Life stories of three child maltreatment survivors illustrate how resilience is fostered by various protective factors. Protective factors include personal characteristics or skills (e.g., precocious maturity, dissociation of affect), generic life circumstances (e.g., good health, social welfare services), and abuse-specific factors (e.g.,…

This paper reviews the limited research on children and war and concludes that the dynamic interaction among five processes within an ecological framework is most important: (1) the child's psychobiological makeup, (2) disruption of the family unit, (3) breakdown of community, (4) ameliorating effects of culture, and (5) the intensity, suddenness,…

This paper presents the individual's life span trajectory as a unique construction within a unique context for that individual's interactional and adaptive self-regulatory strategies. Issues of adaptive coordination between caregiver and infant are discussed, and five propositions concerning individual development summarize the work. (Author/JDD)

Potential long-term effects of the trauma of severe sexual abuse on a child's sense of living in his/her body and in the world are explored. Trauma and dissociation are analyzed and linked to a posttraumatic sense of personal identity. Then dissociation, multiple personality disorder, eating disorders, somatization disorder, self-mutilation, and…