Resilience, the human capacity to recover from trauma and to overcome hardship, can come into play at any age.

Following his earlier books about childhood and adulthood, Boris Cyrulnik describes and analyses here a number of cases of resilience that he has encountered either through his own practice or through the national and international networks on resilience that he has established.

Resilience in adults relies on the same conditions as it does in children: the victims must have the capacity to articulate suffering and they must be able to “weave” or “knit” their rebirth around someone else.

But because adults and children are different, these conditions will not be realised in the same manner. The author highlights some of the difficulties adults may encounter in “knitting” resilience and shows how to overcome them.

Written with the heartfelt intelligence and warmth for which the author is known, this book imparts a strong message of hope.

Boris Cyrulnik, a neurologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is one of the founders of human ethology. He is the author of numerous books published by Editions Odile Jacob, including Les Nourritures affectives, L'Ensorcellement du monde, Un merveilleux malheur, Les vilains petits canards and Le Murmure des fantômes.