Robert Scaer received his B.A. in Psychology, and his M.D. degree at the University of Rochester. He is Board Certified in Neurology, and has been in practice for 39 years, twenty of those as Medical Director of Rehabilitation Services at the Mapleton Center in Boulder, Colorado. His primary areas of interest and expertise have been in the fields of brain injury and chronic pain and, more recently, in the study of traumatic stress and its role in all mental illness, as well as in physical symptoms and many chronic diseases. He has lectured extensively on these topics, and has published several articles on the whiplash syndrome and other somatic syndromes of traumatic stress. His first book, The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation and Disease, presents a new theory of dissociation and its role in many diseases. A second book, The Trauma Spectrum: Hidden Wounds and Human Healing, released in 2005, explores the insidious spectrum of culturally-based trauma that shapes our lives, and how transformation and healing may still take place. He is currently retired from clinical medical practice, and continues to pursue a career in writing and lecturing.