ESSAY
After tragedy, most can rebound and enjoy happy lives.


After watching his timber company crash to pieces, literally before his eyes, the narrator in the 1964 movie“Zorba the Greek”hangs his head for a few moments. Then he turns to his friend with a simple request.

“Teach me to dance, will you, Zorba?”In recent months, three prominent European businessmen have had something like the opposite reaction to their own economic crises. A London financier threw himself in front of a train in September. A French aristocrat tied to Bernard L.Madoff (accused of operating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme) stabbed himself in his Manhattan office in December. And in early January, the body of a German industrialist turned up by the railroad tracks near his house. All were ruled suicides.

People’s responses to loss can differ wildly. And the depth of this economic collapse has unceremoniously stripped thousands of far more than money: reputations have reversed; friendships have turned sour; families have fractured.

Yet experts say that the recent spate of suicides, while undeniably sad, amounts to no more than anecdotal, personal tragedy. The vast majority of people can and sometimes do weather humiliation and loss without suffering any psychological wounds, and they do it by drawing on resources that they barely know they have.

“The fundamental point is that most people are extremely resilient, and we have shown this in studies of a wide variety of events? losing a spouse, a marriage, even a bodily function,”said George Bonanno, a professor of psychology at Columbia University.

In a recently completed study of 16,000 people, tracked for much of their lives, Dr.Bonanno, along with Anthony Mancini of Columbia and Andrew Clark of the Paris School of Economics, found that some 60 percent of people whose spouse died showed no change in self-reported well-being. Among people who’d been divorced, more than 70 percent showed no change in mental health. Many of those in the study who suffered serious distress? depending on the loss? rebounded psychologically, with time.

In any group of people, moreover, there will be a handful who are exceptional, who find some release or hidden opportunity in a seemingly devastating loss? a kind of Zorba response. In one study in England, psychologists found a bricklayer who, after being paralyzed, became an academic and now says the injury was the best thing that ever happened to him. Other research has recorded significant improvements in the lives of some people after they lose a loved one.

If some Wall Street executives seem curiously unmoved by public outrage (Mr.Madoff?), it’s likely that they’re drawing on the same psychological skills that have gotten them through previous crises, whether a divorce or the death of a friend. The ability to ignore an ominous cloud and concentrate on what needs to get done today? to“compartmentalize”? is a psychological skill that doctors, soldiers and others need in order to do their jobs. It’s an absolute requirement for any serious trader or high-end investor.

In the United States, where reinvention is considered a birthright, a certain type of loss? perhaps especially a“paper”loss, of net worth rather than irreplaceable life? may even seem an invitation to something better.

Or in the case of those who, like Mr.Madoff, had been living a treacherous, secret life, it could bring something even more precious: relief.“You’d think someone in that position,”Dr. Bonanno said,“would be almost delighted to be free of living that way.”


BENEDICT CAREY