Resilience means forming oneself out of the annihilation of form

Evidence

Resilience is indeed a logic of self-formation starting from the annihilation of form. It appears as a psychical process of construction, or rather of reconstruction and self-reconfiguration, developed simultaneously against and with the threat of destruction. In studying the cases of certain ”problem children”—children held back, mistreated, sick—Cyrulnik reports that some of them developed processes of resilience, possibilities for a becoming on the basis of the effacement of every future, for a transformation of the trace or mark, and for a historical transdifferentiation. It is as if, in order to return to themselves after the destructive trials they had suffered, these children had to create their own constancy, to self-generate their homeostasis. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 251

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines resilience as self-formation from annihilation of form — self-generated homeostasis, the core of plasticity.
• ADDENDUM: Bears directly on the sacrifice/harm and identity-formation threads; also relevant to how trauma survivors rebuild — could extend the grafting article’s metaphor of growth from wounding.
• XREF: connects to: Resilience marks irreversible psychic change, not a return to prior equilibrium — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 3800; Resilience means regaining stability after disaster, not mere robustness — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 4592; Resilience forms a subject between biology and social context — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 3798 (+2 more)