Eleanor Clarke Slagle's Case Study: Who Rise Above Adversity?

This week and next week’s writing assignment will be split into two parts based on Eleanor Clarke Slagle’s lecture which examines the lives of those who have endured extraordinary hardships and their ability to rise above. Slagle’s case study poses the question: Who rises above adversity? Most of the data use in her study comes from personal experiences of those who have been faced with terminal illness, abuse, impoverishment, and incarceration. First I would like to provide a brief background on one of the earliest pioneers of occupational therapy. Eleanor Clarke Slagle was a social worker that directed occupational therapy research for the state of Illinois and organized a therapy program for the state’s mental hospitals. She demonstrated the first large-scale occupational therapy program and also founded an annual training institute for state therapists that became a model program throughout the country. Webster’s dictionary defines occupational therapy as a form of therapy for those recuperating from physical or mental illness that encourages rehabilitation through the performance of activities required in daily life. This paper is intended to demonstrate the interaction among a person’s inner

What is still unclear is how some manage to marshal the necessary resources to rise above, while others do not. What enabled Nelson Mandela to endure 27 years of imprisonment, to become South Africa’s first black president in 1994? One can conclude that resilience is not all of one piece. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) suggested that such skills do not come all at once. Rather, they are acquired through a developmental process—a process of selecting from available alternatives and having persons reinforce the skills that are necessary to make coping