contributors' biographies

Bessel van der Kolk

To people who roll up their sleeves in the villages of the world to help victims of flood or famine or war, to workers who eye-witness the ravages of nature and man at ground zero, the idea that a new era of peace and security is at hand may well strike them as odd if not a cruel illusion. Bessel van der Kolk, the Dutch-born director of the Trauma Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, is a case in point. As a psychiatrist and as president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, he divides his time between "ordinary people who have experienced terrible things" and colleges and policy makers who try to find solutions to the causes of systematic human suffering.

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