The Unbroken Soul: Tragedy, Trauma, and Human Resilience

How do individuals cope constructively with significant trauma? How do they recover from it? What factors seem most codetermining of coping with and recovering from trauma? Can these be not only identified but also influenced by our interventions? Addressing these questions-questions about human beings' capacity for resilience-is the prime challenge taken up in this book by an assortment of international psychoanalytic, attachment, and biological mental health theorists and clinicians. While mental health professionals are well trained to identify and treat psychopathology, little is taught about how to look for strengths in patients that assist them in their coping and that, on their own and with our nurturance, can foster their recovery. Some of the contributors to this volume, having themselves been subjected to severe trauma, speak of resilience both from within their own experience, from those around them, and from their work with traumatized patients.