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In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
Peter A. Levine
In an Unspoken Voice (2010) is the fullest statement of Peter Levine's influential idea that trauma lives in the body, not just the mind. Levine, a psychologist who developed the method he calls Somatic Experiencing, begins from a striking observation: wild animals routinely face life threats yet rarely stay traumatized, because they discharge the enormous survival energy of a near-death encounter through instinctive physical responses—trembling, shaking, completing the interrupted impulse. Humans, he argues, tend to override those responses, leaving the nervous system stuck in unresolved arousal. The book blends neuroscience, clinical stories, evolutionary biology, and his own experience of being hit by a car to make the case that trauma is an injury that can be healed by working through the body. Warm, wide-ranging, and occasionally speculative, it has become a cornerstone of the somatic-therapy movement. For readers interested in trauma, the nervous system, or embodiment, it's essential.
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The author
Peter A. Levine (b. 1942) holds doctorates in medical biophysics and psychology and is the originator of Somatic Experiencing, a body-centered approach to healing trauma. His earlier Waking the Tiger helped move somatic therapy from the fringe toward the mainstream; this book is its more developed sequel.
The book
Published by North Atlantic Books in 2010, with a foreword by physician Gabor Maté, In an Unspoken Voice argues that trauma is neither disease nor disorder but an injury the body can resolve by completing thwarted survival responses. Levine draws on animal behavior, neuroscience, and case histories, including his own recovery from a serious accident.
How to read it
As an argument and a practice, not a clinical manual. Some of Levine's neuroscience is more suggestive than settled, but the core insight—that the body plays a central role in both trauma and recovery—has been broadly influential.
For more context
Read alongside Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score and Levine's own Waking the Tiger.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Peter A. Levine
- Publisher
- North Atlantic Books
- Place of publication
- Berkeley
- Year
- 2010
- ISBN
- 978-1-55643-943-8
- Shelf
- Science
- Location
- Maine