There is a law of the wild: “Never underestimate the intelligence, expertise and resilience of any being whom you believe to be smaller or less important than you.”
Invited earlier this year to attend an online presentation by the Lithuanian Psychoanalytical Society, which focused on the impact of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Ian McCallum was inspired to examine and reflect on the meaning of the word “resilience”.
Learning of the close historical association between Lithuania and Ukraine, he came to recognise that the word, far from being a mere concept, describes both a process and a phenomenon of immense psychological, ecological and evolutionary significance, not least in analytical therapy.
Derived from the Latin resilire, “to recoil” or “to leap back”, the word was originally used to describe the physical capacity of a substance to return to its earlier shape following damage or deformation. It is unclear when the word acquired its metaphorical and, later, psychological meaning: the ability of a being to withstand, adapt to and recover from adversity.
Although often linked to the doggedness of endurance, and the two are not mutually exclusive, resilience has more of an “elastic” feel to it: an athleticism, and with it a sense of defiance, adaptability and recovery. It is in this light that Ian has come to recognise resilience as central to C.G. Jung’s notion of psychological individuation, a process not without profound biological and evolutionary underpinnings, and as a capacity we share with all living beings.
In this presentation, starting from the premise that adversity is guaranteed in human life, Ian will explore the deeper significance of resilience and, not least, its relevance to the life-saving myths, poems and stories of the human capacity to “hang in”, sometimes against all odds.
Resilience, he suggests, is a psychological imperative.
[Image credit: Photo by Geranimo on Unsplash]
