The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz
Book Review by Carol Ladas-Gaskin
We were directed to reading this book by a cryptic email from Ron Kurtz, founder of the
Hakomi method. The email was addressed to a long list of students and graduates of
Hakomi trainings, people who understand and appreciate Ron's sense of humor and his
unerring recommendations for good reading. It read: "If you don't read this book, I'm
going to kill myself."
Shortly after we read the book, another recommendation arrived from our colleague
Rob Bageant, Hakomi therapist, teacher and trainer now working Taiwan. He wrote,
"(They) write with a novelist's sense of structure. My heart aches to hear what these
children have experienced; I can hardly read the case studies. And yet, I believe that
anyone interested in more deeply understanding what it means to be human should
read this book. The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog has a lot of answers. Through hard
won experience, Perry and Szalavitz have ferreted out the neurological effects of
trauma as well as the practical therapeutic approaches which help heal the wounds." A
client and workshop participant, who has experienced encounters with psychiatrists of a
less compassionate persuasion, read the book recently and left a touching phone
message conveying how this book has changed her attitude about psychiatrists and
psychiatry.
The Boy who was Raised by a Dog is a memoir of a Bruce Perry’s growth and
development as a psychiatrist working with children suffering from severe trauma. Bruce
Perry, M.D., Ph.D. is a senior fellow of the Child Trauma Academy. He has served as a
consultant to the FBI (concerning the Waco disaster) and is the former chief of
psychiatry at Texas Children’s hospital as well as former Vice Chairman for Research in
the Dept. of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. His co-author Maia Szalavitz is
author of Help at any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts
Kids and Recovery Options: The Complete Guide written with Jospeh Volpicelli, M.D.,
Ph.D. Although the book is written by both Perry and Slalavitz, the stories themselves
are written as experiences had by Perry, so the review will speak of him rather than
them.
It is rare to find a book so informative and practical and yet inspiring to read. As
practitioners of a method, Mindfulness Centered Therapies, based in part on the
teachings of Ron Kurtz’ and as clinicians who long ago discovered the healing power of
mindfulness, compassionate presence and following the client, we find this book to be
an affirmation of all of the principles of our work and the methods we teach. Perry’s life-
affirming approach with his respectful, kind, profoundly attentive and innovative, mindful
presence embodies the work of our teachers, to mention a few, Carl Rogers, Ron Kurtz,
Eugene Gendlin, and Richard Schwartz.
One of Perry’s most important conclusions after years of his clinical work is that “the
