Michel Delage is a psychiatrist and former head of department at the army teaching hospital of Toulon, France. He is the author of La Résilience familiale (2008).
Boris Cyrulnik, a neuro-psychiatrist, is the author of such bestsellers as De Chair et d’âme and Autobiographie d’un épouvantail. His works include Les nourritures affectives (1993), L’Ensorcellement du monde (1997), Un merveilleux malheur (1999), Les Vilains Petits Canards (2001), Le Murmure des fantômes (2003), Parler d'amour au bord du gouffre (2004), Ecole et Résilience (2007), Je me souviens (2010) and Et Mourir de dire. La Honte (2010).

When confronted with a traumatic event, most people first turn to their families. But the earliest works on attachment, by John Bowlby, in 1949, showed that even if some families have an undeniably protective effect, others, on the contrary, hinder the recovery of resilient development.
What is the impact of trauma on the family? Under what conditions does family resilience persist?
In this collective work, psychiatrists analyse affective interactions in family systems. They explain the amazing variety of reactions that can arise in the aftermath of a traumatic event and the possibility of developing resilient responses.

• The notion of resilience, introduced in psychology by Boris Cyrulnik, designates the capacity to overcome trials and trauma in order to resume development. In several of his works, Cyrulnik has honed the definition of what he calls “resilience tutors”, i.e. all the figures of attachment that enable a subject, whether young or not so young, to overcome trauma.

• This book delves further into the notion of resilience, examining it in the light of the family group.