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"Our history does not determine our destiny," stated Boris Cyrulnik, author of Resilience: How Your Self-confidence Can Set You Devoid Of the Past. Strength can come from lots of places in a person, however when taking a look at the nature versus support perspective, it is nature that many strongly identifies how resistant an individual will be, and not based rather as much upon how they were nurtured. As Cyrulnik stated, it is not our history, simply put, not how we have actually been formerly supported, that determines what we will become, or how durable we will remain in times of trial.
Before discussing the concept of how nature uses to the concept of resilience, it is essential to first understand what strength is.
Cyrulnik defined this word as such: "The capability to prosper, to reside in a favorable and socially acceptable method, despite the stress or misfortune that would normally involve the real possibility of a negative outcome." (Cyrulnik, 1999.) this means that when an individual goes through a hardship in their life, they continue to live typically instead of allowing it to impact their lives in a bad method.
One crucial point that the book Invitation to Lifespan Psychology brought up was that "difficulty should be considerable" in order for a person to be considered resilient.
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(Berger, 2010.) for that reason, when discussing resilience, the problem that an individual has to overcome need to be major/life-changing for it to be considered resilience when it is overcome. While support may have an impact on how resilient an individual can be, it is their nature that truly identifies this.
Cyrulnik provided an example of how 2 hundred kids were at "severe adult and social threat." (Cyrulnik, 1999. Out of those 200 children, 130 of them had serious mental and feeling problems in their lives years later on. Nevertheless, that left 70 kids that went on to lead completely regular lives.
If this were to be looked at from the perspective of nurture being the key role in how resilient a child will be, it hardly makes sense. All 200 of these kids were in the same abusive type lifestyles; they were all nurtured the same. If it were nurture that determined how resilient a child will be, then it should have been closer to 200 kids that ended up being greatly negatively impacted later in life. 5% of the kids went on to lead normal lives. They were not nurtured to do so. It was in their very nature to continue to lead a positively normal life, so how they were nurtured could not affect that. Studies have shown that the ability for a child to make friends and learn new things can impact how resilient a child is.
Berger stated in Invitation to Lifespan Psychology: “Another key aspect of resilience is whether or not a stressed child can develop friends, activities, and skills. (Berger, 2010. ) The social skills of a person is strongly dependent on their genes. In a study covered by CNN, they stated: “People who have two "G" variants of this oxytocin receptor gene tend to have better social skills and higher self-esteem. ” (CNN, 2011 “Is empathy in our genes? ” Retrieved from http://www. cnn. com/2011/11/15/health/empathy-genes/index. html). This is important because, as Berger stated, the ability to make friends is a huge part of a child’s ability to become resilient.
As CNN suggested, social skills are genetic, which leads to the idea that the ability to be resilient is linked to a person’s nature, and the better their genes are regarding social skills, the better the chance they have to become resilient. Not only are social skills hugely a part of the nature of a person, the need to interact with other people is deeply rooted in human nature. Cyrulnik gave the example of Michel, who spent three weeks in a camp during WWII after spending six months in hiding. (Cyrulnik, 1999.
One might assume that a child would become very unhappy and depressed in a war camp, but Michel became thrilled, and felt as if he were at a party. This is because he had very little human interaction while he was in hiding, and he was finally able to interact with people when he was sent to the camp. He was resilient after his time in camp, able to move on with his life and not allow what happened to him to have a negative influence over his life. It was his human nature of needed contact with people and interaction that changed his whole perspective on his ordeal.
He was nurtured well enough when in hiding, but he was miserable. It was his inborn nature that saved him because of the much-needed human interaction, which illustrated how it was his nature that was able to cause him to be resilient, and not the way that he was nurtured. Nurture will always impact people, but it is nature that impacts the lives and resilience of people the most. Cyrulnik describes multiple examples which help to illustrate this idea, such as the case of Michel. Resilience is what keeps people together when they have an intense struggle. Nature impacts the strength of that resilience.
Psychology Resilience Paper. (2016, Sep 21). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/psychology-resilience-paper-essay
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