In the latest issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens, writes: "...one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there's one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction I once used to: in particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that "whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger"".
But to examine this dictum of Nietzsche as if it was either only true or false is not particularly useful - at best in my view it's a conversation starter - what do we mean by stronger? And what does it mean to talk about things that kill us? Does this dictum refer to the physical or the psychological? Are some people left stronger but not others? If so what makes the difference?
The picture is more complicated. Often people do report becoming stronger. But not in every case do they become stronger. And often the new strength comes at great cost. Sometimes the new strength is later revealed to have been little more that an illusion that helped at the time - a form of denial - a way of coping.
The title of my new book is "What Doesn't Kill Us" - deliberately taking only the first part of the dictum - thus opening this conversation with the reader as to whether and in what way trauma makes for being stronger.
In the book I put forward my understanding that people can sometimes change in ways that are psychologically beneficial through their struggle with adversity and the painful emotions of posttraumatic stress.
There are some things that people can do to help them cope effectively and to maximize their chances of recovery from posttraumatic stress and to achieve benefits, but in no way would I advocate the glib assertion that trauma always leads to becoming stronger or that it should be expected of everyone.
Returning to Christopher Hitchens's article, Grayson Carter in his editorial notes that in Hitchens's argument against the dictum there is an irony - and that is that although the cancer may have enfeebled Hitchens's body, his mind and talent seem to have emerged unscathed and even stronger. Maybe this is little more than wishful thinking in the face of Hitchens's suffering - I hope not and that Hitchens continues to be able to write and think for a long while yet and that somehow there is a truth to Nietzsche's dictum for him.
What Doesn't Kill Us: The New Psychology of Posttraumatic Growth. http://www.whatdoesntkillus.com