Resilience: How Your Inner Strength Can Set You Free from the Past

The translation is terrible hard to understand

I was familiar with Cyrulnik's works in French and needed an English version for my doctoral dissertation. It turns out that Cyrulnik's poetic prose is as efficient in English as in French. His theoretical essays read like novels but nonetheless offer an undeniably interesting insight in psychological coping and defense mechanism, as well as an approach to narrative identity.

Author talks mostly about the resilience of concentration camp survivors. Most interesting to me was the affect from a generational perspective.

Excellent and well written book.Easy to read, clear enough to understand, nice cover.Recommend it highly.

Excellent book!

Resilience is an English translation of the book written by a renowned French psychologist, Boris Cyrulnik, who lost his parents at the age of 5 to the concentration camps in 1942. He was subsequently abused by his foster parents.The first part of the book addresses the experiences and responses of people, especially children, who have suffered systemic horrors such as wars, natural disasters, and genocide. There is much discussion of the special problems of children who are orphaned and how these children often leverage this early tragedy into a successful life.In the second half of the book, Dr. Cyrulnik begins to weave in observations about children who were abused by their own families, and then the book becomes more relevant to American readers looking to gain insight into how one recovers and processes a history of childhood abuse.The translation successfully maintains the French linguistic style, so we get prose that is both academic and heartfelt and lyrical. This is not a pop psychology, self-help book with cutesy language. This is a book designed for someone who is looking to think deeply about the subject of resilience. Be prepared at times to read about some horrific tragedies, but I don't think the author is gratuitously graphic or sensational. There are rarely "blow by blow" accounts listing every painful detail.The author spends a good deal of time discussing how a survivor can talk about abuse and how creativity plays into the healing. He investigates the special role that creating art in any form, especially writing, plays into healing. There is surprising data, such as a study that showed that survivors who shared their stories showed no better outcomes than those who kept their abuse a secret. On the other hand, other studies showed that some cultures support the healing of survivors better than others, and that these cultures were those that tolerated knowing the details of abuse.The conclusions to draw from the book is that resilience is tied to tapping into the creative and healthy parts that lie in all of us. This is a refreshing turn from many American articles discussing resilience as a genetic trait.Keep in mind that you really need to read the whole book to weave together a portrait of what makes a person resilient, because a lot of background and data are presented. The book is never dry and clinical. I am sure that this owes to the author's empathy with survivors of abuse.This book is a wonderful choice for students of psychology and counseling.

Sorry but I must correct one important point misstated in the prior review. I also read the French original and Dr. Cyrulnik never mentions being sexually or physically abused by the two women who fostered him or by anyone else: Margot the social worker who first hid him, and Dora, the loving aunt he had never met before but was reunited with at the end of the war. (These two women actually became embroiled in a legal case for his custody.) The major trauma he suffered was being arrested by agents of the Gestapo in occupied France at age 5 or 6 during a major raid in his birth city, Bordeaux, a raid in which 1600 people including children were eventually deported and killed in Auschwitz. He managed at that very young age to escape from being deported to Germany. He had no concept of why people wanted to kill him and he didn't know anything about being Jewish, only that he was told never to say anything to anyone. He was terrified and spent several months on the run, taken in by kind French people. He struggled with finally being able to talk about what had happened to him. His social worker Margot, who eventually lost her case for custody to his aunt, received a medal from him from the state of Israel many years after his life story went public, a medal for being a "Just Gentile." This book is about the fallibility of memory in general but especially in traumatized children. Dr. Cyrulnik had to reconstruct what had happened to him in the course of this narrative which includes his insights as one of France's preeminent neuropsychiatrists. A wonderful, interesting and inspiring read! One learns much about life in Nazi occupied France and the national reconciliation with the past which carries on to the present day from the personal experience of a resourceful child who survived.

Very interesting points that I didn't necessarily agree with however it helped me think differently. The highlight was reading how the symbol for resilience could be the Oyster as I really enjoyed learning why and it definitely resonated with me.

Boris C. uses lots of examples to support his theory that current child development theories are far too gloomy in their prognosis of the future for child victims of war, abandonement and abuse.He discusses why and how, most children are able to develop resilience and lead 'normal' lives. It is interesting because he suggests that treating these children as victims is the worst possible approach; something schools and the government would do well to ponder. It is not always an easy read because it has been translated from French, and because he is not a naturally 'flowing' writer, but well worth the effort if only to reaffirm the resilience of the human spirit.

Connu et apprécié de longue date.Acheté pour l'offrir à un petit-cousin qui ne cesse de nous interroger sur notre résilience après Shoah.Ceci dit: à recommander à tous les sceptiques quant aux possibilités d'une psychiatrie intelligente.

Excellent book. Very interesting if you are intrigued by how some people survive dreadful events in their lives and other people crumble at the slightest setback.

Good read and reference