support for the usefulness of interventions with individuals meeting PTSD criteria. Cognitive–behavioral treatments that aim to help traumatized individuals understand and manage the anxiety and fear associated with trauma-related stimuli have proved the most effective (Resick, 2001). Although outcome studies generally show few differences between treatments, there is some evidence for superior results with prolonged exposure therapy (e.g., Foa et al., 1999). The essential components of exposure treatment usually involve repeated confrontations with memories of the traumatic stressor (imaginal exposure) and with situations that evoke unrealistic fears (in vivo exposure; Zoellner, Fitzgibbons, & Foa, 2001). Ironically, the effectiveness of reliving traumatic experiences for individuals with PTSD may have helped blur the distinction between recovery and resilience. Researchers have made remarkably few attempts to distinguish subgroups within the broad category of individuals not showing PTSD. Resilient and recovering individuals are often lumped into a single category (e.g., King, King, Foy, Keane, & Fairbank, 1999; McFarlane & Yehuda, 1996). As with bereavement, however, when researchers do not address this distinction, they risk making the faulty assumption that resilient people must engage in the same coping processes as do exposed individuals who struggle with but eventually recover from more intense trauma symptoms. The possible untoward nature of this assumption is evidenced keenly in the often contentious debate about the appropriateness of psychological debriefing. Whereas genuinely traumatized individuals were once doubted as malingerers, the pendulum has recently swung so far in the opposite direction that many practitioners believe that virtually all individuals exposed to violent or life-threatening events should be offered and would benefit from at least some form of brief intervention. Critical incident stress debriefing was originally developed for relatively limited use as a brief group intervention to help mitigate psychological distress among emergency response personnel (Mitchell, 1983). Over time, however, debriefing has been applied individually and broadly (Mitchell & Everly, 2000) and sometimes, as after the recent September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (Miller, 2002), as a blanket intervention for virtually all exposed individuals. Critics of psychological debriefing argue, however, that such a broad application may pathologize normal reactions to adversity and thus may undermine natural resilience processes. Indeed, growing evidence shows that global applications of psychological debriefing are ineffective (Rose, Brewin, Andrews, & Kirk, 1999) and can impede natural recovery processes (Bisson, Jenkins, Alexander, & Bannister, 1997; Mayou, Ehlers, & Hobbs, 2000). An alternative form of early trauma intervention, recently proposed by Litz, Gray, Bryant, and Adler (2002), resonates with the distinction proposed here between resilience and recovery. Litz et al. argued that, while offering debriefing to all individuals exposed to a potentially traumatic event is misguided, some individuals would indeed benefit from early intervention. They proposed the development of initial screening practices for intervention with individuals who show possible risk factors (e.g., prior trauma, low social support, hyperarousal) for developing chronic PTSD. Implicit in this approach is the idea, central to the current article, that many individuals exposed to violent or life-threatening events will show a genuine resilience that should not be interfered with or undermined by clinical intervention. Point 2: Resilience Is Common Because research on acute and chronic grief and PTSD historically has dominated the literature on how adults cope with aversive life events, such reactions have generally come to be viewed as the norm. As I discuss below, bereavement theorists have been highly skeptical about individuals who do not show pronounced distress reactions or who display positive emotions following loss, assuming that such individuals are rare and suffer from pathological or dysfunctional forms of absent grief. Trauma theorists have been less suspicious about the absence of PTSD but have often ignored and underestimated resilience. A review of the available research on loss and violent or life-threatening events clearly indicates that the vast majority of individuals exposed to such events do not exhibit chronic symptom profiles and that many and, in some cases, the majority show the type of healthy functioning suggestive of the resilience trajectory. Resilience to Loss Bereavement theorists have typically viewed the absence of prolonged distress or depression following the death of an 22 January 2004 ● American Psychologist important friend or relative, often termed absent grief, as a rare and pathological response that results from denial or avoidance of the emotional realities of the loss. Bowlby (1980), for example, described the “prolonged absence of conscious grieving” (p. 138) as a type of disordered mourning and viewed the experience or expression of positive emotions during the early stages of bereavement as a form of defensive denial. Summarizing the first wave of bereavement research, Osterweis, Solomon, and Green (1984) concluded “that the