Boris Cyrulnik (Bordeaux, 1937) has dedicated his life to explaining how people can recover after trauma. His woke him up one night, when he was barely six years old. Four armed German officers surrounded his bed and detained him. It took him a while to understand the reason. He didn't even know very well what the word Jew meant, he says in his book Save yourself, life awaits you. “Flashlight in one hand, revolver in the other, felt hat, dark glasses, collar of the coat turned up… So this is how one dresses when he wants to kill a child,” she writes.
But they didn't kill him, they didn't even hold him for long. Cyrulnik was hiding from the Gestapo for the next few years. His parents suffered worse fate, both were deported to Auschwitz. He didn't see them again. He escaped from Bordeaux and went to work on a farm using an assumed name while France continued to be occupied by the Nazis. All these events pushed him to study neuropsychiatry, the science of the soul, as he himself defines it. “When a scientist chooses to study a topic, he often does so based on his own experience,” he explains in a video call. He did it to understand what happened to him, but also to rebel against it. “After the war they told me: you don't have a family, you haven't gone to school, you're a lost cause. So I opposed that prophecy.”
This ethologist and neuropsychiatrist has achieved worldwide fame for being considered one of the fathers of resilience, a concept that he defines as the ability to overcome trauma. He is an unofficial advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron, for whom he analyzes everything from the needs of kindergartens to the extension of paternity leave. He is also a prolific writer, with more than 20 books dedicated to delving into the concept of resilience from a humanistic and scientific approach. In the last, The sport that heals us (Gedisa publishing house), reflects on the social role of play, physical exercise and the spectacularization of sport.
According to Cyrulnik, sport can help us heal wounds. “There are issues that are difficult to face, there are traumas that the patient cannot talk about at a certain moment, but they can be overcome with sport,” she points out. For this reason, in his study groups, he explains, there was always a neurologist, a psychologist, a biologist and an athlete. He also, on occasions, brought in a musician or a comedian, since these are also disciplines with which trauma can be faced. “They were very heterogeneous groups,” he acknowledges with a smile.
After the war they told me: you don't have a family, you haven't gone to school, you're a lost cause. So I opposed that prophecy
Boris Cyrulnik
This is understood anywhere, but in the most conflictive contexts, where many kids flee violence through sport, is where its power as a resilience tool is most evident. Cyrulnik has worked in the favelas of Brazil and in the most marginal neighborhoods of Colombia. “The children overcame very harsh contexts, and the musicians and soccer players were the role models,” he reflects. “It is a very useful tool in crime prevention.”
Repression in these contexts, he explains, had the opposite effect: the neighborhood hero was the one who confronted the police. But with campaigns that promoted sports, the story changed; the hero became the best footballer, the best runner. In both cases, in the end, the same mechanism is used, since “a human group, a neighborhood, a town, needs a hero, who represents it and has the function of revaluing the group.”
Neighborhood and professional sports
When we are little we play, like many mammals play, explains Cyrulnik in his book. It is a way to train for future scenarios. To train hunting, flight, war. “But from the moment young people develop the capacity for fiction, pleasure changes its source. There is no longer pleasure in running, but in running faster than the other,” he explains. This is how sport begins, creating a framework of conventions. A set of rules to get the game on track. That is, the ethologist believes, what differentiates us from animals.
The Greeks were the first to codify these rules. And in associating the beauty of the bodies with the practice of sport with the Olympic Games. In fact, athletes often competed naked and soaked in oil. Beauty was part of a social discourse. And sport was a vehicle to display it. This may find some echo in the way the sport is currently conceived, with footballers who exhibit their bodies as another advertising claim; or with crowded gyms in a utilitarian, individualistic and practical vision of exercise. Sport understood as an end to achieve a canonical body, not as a means to socialize and have fun.
A human group, a neighborhood, a town, needs a hero, who represents it and has the function of revaluing the group.
Boris Cyrulnik
Cyrulnik prefers team sports, those that have a more social component, as he believes that minds are only shaped together. But he also warns that physical activity is always recommended. “We have to play sports, any sport, because we live in a sedentary society. Otherwise, we can spend the whole day sitting at the table or behind a screen,” he laments.
He also points out that grassroots sports are better than professional sports. He says of the first “that it is part of the culture” while the second “is part of the spectacle.” He believes that there is a social component in this, that the game does not end on the field, but in the bar. Cyrulnik understands that it is a way of creating bonds, moralizing and fictionalizing small epics without the need for violence. The healing properties of neighborhood pachangas involve moving, socializing and feeling part of a group. And they would be superior to consuming the exploits of others with cathodic passivity. No matter how much this can make us feel part of a group, or that it also has a social component thanks to a common interest.
His objections to professional sports go further and become a criticism of voracious capitalism. “Starting in the 20th century, the organizations that created sporting events began to be structured as a company,” he points out. “Today everything is very spectacularized and everything ends up at the service of marketing.”
And resilience became pop
When Cyrulnik began to talk about resilience, in the nineties, he had to repeat the word due to the incomprehension of his interlocutors. Today it is impossible to escape it, it has become a totemic word repeated by politicians, influencers and entrepreneurs. “I have experienced this with great pleasure, and also with a little anxiety,” she acknowledges.
The term has its origins in physics. It is the ability of a material to resist an impact and return to its original shape. It became a perfect metaphor. A viral idea. A search for him offers more than 47 million results on Google, more than 10,000 books on Amazon. When a concept reaches such a level of popularity, it is possible that its meaning begins to be diluted, that the initial idea is perverted to resignify it at the will of the person who pronounces it. Or to sell t-shirts.
Some politicians use the word resilience with completely different connotations. It's almost a contradiction, they use it to tell people: 'solve your problems by yourself'
Boris Cyrulnik
“I think that someone with their feet on the ground, working class, can understand very well what resilience means,” the neuropsychiatrist concedes. “But people far from this reality, some politicians, for example, can use it with totally different connotations. It's almost a contradiction, they use it to tell people: 'solve your problems yourself'. That is the opposite of resilience, which is a concept that is based on the need of the other.”
Resilience is based on cooperation. In the idea that our brain is a sculpture, and that, despite the blows, we can re-mold it, return it to its original shape, with the help of another. And this goes for sport and for any other field. That is why the ethologist warns of the drift of an increasingly individualistic society. “It is an illusion to think that you will understand yourself through isolation. It is a Cartesian thought, an individualistic idea. When I worked in Japan they told me that this vision is very typical of the West,” Cyrulnik argues.
The author concludes by praising cooperation, even if it is to compete or to confront ideas. He claims the discussion based on respect. He does it starting from a sports simile, but then extrapolates his speech to something bigger. “I need another person to stimulate the brain, to expand knowledge. To understand myself I have to argue with someone,” he points out. “That is why we need rituals to live in society. Political, conversational, and behavioral rituals to contain our competitiveness and our anger. To confront narratives and ideologies.”
When we abandon these rituals, he points out, brutality makes its way. In these years, Cyrulnik has not been able to understand the mechanisms that push a society to war. And his incomprehension does not only refer to the past. “I also can't understand what is being heard right now,” he says in reference to the current wars. “They are the same discussions. They are pronounced in other languages, but they are the same arguments.” What Cyrulnik has begun to understand is how people can survive these events. And sport seems to play a key role in all of this.
You can follow EL PAÍS Health and Wellbeing in Facebook, x and instagram.
#Boris #Cyrulnik #neuropsychiatrist #traumas #patient #talk #overcome #sport