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

In this instant classic of developmental psychology, a renowned psychiatrist examines the effect that trauma can have on a child, reveals how PTSD impacts the developing mind, and outlines the path to recovery.
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 Dr. Bruce D. 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, Dr. Perry 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.
As a senior fellow at the Child Trauma Academy, Dr. Perry and his clinical group worked with hundreds who endured severe childhood neglect and abuse with incredible resilience and strength. 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.

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
• Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered
• Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
• PTSD (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease)
• Mandated Reporting of Child Abuse and Neglect: A Practical Guide for Social Workers
• The DeShaney Case: Child Abuse, Family Rights, and the Dilemma of State Intervention (Landmark Law Cases and American Society)
• When the Sun Bursts: The Enigma of Schizophrenia
• Too Scared To Cry: Psychic Trauma In Childhood
• A Guide to Writing for Human Service Professionals
• To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care