Bio-cultural determinants of resilience.
Boris Cyrulnik


Resilience is a process that makes us capable of another kind of development after a trauma.
A psycho-ecological perspective of resilience could be described with three sensorial niches.
The first sensorial niche takes place in the womb where the mother’s stress is transmitted to
the fetus by cortisol and catecholamines, consequently, the baby has some factors of
vulnerability imprinted in its biological memory.
The second sensorial niche lays in the mother’s arms where the main figure of attachment is
expressed through low frequencies of her voice and eye contacts, a maternal figure may be
surrounded with a second parent, once called the “father”.
The third sensorial niche is rooted in the family’s words and its cultural narratives. When the
internal working model is congruent with surrounding narratives, the child feels a coherent
protective factor. However, when there are discrepancies between these narratives, the child
will develop a split-mind which is a factor of vulnerability


It is therefore necessary for clinicians to give up linear explanations and to think in terms of
beneficial or harmful integrated causalities