[Introduction, Alan Leshner]
p.2 For some time, a small group of researchers and program providers have been focusing on, basically,
what keeps some of the most at high risk individuals from engaging in the problem behavior, what are called "protective factors".
Several researchers have studied resilient individuals who have defied others' expectations and survived or surmounted daunting
and seemingly overwhelming dangers, obstacles or problems. This research has provided some very important insights and is
part of the founding body of information which has launched the relatively new field of developmental psychopathology. One
of the cardinal tenets of this field is a systems approach that incorporates a focus on the interaction of risk and resilience
factors. This more holistic perspective is not only heuristically useful but also encourages interventions that both attempt
to minimize risk factors and maximize protective or resilience factors. The approach also recognizes the interaction
between risk and protective factors
p.3 we must all be concerned with understanding the nature of resilience and building on that knowledge.
This book is a state of the art guide in that effort.
[Resilience: An Interview with Norman Garmezy (Jon Rolf, Meyer Glantz)]
p.5-8 Norman Garmezy is Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, at the University of Minnesota. He is generally
credited as being the founder of the contemporary research study of resilience. Following is an interview (in edited form)
conducted by Dr. Jon Rolf in which Dr. Garmezy discusses the origins of his interest in resilience and some of his current
thinking...
J.R. Define resilience for us and is it different than competence?
N.G. ... I think "competence" is really the term for a variety of adaptive behaviors and I think that resilience
is manifest competence despite exposure to significant stressors. It seems to me that you can't talk about resilience in the
absence of stress. The point I would make about stress is the critical significance of cumulative stressors. I think this
is the most important element... I think that you can either focus on great stressors and study its consequences or you can...
make a tabulation of the cumulating impact of stressors. I think that a cumulation is very critical... I have to think of
a single great stressor and its consequences and I think also of the cumulation of stressors in which the environment... and
the background all add up to generate negative events and circumstances that ordinarily would bring a child down,
but in many instances do not.
J.R. ... Why do you focus so strongly on poverty?
N.G. Well, if you think of the cumulation notion of stressors, poverty bares it.
p.10-11 J.R. Let's turn if we can to protective processes. These are the mechanisms whereby children
escape, move or grow towards more protective things. I was wondering what are some of the protective processes within the
individual?
N.G. That is one of our major needs for good research. Answering the research question, it seems to me,
begins with a determination of the manifest stressors present in the lives of children marked by adaptive behaviors. From
this you develop inferences about protective processes both in the child's environment and the attributes of the child - what
factors lead to a positive outcome or which lead to a negative outcome? There lies the central issue of "protective processes."
What protective processes really speak to is the unanticipated avoidance of failure and deficits by a child subjected to multiple
stressors. It's when you say, "well how can that be? ... that child should have gone under a long time ago, but he or she
hasn't." So let's look into the world of the child... What accounts for the negative influences that are being overcome...
That is the task for the researcher, to begin with the stressors and then to look to the adaptive versus the non-adaptive
groups of children.
p. 13 Well, you know you could ask anyone the question, "how would you explain people who are under great
stress and yet behave very adaptively?" and everybody would give different reasons and examples. For me, there is no such
thing as a single set of protective factors.
p.14 so much of resilience is a function of the interaction of multiple, complex factors... When a person
comes in for a first interview, for a second interview, the clinician should begin to formulate in his mind what is the nature
of the risk elements there and from a therapeutic stand point what are the protective elements that he might be able
to count on... search out what really are the risk factors and the protective factors... If clinicians examined risk and protective
elements and correlated them with outcomes in therapy, we might begin to get a handle from clinicians about what some of these
multiple factors might be that engender positive outcomes as opposed to negative outcomes.
[Toward an Understanding of Resilience: A Critical Review of Definitions and Models (Howard Kaplan)]
p.18 When a concept such as resilience captures the imagination of a large group of scholars we should perhaps
be grateful. Science can only win when scholars focus upon an idea and bring their unique perspectives to the elucidation
of this idea.
p.18 Losel, Bliesener, and Koferl (1989, p. 187) observe: "There is a multitude of constructs that are
related to invulnerability, such as resilience, hardiness, adaptation, adjustment, mastery, plasticity, person-environment
fit, or social buffering."
p.20 Resilience refers to the fact of "maintaining adaptive functioning in spite of serious risk hazards"
(Rutter, 1990, p. 209).
p.21 Vulnerability can be described as reduced flexibility or adaptational potential
p.27 it would appear that resilience has little relevance where risks associated with particular outcomes
have not yet arisen.
p.28 At the very least, the concept of resilience should include the capability as well as the actuality
of surviving in the face of stress.
p.29 In the last analysis, the meaning of any concept of resilience is dependent upon a specific causal
model.
[Re-Visiting the Validity of the Construct of Resilience (Tarter and Vanyukov)]
p.86 Employing the term resilience implies that it is (or will be) possible to predict magnitude of recovery
to the pre-stress state upon knowing the properties of the stressor (magnitude, type, duration, etc.) and capacity to measure
the resilience trait. [JLJ - Imagine the city of New Orleans predicting the ability to survive a category 5 storm based on
measurements of Levee strength and models of storm surge.]
p.87 Resiliency is the extent to which a material returns to the normal state following removal
of a stressor. In research where the concept of resilience has been invoked, the process implies good outcome
despite the presence of the stressor.
p.97 Resilience is the construct or trait that has been proposed to explain the development of a positive
outcome despite the presence of adversities.
[Drug Use, Resilience, and the Myth of the Golden Child (Beauvais, Oetting)]
p.101 Resilience is not an innate characteristic that magically prevented the negative environment from
influencing this child. The real causes of the child's success are protective factors that provide attitudes and skills that
allow the child to resist the effects of the environmental risk factors that are present.
p.103 Resilience, therefore, is defined here as the ability to tolerate, to adapt to, or to overcome
life crisis... A protective factor helps set a trajectory that reduces the probability of getting involved [in
bad situations]. It tends to operate consistently and all the time... resilience becomes important only when those
problems appear. Protective factors save you from disaster; resilience lets you bounce back.
[Analysis and Reconceptualization of Resilience, Glantz and Sloboda, p.109-126]
p.110 Resilience or some variation of this idea is a concept that is explicitly if not
tacitly implicit in almost all explanatory models of behavior ranging from the biological to the social. It may be
an inextricable part of the ways in which we define and explain not only human behavior but virtually all phenomena with variable
outcomes.
p.116 Garmezy and his associates... have described resilience as a "capacity" for successful adaptation
in the face of hardship
p.116 Cicchetti and Schneider-Rosen (1986) and Egeland, Carlson and Sroufe (1993) consider resilience to
be a "transactional process within an organizational framework... developmental outcomes are determined by the interaction
of genetic, biological, psychological, and sociological factors in the context of environmental support."
p.118 We propose altering the common concept of resilience from that of the often hypothesized basically
undefined inner personal trait to the concept of resilience as adaptive or compensating (positive) behaviors and factors.
Relatedly, we propose that models of problem behaviors and negative outcomes attempt to account for outcomes not merely by
identifying and tallying negative influences but by investigating the ways in which different sets of positive and negative
factors interact leading to different outcomes. This will improve the utility of the concept of resilience
p.120 Some stressors exert a particularly pernicious influence in that they interfere with or diminish
the development of the individual's coping repertoire, abilities, expectations and potential resilience. Interfering
with an individual's development of adaptive, effective coping functions and abilities may be one of the most harmful effects
of some major stresses and negative influences.
p.122 The fourth proposal [JLJ - out of 5 presented, attempting to re-conceptualize resilience] is that
research and theoretical attempts to understand resilience and the development or avoidance of problems and pathologies routinely
adopt a systemic approach considering both positive and negative circumstances and both predisposing and protecting characteristics
and the ways in which they interact in the relevant situations... a broad range of both positive and negative factors from
multiple domains must be considered in order to understand the "resilience" of individuals... the cumulation of factors
and the influences of both proximal and distal factors must be considered... a comprehensive multifactorial systems
oriented approach which investigates the interaction of factors and recognizes the diversity and variability of the influences
of both positive and negative influences. Simple linear approaches that list and add up numbers of protective and risk factors
make a very limited contribution... [This approach] significantly increases the difficulty, complexity and resource demands
of research, but unfortunately, it is necessary.
