finest minds among the “body keeps the score” experts. In this video she seems completely certain that human nature works according to a radical progressive worldview—white supremacy, systemic oppression everywhere—and largely incurious about alternative explanations. These same assumptions appear among other prominent trauma experts. That raises a bigger question: What, if anything, connects the “body keeps the score” theory to this worldview?

How does a “body keeps the score” therapist draw out the supposed special knowledge stored in the body? Pat Ogden explains a method here. People may benefit from these approaches—but that doesn’t validate the theory. The scientific evidence for the mechanism remains remarkably thin.

The evidence shows the body does NOT keep the score. Yet they keep saying it. This is Pat Ogden, creator of “Sensorimotor Psychotherapy,” featured in The Body Keeps the Score and a major trainer of trauma therapists. The refrain: the body has some kind of memory of its own, which takes control of the person. Healing is possible only through extensive “body awareness” and the gatekeeping, meaning-making guidance of a body therapist.

A new paper from a Harvard scholar argues that DSM-6 should add a specifier for PTSD with “postpartum onset” to improve recognition. This would misuse the DSM. It wouldn’t change the diagnostic criteria or treatment. The DSM’s primary purpose is reliable communication—not creating special codes to promote recognition of particular causes. Where does this end? Dog-bite onset. Struck-by-car onset. Plane-crash onset. Burn-injury onset. Rape onset. Child-abuse onset. Fall-injury onset. Gunshot-injury onset. If every cause gets its own specifier, the DSM becomes an index of life events.

Some people who watched this podcast seem confused. Yes, people CAN feel stress in their bodies. I never said otherwise. But that is NOT van der Kolk’s claim in The Body Keeps the Score. Of his 42 specific neuroscience claims, nearly all were about brains, and only 1 about feeling stress in the body that might be unrelated to brain control. Before arguing about a claim, it helps to know there is a history to the claim. Apparently history is an elective in the school of online argument. For the 1 “body” claim, van der Kolk never established whether it was a consequence of brain damage or a separate mechanism operating independently of brains. So when critics respond to my argument by pointing out that people can feel stress in their bodies, they may actually be conceding my central point: the evidence for van der Kolk’s claims about lasting brain damage simply isn’t there.

Another clip from Culture Apothecary: If trauma causes widespread changes in the body, why haven’t proponents followed just one person from trauma forward and measured cortisol many, many times tracking with disease progression?

A very kind—and unexpected—mention of my book "The Body Does Not Keep the Score" in a new Skeptic article by two scholars who have done important work exposing the problems with recovered-memory claims. They call the book a “powerful antidote” that "demolishes" van der Kolk's claims. I’m grateful for the recognition—and hope it helps the book reach a few more readers. skeptic.com/article/life-and…

I enjoyed my conversation with Alex Clark on the Culture Apothecary podcast. In this clip, I answer: What happens when we look at pre-trauma prospective studies compared to the cross-sectional studies cited in The Body Keeps the Score? More to come.

I received an email from a doctoral psychology student. It captures something deeply disturbing about modern training. A doctoral program is supposed to provide scientific training. Instead, the student describes encountering trauma doctrines treated as dogma. When students are taught what to believe rather than how to evaluate evidence, that isn’t science education. It’s indoctrination. Excerpt: Dear Dr. Scheeringa! ...Throughout my studies…the concept of developmental trauma and complex trauma is used ubiquitously and accepted not only as fact, but as borderline religious revelation...Most of my classmates consider the DSM absolutely corrupt and that complex trauma or developmental trauma is at the core of every mental health disorder...This has led me to develop an existential as well as an intellectual crisis on what it is that I am actually even learning. I don't even know what sources can even be trusted...”

It was great spending time with Alex Clark on the Culture Apothecary podcast where we took down the book 'The Body Keeps the Score.' Stay tuned for more clips.