Cumulative Lifetime Adversity and Resilience | Aging In Action

by Jordan Stein

A recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology lends a fresh perspective to Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous quote, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

The authors of this article examined the relationship between cumulative lifetime adversity and human resilience. By analyzing a nationally representative sample of the population, the authors found that individuals who experienced a moderate amount of adversity during their lifetimes had higher levels of mental health and well-being than (a) people with an extensive history of adversity and (b) people without any history of adversity.
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Article Reviewed:
Seery, M. D., Holman, E. A., Cohen-Silver, R. (2010). Whatever does not kill us: Cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 1025-1041.

The Tales They Tell - NYTimes.com

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By KAREN STABINER

In a way, this is a familiar story: A dedicated teacher exhorts her pupils to reach deep within themselves for intimate details of their personal struggles, knowing that sharing these truths will have a profound impact on their lives.

The difference here is that most of the students are old enough to be their teacher’s mother or father; the average age in Mary Jane Roberts’s writing class is about 80. The jostling among her most devoted students for front-row seats “is always some traffic jam,” she said, often involving walkers and wheelchairs.

For 18 years, Ms. Roberts, 62, has taught a class she calls “Autobiography” on Saturday mornings at Emeritus College, a program for older adults at Santa Monica College, on the beach edge of Los Angeles. She has worked with two distinct generations of students — the first ones came of age during World War II, while her current pupils hail from the far safer world of suburban sprawl.

This is a “performance” class, more about students sharing what they have written and less about writing style. Ms. Roberts believes that what matters to her students is the chance to take stock in a safe setting, among peers. She still recalls a Dachau survivor who never spoke of his experience in class until the day he got up to read an account of the day the camp was liberated.

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