PSYCHOTHERAPY 153
See also: Sigmund Freud 92–99 ■ John Bowlby 274–77 ■ Charlotte
Bühler 336 ■ George Kelly 337 ■ Jerome Kagan 339
relationships. We are constantly
“knitting” ourselves from people
and situations that we encounter,
through the words we exchange
and the feelings that arise. We
might feel that if one “stitch” is
dropped, our lives will unravel. In
fact, “if just one stitch holds, we
can start all over again.”
Positive emotions and humor are
key factors in resilience. Cyrulnik’s
research has shown that people who
are better able to cope with life’s
difficulties or traumas are able to
find meaning in hardship, seeing it
as a useful and enlightening
experience, and even to find ways
to laugh. Resilient people always
remain able to see how things may
turn out for the better in future, even
if the present is painful.
Meeting the challenge
It had previously been thought that
people who show more resilience
are less emotional in general, but
Cyrulnik believed that the pain is
no less for resilient people than it is
for others; it is a matter of how they
choose to use it. The pain may
continue, even over a whole lifetime,
but for these people it raises a
challenge that they decide to meet.
The challenge is to overcome what
has happened, to find strength in
the experience instead of letting it
defeat them, and to use the strength
to move defiantly forward. Given
the right support, children are
especially capable of complete
recovery from trauma. Cyrulnik has
shown that the human brain is
malleable and will recover if
allowed. The brain of a traumatized
child shows shrinkage of the
ventricles and cortex, but where the
child is well supported and loved
after the trauma, brain scans have
shown the brain to be capable of
returning to normal within a year.
Cyrulnik stresses the importance
of not labeling children who have
suffered a trauma, thereby sidelining
them to a seemingly hopeless future.
Trauma consists of the injury and
the representation of that injury.
Enduring humiliating adult
interpretations of events can be the
most traumatic experience. Labels,
he says, can be more damaging and
damning than the experience. ■After disasters such as tsunamis
psychologists have witnessed the
formation of resilient communities,
characterized by the residents’
determination to overcome adversity.Resilience is a person’s
ability to grow in the face
of terrible problems.
Boris CyrulnikBoris Cyrulnik
Boris Cyrulnik was born to
Jewish parents in Bordeaux,
France, shortly before the
outbreak of World War II. In
1944, when the Vichy regime
controlled unoccupied southern
France by arrangement with
Germany, his home was raided
and his parents were taken to
Auschwitz concentration
camp. His parents had placed
him with a foster family for
safety, but within days they
turned him over to the
authorities for a small reward.
He escaped while awaiting
transfer to a concentration
camp and worked on farms
until the age of ten, when he
was taken into care. He grew
up in France, without any
relatives. Largely self-taught,
Cyrulnik eventually studied
medicine at the University of
Paris. Realizing he wanted to
reevaluate his own life, he
began to study psychoanalysis
and later neuropsychiatry.
He has devoted his career
to working with traumatized
children.Key works1992 The Dawn of Meaning
2004 The Whispering
of Ghosts
2009 Resilience