As “a staff psychiatrist at the Boston Veteran Administration Clinic” (7), van der Kolk meets Tom, a Vietnam veteran suffering from rage episodes and nightmares. Van der Kolk prescribes Tom medication for his nightmares, which Tom does not take, explaining that he fears if the nightmares go away, his friends’ “deaths will have been in vain” (10). Prompted by Tom’s statement, van de Kolk tries to research war neuroses, only to find that “the VA didn’t have a single book about any of these conditions” (11).

Driven to understand Tom and other veterans, van der Kolk conducts studies of Vietnam veterans. He compares their experiences to those of victims of child abuse, noting that both groups often become entirely numb to emotions and unable to engage effectively with the world around them. Through a study asking Vietnam veterans to describe Rorschach blots, van der Kolk discovers that trauma also shuts down perception and imagination. 

During group therapy studies separately involving Vietnam and World War II veterans, van der Kolk finds that many of the veterans can only talk about the war. The groups of men come alive when describing their battle experiences, but fail to engage with anyone who isn’t part of the “in” group.