부/모 사별을 경험한 대학생들의 정서에 대한 현상학적 연구

A Phenomenological Study on the Emotion of University Studentswho Experienced Death of Their Parent

The purpose of this research was to explore the understanding of psychological and emotional phenomenon of the university students who experienced parental separation by their mother’s or father’s death. To achieve the purpose of this study, nine objects were participated. Through ten sessions of personal interviews, the author extracted some meaningful parts and clustered them into broad thematic categories. As a whole, their narrations and writings on the research topic represented their genuine psychological and emotional experiences. After verifying the validity of the materials, 32 themes and 15 thematic categories were extracted. From the 15 thematic categories, the authors pulled out some key words that showed distinctive characteristics of their experiences such as emotional reaction, physical responses, domestic features, social features, and religious features. First, shock, rejection, longing, and feeling of unfairness represent their emotional reactions. Second, anorexia, dyspepsia, sleep disorder, and restlessness indicate their physical responses. Third, economic shrinking, withdrawal, and increased conflicts among family members are the domestic features. Fourth, low self-esteem, inferiority complex, and self-depreciation take on social features. Fifth, considering a religion for solace and seeking for spiritual well-being reflect the religious features. During their grieving process, the participants went through changes in their perspectives in dealing with the loss and finally were able to accept the death from a religious point of view. They began to look at life in a big scheme of time: past, present, and future. Gradually they strived to free themselves from the chain of sorrow caused by their parent’s death. As time passed by, they did not regard their parent’s death as an obstacle anymore, nor did they shrink from the hardship. In their healing process, there commonly lay an important religious factor, namely, Christianity, which led them to a more proactive life with newly gained spiritual strength.