The resilience, the ability to withstand and rebound from adversity, is a concept that in the last years is playing an important role in the study of family processes. In this paper, families that include a member with a severe psychopathology like schizophrenia and show a good functioning have been compared with normal
ones. Some characteristics of families with a schizophrenic member who affected positively the course of that disorder were found surprisingly similar to the ones of normal families that show more healthy processes. The study of these analogies could help to better understand the family functioning, to evaluate the weight of the family in the course of psychiatric disorders and medical diseases, and to plan
effective treatments.