Resilience is conceptualized as a dynamic developmental process encompassing the attainment of positive adaptation despite the exposure to or the experience of significant threat, severe adversity, or trauma that typically constitute major assaults on the processes underlying biological and psychological development (Luthar, Cicchetti & Becker, 2000; Masten & Cicchetti, 2016). The notion of an average expectable environment for promoting normal development connotes that there is a species-specific range of environmental conditions that elicit normal development in humans. Concerns about how childhood adversity impacts developmental processes and mechanisms have captured deep concerns in researchers in the fields of developmental and clinical psychology, developmental psychopathology, evolutionary psychology, molecular genetics, and neuroscience. Child maltreatment exemplifies a pathogenic relational environment that is far beyond the range of what is normally encountered and engenders substantial risk for maladaptation across domains of biological and psychological development. Child maltreatment is implicated in the disruption of multiple biological systems, including neuroendocrine and immunological functioning, neurobiology, and physical and mental health outcomes. Nonetheless, even though there is strong scientific evidence for maladaptation associated with maltreatment, the absence of an average expectable environment does not condemn maltreated children to negative developmental outcomes later in life. Resilience is possible across the life course.