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Resilience: “Ordinary Magic,” Development of the Issues and Current Status of Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2022

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Summary

Using the term ordinary, everyday magic Masten called the mechanism protecting or modifying the impact of difficult, traumatic experiences on the individual. Numerous studies on resilience in the last 30 years (Masten, Powell, 2003) allow to organize the factors protecting against trauma, grouping them into three areas: individual, family and environmental. Thanks to this classification, the model in the form of a two-dimensional grid allows for systematic verification. Individual factors interact and/or compensate, and the circular paradigm is used to understand their influence. The beginnings of research on resilience concerned mainly the period of childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, currently the research (Ostrowski et al., 2018) is conducted with the participation of people in every developmental period and various life situations. Luthar et al. (2000) distinguish emotional responses of individuals in case of risk factors, which translate into their cognitive and behavioral functioning, which are classified as resilience. Individuals maintain functioning much better than it might be expected or maintain good functioning despite difficult or traumatic experiences, or return quickly to well-being. The analysis of contemporary research (David-Ferdon et al., 2016; Vannucci et al., 2019) allows us to assign a preventive role to the development of resilience in children and adolescents, and the emphasis is on shaping the family and social environment towards healthy development. The clamping of healthy development are the features of the family and social environment, which include, among others: healthy communication, maintaining family rituals, cultivating social contacts.

When analyzing the terminology related to the issue of mental resilience, it should be noted that a certain group of concepts was already known in science, e.g. in psychopathology. It applies to such terms as: adversity, risk factor or vulnerability. However, the concept of resilience has now been significantly enriched with a range of new terms, among others, such as: protective factor, resource, compensatory factor (Wright, Masten, Narayan, 2013). Due to the concept of resilience and its increasingly common application, reflection on pathomechanisms of functioning and a salutogenetic approach have gained new research inspirations. Resilience is therefore a perfect example of the synthesis of knowledge about the context in which an individual, when confronted with various types of risk factors, can strengthen personal immune resources.

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Publisher: Jagiellonian University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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