'I put myself in standby mode': what makes a survivor?

A resilience research centre is investigating why some people recover from adversity, while others crumble

Standing in a cold cell in a former East German secret police prison, Gilbert Furian explains how he approached his imprisonment here in 1985. "I tried to numb myself," he says. " thought that if I reacted the way my heart wanted to, I would go crazy. So I put myself in a kind of standby mode."

Furian was working for a company that produced heating facilities when he was arrested at the age of 40. He recalls the fear he felt as four Stasi agents dressed in plain clothing turned up at his office and took him away. Though they didn't specify the charge at the time, Furian knew it must be about the interviews he had conducted with punks in East Berlin a few months earlier.