Resilience: What Does It Mean and Where Does It Come From?

with 

Clara Mucci, PhD

 

Course Description:

A physical concept, “resilience ” describes the ability of a material being stretched beyond its limits and then being able to return to the original state again. Applied to humans, the mysterious  concept of resilience describes the ability of a person, having overcome  severe difficulties thanks to unexpected inner resources. It defines the human ability to resist adversity and/or to respond, without too much damage, to trauma of various intensities, both interpersonal trauma, and trauma stemming from natural catastrophes or involuntary accidents, which has different consequences (Mucci 2013, 2018, 2022).  Yet human beings differ in the responses to severe traumatic experiences.  Some people go through the most adverse experiences and are capable of struggling, fighting back  and keeping hope and maintaining healthy attitudes and capacity to care for one’s own and other’s  life,  while others suffer from extreme consequences, to the point of becoming ill and losing the capacity to go back to previous health and personality qualities?

Where does the difference in the response lie? Are there exquisite biological features that explain the differences, or is resilience based on a sort of mental strength that we need to better define and clarify? Is resilience  innate or acquired?  And if so, how and why?

In examining these  questions in this intensive five weeks  course, Dr.  Clara Mucci defines the biological features that create a better resilience to trauma and  explores where the vulnerability to traumatic response  may come from. In addition, we will analyse which biosocial conditions  contribute to and determine the likelihood for optimal response and  restoration of health, and which relational and socio-cultural elements create post-traumatic effects in both individuals and collectivities.

Finally, the course will give hints as to how to implement and create better resilience in individuals and families  and how to reduce post-traumatic effects, through therapy and other community interventions.

Learning Objectives:

1. To understand and evaluate levels of traumatizations in individuals, for clinical purposes.
2. Learn how to recognise patterns of long term trauma including intergenerational ones and modalities of psychological transmission
3. Learn how to enhance resilience capacity in traumatised individuals and groups , and  learn how to intervene in the treatment.

 

Course Outline:

Lecture 1. October 16 th, 2022.  Time : 12:00 , Noon –2.30PM

In this first lecture, we will investigate the biological reasons for better or worse response to traumatization. How is resilience created neurobiologically? Is the response of the HPA axis, the neurobiological stress system, innate? And if not so, when and how is it created? We will consider trauma at any developmental level, starting in utero.first investigations of what trauma means will be necessary: what does DSM-5 define as trauma and what does PTSD means?  Is PTSD the only way we can define the neurobiological and mental response to traumatic stress or do we need to consider different definitions? We will contrast PTSD with Complex PTSD as in PDM-2 and in ICD-11 and see differences and applications to case histories and treatment. How to create secure attachment and affect regulation in the subject.

 

Lecture 2. October 23 th, 2022. Time :12-:00, Noon — 2:30pm

Differences about symptoms and consequences of different traumatizations: trauma of human agency versus trauma due to natural catastrophes. Three levels of trauma of human agency. Dissociative symptoms and structures as signs of trauma of human agency. Responses to this kind of trauma: symptoms and distorted patterns in evaluating reality. How affect dysregulations is created in individuals and how to enhance the capacity for better regulation and to limit symptomatology.

 

Lecture 3. October 30, 2022. Time 12:00, Noon – – 2.30 pm

Secure insecure and disorganized attachment; post traumatic effects in the long term. Cumulative traumatizations and the treatment of trauma of human agency. PTSD and Complex PTSD.

How to distinguish and diagnose levels of traumatizations even intergenerationally.

 

Lecture 4. November 6, time 12, Noon – – 2.30 PM

Transmission of trauma through generations. Studies on three generations of post-traumatic disorders. The dynamics of transmissions and the neurobiology of transmission. Resilience as an acquired capacity due to early experience and lack of intergenerationally transmitted vulnerabilities. ACE research and reflections on resilient bodies and ways to fight physical illness not only psychologically transmitted illness.

 

Lecture 5. November 1 th, 2022: Time 12:00, Noon —2.30PM

Psychosomatic illnesses of traumatic origins. Neurobiological and psychodynamic research. What does it mean to survive trauma and to thrive after it; resilience and forgiveness or overcoming the negative identification with one’s tragic story.

 

About Presenter:

Clara Mucci, PhD is a graduate of Emory University in English Literature and Psychoanalysis,  and Genoa University, Italy, and University of Chieti, Italy as well Specialization in Psychoanalytic  Psychotherapy, (SIPP) in Milan, Italy She was a full professor  in English  Literature and is the expert in Shakespere.  She is currently a professor ,teachingDynamic Psychology atUniversity of Bergamo, Italy. Besides numerous international  professional group membership, she is  a faculty at Societa Italiana Psicoanalisis e Psicoterapia  -SandorFerenczi,Italian Society of Sandor Fernczi.