A new psychology of war: The science of resilience and the militarization of positive psychology

‘Resilience’ is reshaping the science and politics of trauma in the twenty-first century. This chapter traces the history of this concept, from when it entered psychology in the 1960s until the US military adopted it in the 2000s. Resilience originally belonged to developmental psychopathology, not traumatology. But the effects of 9/11 defied scientific expectations, and psychologists began to argue that it was necessary to rethink how the mind reacts to such extreme experiences. As the war in Iraq deteriorated and a mental-health crisis loomed within the armed forces, the US Army asked ‘positive psychology’ to increase the resilience of its soldiers. But in doing so, the Army overlooked important conclusions from half a century of psychological research on resilience.