About Resilience: Workshops in Palestine

Introduction

Originally, the word « resilience » was used in physics and engineering and was defined as the capacity of a material to absorb energy when it is deformed elastically and then, upon unloading to have this energy recovered (resistance capacity of a material). The concept was used in a psychological context first by American psycho sociologists who developed it especially between 1960 and 1980. It was “discovered” and worked at (or polished up) some years later in France where the publications of Boris Cyrulnik triggered off a strong interest for this “antidote against fatalism” that allows not to surrender in front of situations which appears to be especially difficult to overcome. If publications are often focused on individual life trajectories, very quickly it appeared that the concept might be useful in a much larger context, as it is usually considered that there are three levels of resilience factors: individual resources of the individual, resources offered by the family and resources offered by the group or the community. Through the impetus given by Boris Cyrulnik, French researchers tried not only to analyze factors of resilience but also to draw information to develop strategies, concrete actions in the field of prevention in mental health. The names of Jacques Lecomte, Stephen Vanistendael (International Catholic Bureau for Childhood), Michel Manciaux are associated to this trend.

The current proposal to organize a series of events (conferences and workshops) on the concept of resilience in Palestine has several objectives:

1. To understand better a mechanism that one can observe in a vivid way in the Palestinian society, despite all the difficulties
2. To bring examples of resilience, not only at the individual level but also at the collective level, using a comparative and multidisciplinary approach
3. To analyze the factors involved and the limitations of the concept
4. To analyze in what way the cooperation activities in mental health of the French Consulate and the French Development Agency in Palestine contribute to the reinforcement of resilience.

Calling on different complementary “grids” or approaches (psychoanalytical, historical, cultural), as well as calling on French and Palestinian researchers and practitioners from different disciplines should allow a better understanding of the concept.

Palestine offers, definitely against its will, a propitious field to assess the pertinence of the concept of resilience: whether it is at the level of the emerging state, at the level of the community (the town, the village, the refugee camp…), the family or the individual, there is an accumulation of challenges and hardships when at the same time opportunities and sources of support are melding.

After 58 years of occupation, two “Intifadas”, the situation in Palestine is especially worrying. To the number of dead, injured, destroyed houses, confiscated dunums of land, uprooted olive trees, families without financial resources, one should add the daily confrontation to violence, to collective punishment, to confrontation to the reign of the arbitrary, of the no-rights.
All this cannot leave the individual, the family, the society untouched/intact. Research has demonstrated the impact of traumas. But some studies (especially in the Palestinian context) do not succeed completely to differentiate between the descriptive level of the traumatizing experiences and the analyses of the consequences on the individual and the community. The concept of PTSD has been extensively used to express the destabilizing/destructive effect of the context at the individual level. Figures/statistics are indeed important but should not make us forget that a high score on a PTSD scale is neither predictive of the ability/inability to function, nor an indicator of the necessity to look for professional help, and even less especially so when one is in a situation of collective trauma.             

Faced with a tendency to “psychiatricize” the situation, the concept of resilience might help to focus more on what is “salutogenic” in the Palestinian family and society. Starting from the observation that some individuals, severely traumatized, are able to overcome their suffering, to cope, instead on insisting on the risk factors the concept will help us look for factors (“the stakes of resilience”) that could reinforce the ability to “rebounce”.

History is the natural framework of any study of a social phenomenon like resilience, as it conceals lots of variables (social, cultural, national, regional..). It will for example be interesting to illustrate the theme of resilience in a comparative way, by looking at resilience in France, at the end of the first and second World Wars (through Proust – Le temps retrouvé- and Sartre –Les chemins de la liberté-) and resilience in Palestine after the uprising of 1936, the first Intifada and the second Intifada (what about the concept of “Sumud” / resilience?). To look at resilience under the angle of history and culture will allow to understand a phenomenon which has different expressions, can appear and later disappear.

The link between resilience, art and creativity will also be considered as an important perspective.

Speakers will be asked to look at the pertinence of the use of the concept in general and in the Palestinian situation in particular.

Format
2 conferences and 2 workshops:

1. Opening conference in March 2007: General presentation (history of the concept, definition), factors of resilience, illustrations through cases (individual and collective)
2. Workshop in June 2007: Exchange of experiences focused on fostering the resilience of children.
3. Workshop in September 2007: Resilience and art/creativity, resilience and spirituality.
4. Closing conference in December 2007: “Resilience: Challenges and limits”. Resilience and memory.

Video conference can be used.
Exposition: paintings by patients from Ste Anne psychiatric hospital in Paris + pictures of psychiatric patients and by psychiatric patients at the Bethlehem hospital.