1 / 8

The Concept of Resilience in Psychological Research

The Concept of Resilience in Psychological Research. Margit Schmolke, Ph.D. German Academy for Psychoanalysis, Munich, Germany. Agenda. Definition and concepts related to resilience General protective factors Research approaches Specific protective factors Implications for psychotherapy.

betty_james
Download Presentation

The Concept of Resilience in Psychological Research

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Concept of Resilience in Psychological Research Margit Schmolke, Ph.D. German Academy for Psychoanalysis, Munich, Germany

  2. Agenda • Definition and concepts related to resilience • General protective factors • Research approaches • Specific protective factors • Implications for psychotherapy

  3. Definition and Concepts (1) • Resilience: Psychic resistance despite of stressors, adversity and challenges • Main research area of developmental psychopathology • Danger of mystification • Related concepts: emotional intelligence, self-regulation, self-organization, salutogenesis • Determined by dynamic protective factors

  4. Definition and Concepts (2) • No personality trait • No inherited invulnerability • Disposition for action acquired in family • Analogy to biological processes - Protection - Repair - Regeneration

  5. General Protective Factors • Stable relationship to primary person • Emotionally supportive educational climate • Role models for constructive coping • Social support outside the family • Responsibilities in the family • Temperament characteristics (eg, sociability) • Cognitive competences (eg, average intelligence) • Self-efficacy, positive self-concept • Active, not just reactive coping behavior • Meaningfulness and structure in one‘s development • Realistic future planning • Sense of humor

  6. Studies Documenting General Protective Factors E.g., • Kauai-Study (Werner & Smith, 1982,1992) • Children with mentally ill parents (Anthony, 1987; Garmezy & Devine, 1984) • Children from divorced parents (Hetherington, 1989) • Families with abuse/neglect (Cicchetti et al., 1993) • Children in families with social decline (Elder et al., 1986) • Children in fostering homes (Rutter & Quinton, 1984) • Families from war areas and migration (Garbarino, 1990)

  7. Specific Protective Development Processes Reasons: • Underlying resilience criteria • Methodological design • Accumulation of factors • Ambiguity of characteristics • Relation to the broader social context • Biological factors • Sex differences (Lösel & Bender, 1999)

  8. Implications for Psychotherapy(Welter-Enderlin, 2005) • Focusing on early childhood often one-sided • Persons are not just product of their socialization • Influence of broader social factors outside family need to be more considered • Trauma therapists focus too much on patient‘s role as a victim • Just asking about patients‘ strengths is banal • Being open for listening to their often extremely negative life experiences • Encouraging patients to be proud of their dealing with them so far

More Related