Growing pains: Commentary on the field of posttraumatic growth and hobfoll and colleagues' recent contributions to it

The field of research on benefit-finding and growth following traumatic experience lacks consensus with respect to some central conceptual questions, and a number of these issues are apparent in the research reported by Stevan Hobfoll and his colleagues. In this commentary I briefly discuss, and at times dispute, some of the assertions and assumptions in this target article that I believe reflect these broader issues, including that: psychosocial gains (or benefits) and psychological growth are equivalent, reporting gains (or benefits) represents maladaptive efforts at coping, posttraumatic growth (PTG) is necessarily linked with positive psychological adjustment, and trauma symptoms represent poor adjustment following traumatic event exposure. I also discuss the intriguing proposal of this research: that action is essential to true growth.