CHAPTER TWO

Resilience:

What Psychology Offers TO the Study of Trauma

I began my investigation into Holocaust survivors by adopting the concept of resilience, one that is poorly defined but often referred to in psychological studies of traumatized populations. The central idea behind it is the acknowledgment that, in any trauma, there emerges the individual who succumbs to his or her distress and the individual who copes well with it; indeed, who flourishes in spite of it. While psychologists and psychiatrists have long recognized that some trauma survivors simply “do better” than others, this phenomenon has only recently become a subject for exploration in and of itself. The term itself is commonly understood to refer to the ability to “function well” in the face of, or after suffering from, some traumatic event or series of events. However, not only is this basic definition the focus of much debate, but the precise phenomenon it refers to has also been subject to a variety of interpretations and conceptualizations. Because “resilience” is often synonymous in the literature with “resistance,” “indestructibility,” “invincibility,” and other such terms seeming to refer to a “superhuman” strength, the process of defining this phenomenon has become increasingly difficult.

This misrepresentation of the phenomenon of resilience, and a mislabeling of the resilient as indestructible or invincible is unfortunate. In fact, no one is invincible. It is a dangerous misconception to assume that individuals who are able to cope well with trauma are impervious to all negative influences. As Judith Herman, author of Trauma and Recovery, writes, “Only a small minority of exceptional people appear to be relatively invulnerable in extreme situations.”[1] Even when discussing relative invulnerability, there is an extremely small incidence of this capability, and even these individuals are viewed as “exceptional.” Indeed, there is a difference between coping and being able to integrate damaging experiences into one’s life in a positive manner, and never being affected at all.

In all actuality, there is very little possibility of experiencing a traumatic event and not suffering even a small degree of negative effects. Herman reiterates, “People who have endured horrible events suffer predictable psychological harm. There is a spectrum of traumatic disorders, ranging from the effects of a single overwhelming event to the more complicated effects of prolonged and repeated abuse.”[2] While there is a wide range of negative psychological results of trauma, the range simply does not begin at zero, or the absence of all consequences. To assume that those who are able to deal well with trauma are “indestructible” is simply a greater leap than can be logically supported. To make this leap does a disservice both to those individuals who appear resilient as well as to those of us who are attempting to study this phenomenon.

Indeed, there are a variety of issues that plague the communal attempt to define resilience in a manner that proves useful, meaningful, and operationally effective. To summarize the substantial amount of literature on the subject, below is a review of the salient conflicts within the general clinical understanding of the concept of resilience. While all of these divergences of opinion still exist in the literature, some are currently maintained more strenuously than others. It is evident, however, that the psychological community is far from a “general” and universally agreed-upon definition of resilience.

The first of many disputes in the psychological community over the nature of resilience concerns its status as an end result or the ability to achieve it. Indeed, the question is whether resilience should be perceived as a goal of ultimate psychological health or the process by which relative health is achieved. Is a resilient individual the one who never experiences negative effects after being traumatized? Or is it the victim who does show some signs of being affected by the trauma that was experienced, but is coping effectively with it? Indeed, in nearly every trauma, the majority of victims seem to be able to “manage” in one way or another. They are not totally debilitated by psychopathological symptoms, nor are they functioning at an “optimal” level. If resilience is defined as some innate and superhuman ability to cope beyond what could be expected from the “average” survivor, then most trauma victims would not fall into this category. The resilient survivor would only be that very rare individual who does appear to be invincible, and inexplicably so. The concept loses its meaning when based on such an obscure reality, and its potential as an organizing idea on which therapy could focus becomes unrealizable.

If, however, resilience is conceptualized as a process, or a set of processes, then the trauma survivor population can be perceived in a drastically different light. If a researcher focuses less on attempting to find the “perfect survivor,” and more on characterizing which facets of an individual’s coping processes are more or less adaptive, a definition of resilience shifts from invincibility to an emphasis on positive attributes as opposed to negative ones. The question then turns from, “Is this individual functioning optimally?” to “How and in what way is this individual functioning well?” Resilience thus becomes an ability that can be interpreted in light of individual differences and emphasized to allow each individual survivor to enhance his or her own strengths.

Indeed, the present focus in psychology on searching for psychopathology, assuming that failure will occur, and trying to prevent the supposedly inevitable breakdown is incompatible with this view of resilience. If the concept is defined operationally as simply the strengths a given survivor possesses and his or her relative ability to cope with past trauma, this would require a drastic change from the present perspective of the “deficit model.” It would necessitate an accentuation of the positive aspects in the lives of individuals, emphasizing their level of health and not just their faults, and focusing on enhancing natural abilities to learn, grow, and cope.

Second, and certainly linked to the previous issue, resilience can be conceptualized as a set of personality traits or characteristics of an individual, or contrarily, as a behavior or set of behaviors that a given survivor exhibits. Here, the focus of the definition is dramatically shifted depending on which end of the continuum one chooses to adopt. The former view is person-centered, wholly dependent on the individual and his or her particular set of attributes. Because personality traits are generally believed to be extremely consistent and permanent, this implies that resilience is a fixed phenomenon.

If resilience is conceived as the product or existence of specific characteristics, then a survivor is seen as either resilient or not resilient based on the presence or absence of these traits. The logical leap from this definition would be that resilience cannot be taught, enhanced, or attained if the prerequisites are not present. If this view is taken even further, it could lead to the ability to predict whether a given individual would be resilient even before he or she had experienced a trauma. It would be a simple equation: “If traits A, B, and C are present, then resilience will occur.” This conceptualization does not take into account context or environment.

The alternative perspective views resilience as the presence of certain behaviors, or coping techniques that may or may not be relatable to an individual’s personality traits. This does not necessitate that survivors be pigeonholed into “resilient” or “not resilient” categories. Instead, it allows for individualized responses to specific traumas, environments, and contexts. Thus, a person who copes well with being mugged but develops psychopathological symptoms directly after a parent’s death is not immediately classified as non-resilient simply because negative effects have occurred as the result of a trauma. This individual can be viewed through the lens of the whole picture. Thus, one would look at how she behaved adaptively in both cases, as well as how she may have coped less effectively in either or both contexts. Resilience thus becomes not a static trait but a flexible one, with the ability to be interpreted in light of each situation and each individual.

A third debate surrounds the question of whether resilience should be viewed as a specific, quantifiable category, or rather as a continuum within which individuals can have more or less on one or more scales. This is the difference between asking if an individual is resilient and asking how an individual is resilient. The former question again places the concept in the realm of static and unchangeable attributes. The latter, meanwhile, allows for an individual to be more or less resilient within a given domain of functioning, more resilient in a given trauma than in another, and more resilient in one environmental or social context than in another. Grossman and her colleagues write, “Depending on the different definitions, different people can appear to be resilient. Resiliency in one arena of life does not ensure resiliency in all other domains. Viewing resiliency from many perspectives can be helpful in understanding what individuals or groups need.”[3]

In this sense, there emerges the question of who is truly resilient. If one were working from a strictly categorizable and immutable conception of the phenomenon, the real resilient souls would, again, only be that small number of inexplicably, supposedly perfectly psychologically healthy trauma victims. Thus, the other 96% or so of the population of survivors would simply fall along a continuum of “people who are coping with trauma in a non-resilient fashion,” while the resilient would be viewed as not coping, but recovered. If, on the other hand, that very scale of coping becomes the mechanism through which resilience is understood, every survivor would be viewed as occupying a more or less resilient place on it. This could not ignore contextual information, since each individual would have to be placed on the continuum based on past experience and individual coping style. Therefore, the top of the scale would not always be “perfect health.” What is the “most resilient” in the context of one trauma may be less resilient than the top of the scale for another trauma. Each survivor would be compared to survivors similar to him or her, and not to the supposedly objective, decontextualized, unrealistic standard of “normalcy.”

A Critical Review of the Literature

There are a variety of definitions of resilience currently being used in the literature, ranging on a number of scales and dimensions. While many of the conceptualizations utilize multiple concepts and frameworks, most can be categorized as primarily falling into one or another schema. Some typologies are put forth by developmental psychologists, who focus on the development of resilience and the process of coping with trauma. Some are proposed by cognitive psychologists, with an emphasis on the thought processes and mental behaviors of the resilient survivor. Some definitions are primarily over-simplified, seeming to attempt to circumvent the term altogether, characterizing resilience only as “competent functioning” or “successful coping.”

Others are on the opposite end of this continuum, defining the phenomenon as the presence of up to fifteen different physical, cognitive, and emotional traits or behaviors. Both of these extremes make it nearly impossible to classify any given trauma survivor as resilient or not resilient—the former allows for almost anyone to be perceived as resilient, while the latter seems to require a resilient individual to be nearly superhuman. Below is a presentation of the wide array of conceptualizations of resilience that are presently driving much of the research in this field, organized according to their apparently primary emphasis. Some of the definitions are general and some appear extremely specific to the trauma being studied by the particular author, but all seem to attempt an operational understanding of a phenomenon that all agree does indeed exist.

Reductive Definitions

Because much of the research on resilience has come out of an initial focus on children, especially children from families experiencing multiple negative circumstances (such as poverty, mental illness, or abusive situations), much of the early understanding of resilience has emphasized how some children are able to be “extraordinarily” resilient after prolonged exposure to negative influences.[4] Indeed, the child who grows up in an abusive household, attends college, marries a healthy individual, has children and does not abuse them, could be viewed as having reached a pinnacle of resilience simply in that resistance to follow the example set for him by his parents. It was out of this initial perception of the phenomenon that clinicians and researchers began to think of the resilient as invincible or “untouchable.” Indeed, one of the earliest conceptualizations of resilience viewed these types of children as “teflon-coated” or “superkids.” Resilience was seen as a fixed attribute, one that an individual either had or did not have.

It was from this perspective that resilience was first defined as simply “the ability to recover from trauma.” Frances Grossman and her colleagues note that Murphy and Moriarty, in a 1976 study of vulnerability and coping in children, defined resilience as “a child’s capacity to recover from what they referred to as ‘disturbances in equilibrium,’ or what is now more commonly understood as severe stress, such as the death of a parent, family mental illness, or extensive physical injury resulting from a serious accident.”[5] Masten et al., in 1990, described resilience in a similar manner, as a “process, capacity or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenges or threatening circumstances… Good outcome despite high risk status, sustained competence under threat and recovery from trauma.”[6] In these initial inquiries, resilience was synonymous with “recovery,” “bouncing back,” and “optimal functioning.” There was an assumption that these individuals did not simply cope well with trauma; they did not need to cope at all. They were seen as nearly impervious to it.

These types of definitions are reductive and over-simplified. As I have already argued, they paint a picture of an almost supernatural phenomenon, one that is rarely seen and at best, inexplicable. Early research perpetuated a myth that resilience was an enigmatic, almost mystical force that appeared and disappeared out of nowhere, and was incomprehensible in its mystery. Because this conceptualization came primarily from studies of children, the phenomenon was seen as that much more fantastic. Indeed, how can one understand or explain how an abused child can grow up with the knowledge that abuse is not normal, not acceptable, and not to be perpetuated? How can such a child come out of such a negative environment and flourish? “Resilience” was the term that became the answer to these questions, but it was clear that more work needed to be done.

Operational and Characteristic-Related Definitions

Because the research still initially emphasized children, clinicians began to address the question of how these “extraordinary” children were able to do so well in the face of such adversity. Gina O’Connell Higgins, author of Resilient Adults, noted as late as 1994 that “the academic literature is still primarily focused on the traits (rather than developmental processes) of resilient children.”[7] There began to be, and still is, a great deal of discussion of “risk factors,” those circumstances or attributes that pose a higher probability of causing psychological distress. Simultaneously, “protective factors” emerged as those abilities or environmental conditions that seem to inoculate an individual against the development of psychopathology and appear to foster more resilient coping. This perspective, note Turner, Norman, and Zunz, represents a “paradigm shift from targeting what is wrong and trying to fix it to looking for what is right and trying to sustain and protect it.” Indeed, the authors assert, this marks “a dramatic departure from the direction of prevention efforts in the past.”[8]

Michael Rutter has been a pioneer in this facet of research, emphasizing developmental and contextual processes rather than static attributes. Radke-Yarrow and Brown, in a 1993 study, noted that Rutter has traditionally placed more emphasis on the sense of self in the development of resilience. He argues, “ ‘firstly, a sense of self-esteem and self-confidence; secondly, a belief in one’s own self-efficacy and ability to deal with change and adaptation; thirdly, a repertoire of social problem-solving approaches’ ” are key ingredients in resilience.[9] Rutter, in a 1987 study, conceptualized vulnerability and protective factors as being on opposite ends of a continuum, requiring interaction between them and a transitional view of them. He viewed “vulnerability factors” as exacerbating an individual’s particular reaction to negative situations, while “protective factors” appeared to be mitigating influences on specific reactions to trauma. He also perceived these mechanisms to be more concerned with “key turning points” in the lives of resilient individuals, rather than “long-standing attributes” or given experiences.[10]

In light of this perspective, operational definitions of resilience began to appear, emphasizing specific protective factors that seemed to allow an individual to be more likely to show resilience in the face of or after experiencing trauma. In this sense, resilience was seen as the absence of serious negative effects of difficult life circumstances. This implies that resilience is less of a psychological phenomenon in and of itself, and more a reflection or measurement of the lack of normally predictable psychopathology. Turner, Norman, and Zunz, in a 1995 study of resiliency in children of both genders, asserted that “resiliency is the ability to bounce back or cope well in the face of adversity.” With a specific focus on prevention of traumatic stress, the authors placed great emphasis on strengths and the enhancement of individual and environmental protective factors. They argued that self-esteem and self-efficacy may be the most important traits in resilient people.[11] The authors reiterated that “resilience is not a fixed constitutional attribute, but a process, and the choices one makes at key turning points in life can greatly influence this process.”[12] Intervention at these points may, therefore, also have profound effects on a child’s later life.

These definitions illustrate the changing nature of the clinical understanding of resilience. In order to operationally define the phenomenon, researchers have begun to emphasize specific characteristics and processes that seem to be more adaptive than not. However, here the focus still lies on resilience as a specific trait or set of traits, rather than a continuum of abilities or processes. Each study discussed above presented a list of attributes that supposedly make an individual resilient, or at least, that a “resilient” person tends to possess. Even though some definitions emphasize that resilience can be a process or the mechanism by which “good” adaptation occurs, the phenomenon itself is still seen as either attainable or not.

Thus, these views of resilience tend to espouse a belief that with x number of protective factors and y number of risk factors, an individual will either be resilient or will show the usual psychopathological symptoms. Although it is valuable to consider what these specific resilient children look like, what do these discussions really tell us? Do we know for certain that if an adolescent has all of the attributes illustrated by any of the authors cited above, he will be able to handle the death of his father? Or can we assume that he will “cope well” with that trauma? Or do we know anything about this individual at all? Of course it is better to be friendly, sensitive, and responsible than to be the opposite. But can it really be asserted that a person who is not any of these things is not and cannot be resilient, simply by virtue of the absence of these factors? It is interesting that the majority of the individuals singled out by these authors to be deemed “resilient” happen to possess many of these positive characteristics. But can we assume, therefore, that to be resilient one must possess these attributes?

Process-Related and Developmental Definitions

Recently, some clinicians have proposed a further shift in the understanding of resilience from trait-centered to process-centered. Thus, a focus on resilient mechanisms as opposed to resilient characteristics has appeared, allowing for the possibility of an individual to be resilient in one area of life and perhaps less resilient in another. This has thrown into question the idea of a “resilient individual” at all, relativizing the concept and permitting the perception that nearly any individual can engage in resilient processes at one time or another, to a degree and in some capacity. Grossman and her colleagues cite a 1987 study by Rutter, in which he asserted, “Protection does not reside in the psychological chemistry of the moment but the ways in which people deal with life changes and in what they do about their stressful or disadvantageous circumstances.”[13] Thus, the emphasis has shifted away from specific traumas and specific individual characteristics. Resilience has become a property of the situation, the environment, and the coping processes that are utilized to allow the successful negotiation of such circumstances.

Judith Herman asserts that a variety of studies of “diverse populations” have all concluded that “stress-resistant individuals appear to be those with high sociability, a thoughtful and active coping style, and a strong perception of their ability to control their destiny.”[14] She argues that the resilient generally appear to have this “characteristic triad” of processes which seems to arm them, in times of severe trauma or negative life events, against the full psychological aftermath of such damaging experiences. It is believed that individuals who exhibit these types of abilities or beliefs are much less susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder or the development of more severe psychopathology.[15] In this sense, then, resilient characteristics lead to resilient processes, and it is by these mechanisms that an individual can be assumed to be more likely to cope adaptively with trauma.

This focus on resilient processes has persisted. Resilience is often conceived of as the tendency toward “good coping,” a term that is similarly ill-defined. However, there does seem to be a degree of consistency in the literature regarding what constitutes adaptive coping as opposed to less positive or less effective strategies. Grossman and her colleagues write:

During recovery, it is possible to gauge resiliency in the way people use such processes as compartmentalizing their feelings…coming to a different understanding of the events, being flexible in the way they think of themselves and others, and learning new ways to nurture and satisfy themselves. Moreover, the ability to tolerate arousal and emotional distress, to rework and reappraise the powerful ‘new’ data, and to obtain or accept the support of others are three important factors that can be regarded as crucial capacities underlying resilience.[16]

Indeed, not only are individual coping processes important, but the environment in which they attempt these tasks is just as essential to the development of resilience. Thus, the authors contend, a transactional framework is a useful method for understanding the concept of resilience. The basic assumption under this model is that influence does not exist in a vacuum; that interaction between an individual and his or her social and physical environment is reciprocal in its effects on both sides. This conceptualization has a number of implications:

First, a person’s ability to cope with adversity or trauma depends on the availability of personal resources and social support at the time of the difficult events. Second, even with good enough support, an individual must be able to make use of her personal strengths and the social supports available to successfully resolve her difficulties. Finally, an individual acts on her environment even as it acts on her, and over time the changes that occur are both transactional and developmental. Being successful in dealing with her environment is likely to make the individual more resilient.[17]

In this sense, Grossman et al. argue, resilience is a mechanism that draws on a variety of processes and has the capacity to develop through biological, psychological, and environmental avenues. Rutter agrees, asserting that the multi-dimensional nature of resilience is evidenced by its ability to utilize both personal and environmental dynamics.[18] Indeed, resilience is not only multi-faceted; it is also flexible across time and stages of growth. Kimberly Gordon writes, “the state of being resilient or competent changes over time and through development as the tasks that one needs to complete become more and more complex. As a person develops and the definition of competence changes, a person may need to rely on different factors to obtain a state of resilience.”[19] Thus, the framework of resilience must allow for both transactional and developmental alterations. The phenomenon and its manifestations can change constantly in regard to the individual, to his or her experiences, and to his or her environment.

Mary Harvey, in her ecological model of recovery from psychological trauma, reiterates these mechanisms and the transactional approach in her discussion of “recovery,” which she views as a “multidimensional phenomenon” characterized by seven specific resilient processes. First, she points to “authority over the remembering process,” such that the survivor thinks about traumatic events when he or she wants to, without suffering from intrusions of memories into daily, unrelated thoughts and experiences. Through this process, Harvey asserts, “the balance of power between the survivor and her/his memories is reversed and s/he is able to call upon and review a relatively complete and continuous life narrative.”[20]

Harvey also discusses the process of “integration of memory and affect,” whereby the survivor is able to experience appropriate emotion with the remembering of past traumatic events.[21] Rather than being completely “shut off” from the trauma or conversely, becoming so distraught at the recurrence of a memory that one cannot function, this process allows the survivor to reconnect the course of remembering with the bodily and emotional states that should accompany it. An extension of this is “affect tolerance,” a process of recovery that Harvey defines as the ability to control one’s emotions and to psychically and cognitively handle strong emotional reactions. Indeed, she argues, “Recovery implies that the affects associated with traumatic events no longer overwhelm or threaten to overwhelm.”[22]

Harvey also points to “symptom mastery,” the ability to manage or control traumatic stress symptoms, even if it involves simply an understanding and avoidance of potential triggering stimuli. Recovery, under this model, is also viewed as requiring “repair and mastery in the domain of self-esteem and self-cohesion,” as well as the “restoration of a survivor’s relational capacities” and ability to form safe attachment relationships.[23] The process of meaning-making is also deeply connected with the ability to recover and the course of recovery. Thus, in her overall “ecological” and interactional conceptualization of trauma and recovery, Harvey proposes:

Each of these criteria reflects an entire domain of psychological functioning, one that may or may not have been negatively impacted upon by one or a series of traumatic events. Together these criteria describe a multi-faceted definition of trauma recovery and offer to clinician, survivor and researcher alike a set of benchmarks against which individual recovery can be assessed and toward which both clinical and community interventions can aim… In this framework, recovery is apparent whenever change from a poor outcome to a desired one is realized in any domain affected by traumatic exposure. Resiliency is evident when one or more domains remains relatively unimpacted and when the trauma survivor is able to mobilize strengths in one domain to cope with vulnerabilities and secure recovery in another.[24]

While this is a powerful view of resilience, and while it is certainly more definitive and comprehensive than many of those that came before it, the phrasing still suggests a formula of sorts. For instance, “change from a poor outcome to a desired one” is operationally vague, at best. The emphasis on the interaction between strengths in one area and relative weaknesses in another, however, is valuable and unique. The conception of resilience as both developmental and transactional is, by far, the most advanced and flexible so far. The final piece of the puzzle, however, must be viewed through a descriptive lens, utilizing an emphasis on context to illustrate the types of processes and struggles resilience involves.

Descriptive and Interactional Definitions

The concept of resilience has now come full circle, from requiring perfection to allowing for humanness, from being seen as a static trait to describing a process or series of processes that enhance adaptive coping. Although each definition has its own strengths and weaknesses, perhaps the most meaningful conceptualization to date acknowledges that one can only describe what seems to work well in a given context, without express requirements or “objective” defining qualities. Nancie Palmer, in a 1997 study of adult children of alcoholics, has developed the “Differential Resiliency Model (DRM) as a means of obtaining a nonpathological approach to understanding the resilience of ACOAs [adult children of alcoholics].”[25] There are two unique facets in this perspective: 1) the proposal of a “nonpathological” approach, with explicit emphasis placed on strengths rather than vulnerabilities; and 2) the author describes this model as a tool for understanding survivors of a singular trauma, and does not suggest that this framework can be applied to survivors of any other trauma, much less to trauma survivors in general. Palmer thus appears to perceive resilience as a highly contextual phenomenon.

Palmer proposes the Differential Resiliency Model, created out of the assumption that resilience is a process. She asserts that “the term ‘differential’ was used to convey the idea of varying qualities and attributes that can be generally distinguished from each other and to present the concept that there is a range of related characteristics measurable in increments or degrees.”[26] Within this framework, she presents four descriptive categories of resilience and four “life domains” that are used to emphasize what she believes are significant spheres of functioning, both psychologically and physically. These are: 1) homeostasis, a measure of relative life disruption and balance; 2) coping strategies, a measure of development and internalization; 3) relationship to environment, illustrated by degrees of distancing and accessing; and 4) use of energy.[27]

The author presents the contention that resilience is provisional. In this sense, “any new traumatic or catastrophic event may result in a permanent or temporary shift while restoration or reassembly occurs.”[28] Thus, the Differential Resiliency Model is highly dynamic, illustrating a great deal of versatility and the ability to represent “an individual’s process of survival, transition, and growth” and the positive forces inherent in this development rather than the vulnerabilities.[29] Palmer’s perspective is unusual and refreshing in that it acknowledges and emphasizes the “normalcy” of survival behaviors, and places a great deal of value on “the individual’s capacity for self-knowledge about what is needed and useful for survival and growth.”[30] Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Palmer’s approach is that it was created to describe only one type of trauma survivor in the context of only one type of trauma. Although the model itself could certainly be applied in other contexts, this is not Palmer’s original intent or contention. Thus, her proposal has value in and of itself as a description and typological framework of a phenomenon, within the specific context that it was developed.

This contextual perspective is also illustrated clearly in Gina O’Connell Higgins’s book, Resilient Adults: Overcoming a Cruel Past, which was the result of a study of forty “resilient” adult survivors of severe to “catastrophically stressful” childhoods and family backgrounds. While her conceptualization of resilience encompasses all of the facets that have been discussed above, she places primary emphasis on resilient processes and coping strategies, as demonstrated by the individuals whom she believes to be doing unusually well in light of their past circumstances. Her framework is thus a descriptive one, as she attempts to delineate the concept of resilience through the lens of experience and context. Higgins initially defines resilience as her subjects’ abilities to “negotiate significant challenges to development yet consistently ‘snap back’ in order to complete the important developmental tasks that confront them as they grow.”[31] She goes further to differentiate the term “survivor” from the concept of resilience. She asserts that while “survival” refers only to the actual physical act of existing during and after a trauma, “resilient emphasizes that people do more than merely get through difficult emotional experiences, hanging on to inner equilibrium by a thread… resilience best captures the active process of self-righting and growth that characterizes some people so essentially.”[32]

Higgins contends that while just living through trauma (pure survival) is a necessary factor in resilience, it is not sufficient. True resilience, she argues, is not allowing traumatic experiences to own oneself. Higgins maintains that “resilience is not just about pliability—bend but do not break. It is also about fighting: the capacity to preserve your own soul, to preserve something that your persecutors do not get.”[33] She also believes that resilience is a process of behaviors, not a characteristic of an individual in and of itself. She does not regard the phenomenon as fixed or immutable, but rather emphasizes the gradual development of optimal coping strategies and greater self-understanding and self-care. She writes:

I assume that resilience is not a collection of traits but a process that builds on itself over time. My subjects also acknowledge this process: many pointedly reminded me that they would not have met all (or even most) of the ‘resilient’ criteria during earlier chapters in their lives. Yet they always had several core dynamic capacities, and these launched them beyond their more fundamental struggles into their current level of overall psychological health. Centrally, they see themselves as people who have continually and self-consciously worked on growing.[34]

Through personal, semi-structured interviews with each of her forty resilient subjects, Higgins concentrated on these types of processes and growth. She notes that all were able to “negotiate an abundance of emotionally hazardous experiences proactively rather than reactively, thus solving problems flexibly; they make positive meanings out of their experiences, actively constructing a positive vision despite emotional disappointments.”[35] It is these abilities and processes that characterize a resilient individual, according to the author.

Ultimately, this descriptive approach to resilience is a unique and useful one. Higgins’s core assumptions—first, her belief in the plasticity of human development, and second, her assertion that individuals are unique and each responds differently at different times and to different traumas—combine to create a view of resilience as both process-oriented and individualized. She writes, “First, I assume that growth is an active process of constructing and organizing meaning, thereby propelling the creation of newer versions of the self throughout the life span,”[36] and “Second, I assume that we all need to be understood through our highest level of functioning.”[37] Thus, she proposes, each “self” must be viewed in its own context and in light of its own developmental strengths and constraints. Indeed, Higgins believes, “we are a collection of selves, simultaneously encompassing all of our previous versions yet understood by the most recent ‘us’ through the assumptive lens of our current developmental complexity.”[38] In this sense, then, an eye to individual context is essential to a useful understanding of resilience.

The Necessity of a Contextual Perspective

As can be seen from the wide range and types of definitions proposed, the more descriptive and qualitative characterizations of resilience prove to be particularly meaningful and constructive. When resilience is defined too broadly or too narrowly, it simply does not describe anyone. But when a researcher or clinician endeavors to describe the phenomenon as it manifests itself in one group of people, in one context, and with the interpretive lens aimed at a particular experience, resilience becomes more clearly visible, more definable, and more easily understood. Themes emerge across individuals, both in relation to trauma and to coping styles and mechanisms. Ultimately, this provides a valuable key to unlocking the “mystery” of resilience: context is vital.

The fundamental assumption underlying the concept of resilience is that people and traumas and coping processes can be compared to one another. In actuality, however, these are incredibly complex and problematic tasks. For instance, could one characterize as resilient a schizophrenic patient who spent twenty years in the back wards of a mental institution but finally, on a strict schedule of medication, manages to live on his own and hold down a job? What about the survivor of years of sexual abuse within a satanic cult, who gets out of the abusive environment alive, gets a degree in social work, and has five healthy children, but is never able to come to terms with her childhood abuse and is never able to have an intimate relationship? What can be considered “resilient enough” for an individual who has experienced trauma? Is it enough to simply survive a childhood of abuse or five years in a concentration camp? Or must trauma survivors go on to accomplish everything that would be expected of an individual who did not endure such trauma?

Clearly, it is a far more difficult task to make these types of distinctions in reality than in theory. Grossman and her colleagues assert:

Risk and resiliency occur in a context, that is, with one or more events happening to a particular individual in a specific family and neighborhood. For example, the consequences of risk or trauma in a person’s life are, in crucial ways, influenced by the type, intensity, and duration of the event or set of events. These and other specifics provide the backdrop of risk and resilience.[39]

In this sense, one cannot simply decide whether a given survivor is resilient or not without viewing him or her within this “backdrop.” The concept of a general scale of resilience places one person or one type of trauma survivor at the top, and one at the bottom. Even if they are all considered resilient under whichever definition one chooses, this still requires the comparison of one distinct trauma to another, and one unique individual to another. Individuals must be evaluated in their own context, with an emphasis on their own personality, environment, experience, and understanding of it. A continuum that includes in its range all traumas and all survivors is simply comparing apples to oranges to giraffes to steam engines.

The resilient individual can emerge in every type of trauma and in every context. He or she just looks different each time. One trauma survivor cannot be measured against another, and one type of trauma cannot be compared to another. For instance, can a 30-year-old rape victim be compared to a 10-year-old rape victim? Can a child who lived through the Vietnam War be evaluated against his parents? What about a comparison between an only child who was a victim of incest by her father and four female siblings who experienced similar abuse? Can one even measure male and female victims of the same familial abuse? What does resilience look like in a physically disabled man, as opposed to a former prisoner of war? Beyond the obvious issue of simple individual differences, these contextual differences are extremely salient facets within the understanding of resilience and its definition. Next, we will see what a contextual perspective offers to the concept of resilience.