By Steven Wolin, M.D. & Sybil Wolin, Ph.D.
Description
The Resilient Self: How Survivors of Troubled Families Rise Above Adversity is based on our clinical experience and extensive interviews with survivors of troubled families. Using the material gleaned from these interviews and a growing body of research on resilience, we challenge a traditional view of children which is based on a medical model and which stresses the lasting psychological caused by hardship. We call this approach and its bias toward pathology, the
Damage Model.
In Part I, we describe the Damage Model and present a more optimistic alternative that we call the Challenge Model. A developmental theory of self, the Challenge Model suggests that while children are hurt by hardship they often develop considerable strength as they struggle to prevail. The Resilient Self identifies seven such strengths: insight, independence, relationships, initiative, creativity, humor, and morality.
In Part II, we demonstrate the emergence of each strength from childhood to adulthood, giving each stage a specific name. The entire scheme constitutes a systematic vocabulary of resilience that has been lacking in the helping professions and research literature until now. The Resilient Self also places risk research in a larger context that includes research on strengths, (2) introduces a new positive therapeutic approach for youth and adults who struggle with adversity, and (3) aims to shift the mindset of helping professionals and the public from a Damage Model to a Challenge Model perspective.
Table of Contents
Part I: Pain and Opportunity
Chapter 1 - The Challenge of the Troubled Family
Chapter 2 - To Name the Damage is to Conquer It
Chapter 3 - Reframing: How to Resist the Victim's Trap
Part II: Seven Resiliencies
Chapter 4 - Insight: Forewarned is Forearmed
Chapter 5 - Independence: A Delicate Negotiation
Chapter 6 - Relationships: The Search for Love
Chapter 7 - Initiative: The Pleasure in Problems
Chapter 8 - Creativity: Nothing into Something
Humor: Something into Nothing
Chapter 9 - Morality: Holiness in an Unholy World
Epilogue: The Internal Image of a Survivor: One Who Prevails
Excerpt
In the 1980's in this country, The Damage Model seeped down from the professional to our popular culture in a big way. The survivor-as-victim image became the rallying point for a recovery movement ... As the movement has spread its influence, diseases, addictions, and human frailties have occupied the limelight of our awareness, and resilience has fallen into the shadows. ...
How can we restore ourselves to health? How can we escape the pessimism of the Damage Model prediction? What shall we say to our modern day doomsayers who have reworked the ancient prophecy - "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons" - for popular consumption?
I think we need to hear less about our susceptibility to harm and more about our ability to rebound from adversity when it comes our way.
From Chapter 1: The Challenge of the Troubled Family
Praise for The Resilient Self
"I salute the authors of this book for their masterful synthesis of research, clinical experience and insights ... The Wolins caution the reader that no one emerges from a troubled family without scars, but it challenges us to find ways in which we can transform pain into joy in our lives."
-Emmy Werner Ph.D.,
Author of Vulnerable but Invincible and Overcoming the Odds
"The Resilient Self reminds us all of the importance of being aware of and building on the strengths of our young people, what ever their early experiences. We must work to give them hope and to craft services and programs that are respectful of the resiliencies so fully characterized by the Wolins ..."
-Marian Wright Edelman
President, Children's Defense Fund
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Price: $19.00 Length: 238 pages including bibliographical notes and index |
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