You’ve probably never heard of Kazimierz Dąbrowski.

He was a psychologist from the 1940s with a fascinating background. He studied with Freud’s contemporaries in Vienna, worked with mentally ill patients, participated in the Polish resistance during World War II, was captured and tortured in a prisoner of war camp, and lost many friends and family members in the process.1

These traumatic experiences shaped his study of pain and trauma, leading to groundbreaking insights that are still relevan...