48-3 The Effects of Psychotherapeutic Ritual on Uncomplicated Griever: Transforming Role of a Deceased’s Internal Object
| Sophie Woo | |
| National Changhua University of Education |
According to traditional Chinese culture, a family system includes two sub-system: one is the living family members and the other is ancestors. Instead of being excluded from family system, it is presumes that soon after any one of the family member died will be transformed his/her role by funeral ritual into one of the members of ancestor system, and a spiritual nature of continuing bond was reestablished. Based on the role transformation of traditional Chinese culture, a psychotherapeutic ritual was designed by researcher and applied to help trainees transforming role of their internal object of a deceased. This article reports research that utilized critical incident methodology to explore the perceived experiences of 23 participants. They were master and doctorate level counselor trainees who participated in experiential grief counseling groups as part of their Death, Dying and Grief Counseling course work. Data were collected from one of their weekly reflection journals. The specific journal was to reflect trainee’s experience of participating in that ritual activity of “Creating an afterlife and world for your beloved deceased”. The results show that participants identified 11 elements as contributing to their recovering from grieving a deceased. These 11 elements were then categorized into two dimensions which were 8 therapeutic factors and 3 obtained benefits of learning and growth. The finding results were discussed in light of the current literature of continuing bonds and psychotherapeutic rituals. Implications for counseling practice and future research were recommended.
Keywords
bereavement、culture and counseling、grief、object relation、ritual
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