Resilient Adults: Overcoming a Cruel Past Paperback - 1996 - 1st Edition

Clinical psychology and psychiatry typically study the dire, the deadly, and the derailing.

What is it that makes some people resilient enough to overcome devastating trauma? What separates them from those who are understandably broken by such events? Most important, how can we foster this strength in ourselves and in others?Gina O'Connell Higgins draws on her twenty-year career devoted to the study of resilience to describe people who had brutal childhoods, who suffered violence at the hands of a parent, who were raped, abused, and abandoned, and yet who created lives of hope and happiness. Offering an approach that focuses on the origins of mental health rather than the beginnings of mental illness, Resilient Adults outlines how men and women can recognize the resilient traits they possess and appreciate what has gone right with their lives.What makes some people resilient enough to overcome devastating childhood trauma? What separates them from those who are broken by such events? Most importantly, how can we foster the strength to overcome tragedy and live a life filled with healthy relationships, satisfying work and community involvement? Gina O'Connell Higgins, who has studied survivors and resilience for over twenty years, provides insight into these and other key questions.Through both grim and joyous profiles, Higgins describes people who had brutal childhoods?who suffered violence at the hands of a parent, were raped, abused, and abandoned, and yet who created lives of hope and happiness. These compelling portraits include a psychiatrist, happily married for twenty-eight years, who as a child was the victim of a satanic cult and forced to become a prostitute?and a man who, though ferociously beaten by his father and sexually abused by his mother, grew up to become the director of a human service agency.With an unique approach that focuses on the origins of mental health rather than the beginnings of mental illness, Resilient Adults shows how men and women can recognize resilient traits within themselves, and appreciate what has gone ri