Resilience and Survival

Resilience and Survival: Understanding and Healing Intergenerational Trauma presents a unique combination of resilience theory with attachment, psychoanalysis, and developmental neuroscience, with a mind–body–brain developmental approach to therapy. It shows how resilience can be reinforced and structured to create stronger individuals and societies, vis-à-vis increasing traumatic and stressful life circumstances. The author investigates several human practices, processes, and features that aid our capacity to resist, combat, adapt to or counter extreme traumatisation. These features and capabilities come into play at the interface between vulnerability and resilience, leading to a deeper understanding of the mechanism of resilience itself.

Each chapter illustrates the components necessary to achieve resilience: attachment, connectedness, memory, testimony, education, and the development and practice of artistic and creative activities. The book also explores the positive effects of moral commitment, empathy, and altruism, and psychodynamic intergenerational therapy on trauma, showing that acts and feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and an appreciation for and use of higher order symbolic structures, such as art and creativity, together contribute to building and reinforcing resilience and social solidarity.