Resilience

Psychodynamic Model

Resilience is the ability to adapt physiologically and psychologically to environmental changes. It is a survival skill required of every member of the animal kingdom. In humans, it is often manifested as the difference between individuals' conceptualizing themselves as survivors versus conceptualizing themselves as victims—that is, the difference between individuals who can take care of themselves and others versus those who become unable to care for themselves when subjected to significant stress-ors, whether those stressors are human-made and/or natural: war, pestilence, defective dams, earthquakes, floods, a combination of a tsunami and damage to resultant nuclear power plants, or levee failures from hurricane surges and massive, significant flooding of a major metropolis.

According to psychiatrist George Vaillant, resilience or adaptivity is the objective adaptation to the external environment versus the development of psychopathology. He explains that there are good and bad denial defense mechanisms: The good defense mechanisms lead to resilience, and the bad defense mechanisms lead to dysfunctional psychopathology.

Vaillant identifies and defines six mature defenses (also known as good denial defenses): (1) altruism, (2) anticipation, (3) asceticism, (4) humor, (5) sublimation, and (6) suppression. He also identifies and defines six immature defenses (also known as bad defenses): (1) projection, (2) dissociation, (3) fantasy, (4) passive-aggressive behaviors, (5) acting out, and (6) hypochondriasis. Individuals subjected to stress will usually have a mixture of these defense mechanisms. The cluster that predominates generally reflects good versus bad survival skills and an ability to move forward during one's personal or family or community crisis versus an individual becoming an emotional and physical burden on those around him or her, including the social support system and the health and mental health care system.

Vaillant defines the mature defenses: Altruism is the vicarious but constructive and instinctively gratifying service to others, without doing so at one's own expense, such as sharing food and water when the supply is limited. Anticipation is the realistic acceptance of or planning for future self-discomfort, by planning for and worrying about dire and dreadful possible outcomes, such as an individual's expecting to be without until help arrives after a physically isolating disaster. Asceticism is the removal or elimination of directly pleasurable affects associated with an event. A moral element sets values on specific pleasures. Gratification is gained through renunciation, such as not participating in looting. Humor is the obvious expression of feelings without personal discomfort or offense to others. Humor allows a sharing of events that are considered too terrible a burden to carry. In contrast, wit involves distraction or displacement away from the emotional issue being faced. Sublimation is the gratification of an impulse whose goal is retained, but whose goal is redirected from a socially unacceptable one to a socially valued one. Sublimation allows aggressive and sexual urges to be redirected, rather than neurotically dammed up or directed to socially unacceptable behaviors, such as engaging in sports rather than sexual promiscuity or illicit drug abuse. Suppression is the conscious or less than conscious decision to postpone attention to a conscious impulse or conflict, such as distracting one's discomfort about a lack of food or water until it becomes available by helping others with their physical problems.

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