Bruce D Perry Essay

Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.

Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. is an American psychiatrist, currently the Senior Fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy in Houston, Texas and an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. A clinician and researcher in children's mental health and the neurosciences, from 1993-2001 he was the Thomas S. Trammell Research Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and Chief of Psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital. He also serves as Senior Consultant to the Alberta Minister of Children and Youth Services in Alberta, Canada. Dr. Perry is also a Senior Fellow at the Berry Street Childhood Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Although these accomplishments

He left Stanford for several months, hitchhiking, staying with friends across the U.S., and at times wandering the streets in search of a place to sleep and a warm meal. Perry used this time, as unproductive as it might appear to be, to sort through his emotions, he called this “abstract reasoning”. He gives the credit of his recovery to the fact that he had family and friends that he could talk to about what happened. Most children of maltreatment do not have anyone to talk to other than their abusers. Perry states, “That's why kids end up working through these things behaviorally”. Instead Perry feels the event of his wife’s death made him stronger, more self-confident and free to be what ever he wanted. He knew nothing could happen to him that was worse, therefore there was nothing to loose. The sudden loss of his wife also made him a more empathic therapist as well, especially in counseling people who were struggling with the impact of a sudden trauma. Perry states, ”In therapy I try to think very carefully about what the person who's talking to me is really experiencing. To do that, you have to draw upon your own