Maria Callas, «the divine», the voice of the century if we were only allowed to choose one, was a child languishing in a New York foster home, overwhelmed by emotional deprivation... Georges Brassens, a misguided boy, owes to his high school teacher the discovery of the poetry that would give a new outlet to his rebelliousness... These cases of resilience are famous. All of them were able to start again after having suffered a traumatic experience during childhood. Boris Cyrulnik offers us an alternative and reasonably optimistic vision to the current theories about childhood trauma and its harmful, even irreparable, effects. Through examples of famous people, and also of patients from his own clinical practice, he shows us the existence of a self-protection mechanism that, most of the time «cushioning» the shock of trauma, is set in motion from the earliest childhood, first through the weaving of emotional bonds, and later through the expression of emotions. Because of the strong links with the world around them, children subjected to maltreatment and abuse can draw on a kind of biopsychic «reserve» that allows them to draw strength from weakness. But this is only possible, above all, if the social environment is willing to help them. It is not by chance that Boris Cyrulnik was the first person in France to take an interest in the phenomenon of resilience. When he was only six years old, he managed to escape from a concentration camp, from which the other members of his family, Russian Jewish emigrants, never returned. The young orphan then began a period of wandering through centers and foster families. When he was eight years old, the French public assistance put him in a farm and almost made him an illiterate farm boy; but he became, however, a doctor determined to understand his own will to live.