Sustaining and Reframing Vulnerability and Connection

Although it may appear to represent an oxymoron within classical resiliency studies to argue that the more we can sustain and maintain (healthy) vulnerability in boys and young males the more resilient they will become and remain, that is precisely the argument of this chapter. Indeed it remains at the heart of the deconstruction of our classic model of stoic separation-based models for healthy boyhood for which the hope for genuine resiliency for young (and, for that matter older) males may lie (Pollack, 1995a, 1995b, 1998, 1999, 2000).