Operationalizing the uncertain: some clinical reflections

Abstract

The problems created for clinicians by much of the resiliency research, particularly the fine detail of what may constitute risk (under what circumstances for which individuals and what can be seen as mediating or protective factors), is that the findings often operate at high levels of generality. They may therefore be difficult to use in thinking about family well-being in other than general ways. Much of the work on social adversity falls into this category, for example. However, such socially descriptive research may be of more value in training those who would normally take a medical or organic perspective on illness or criminality. The goal in resiliency research is not to develop a list of static risk and protective factors but to look at how experiences are mediated by context and developmental level. The focus shifts from individual traits to interactional processes that must be under-stood in ecological and developmental context. Family therapists know that "family" itself is a construction under continuous review and therefore the ways in which conception, childbirth and child-rearing will take place in the future will be more various than the constructs organizing resilience research in many spheres have allowed to date.