Can marriage survive traumatic child death?: a 'narrative dance' towards an alternative discourse for spouses' emotional attachment through pastoral therapy

[摘要] English: This 'dance' of study gives us, both the researcher as and reader, the opportunity to take part in the 'dancing movement' of pastoral therapy with grieving parents after traumatic child death. The 'pastoral therapeutic dance' becomes the existential participation in parents' life struggle to co-search for an escape of traumatic child death in the light of God's story. The conversations that took place in the therapeutic processes served as mediation between God and grieving parents. Through these conversations God entered grieving parents' existential needs and met them with new hope. In three 'pastoral therapeutic dances' I saw myself as an instrument of God's love which includes the all-inclusive actions of various kinds; thus, all the actions and reactions in word and deed between therapist, grieving parents and God within the therapeutic conversation. This love made me a conversational partner with a wider circumspect attitude; a more humble approach; a deeper sensitivity to mystery, miracle and meaning, and a higher respect for grieving parents within a person-centred framework. The therapeutic approach that highlights the importance of language and meaning, and simultaneously moves away from a mechanistic, reductionist and deterministic method with a tendency to reify the social status quo and power hierarchies, is Narrative Therapy. Narrative Therapy is based on the postmodern epistemological framework of qualitative research. This view represents movement away from definitive conclusions and labels based on taken-for-granted assumptions. As a postmodern researcher, I see my main task as discovering, by means of a process of interpretation, the patterns of meaning that emerged from the observation and examination of grieving couples' words, actions and records. The process of discovering is on the way, and is always as if not yet plainly understood, and relies on the clues that were given. I present those patterns of meaning in this 'dance' of study as close to the construction of the world as the participant grieving parents originally experienced it. I remained the participant-observer and the participant-manager throughout the therapeutic conversations without becoming the expert who took charge of the therapeutic conversations by influencing them in a particular direction or towards a certain outcome, or who analysed and diagnosed on the basis of what should and what should not. However, the grievingcouplesremainedtheexpertsoftheirownstoriesandmeanings:theywere encouraged to accept responsibility for their own lives by acting on their own behalf according to their own capabilities, capacities, resources and strengths. By means of Narrative Therapy, grieving parents were enabled through externalisation and deconstruction, to separate themselves from their problem-saturated dominant stories that had been constitutive of their lives and relationships after traumatic child death. Problems only survive and thrive when they are supported and backed by particular truths and beliefs from the dominant cultural discourses within the family of origin or within the broader social context such as gender specifications based on cultural stereotyped norms, or cultural specifications and expectations on how bereaved parents should grieve appropriately. However, these constraints within parents' marriage relationships were overcome. Gradually, a new story was co-created and a new reality began to emerge. As an alternative dominant story became rooted in parents' imaginations, it took over and had no end. This new direction was built upon unique outcomes and was dependent on parents who assumed responsibility for the problem, for new choices in their lives and for pursuing new possibilities. The new alternative dominant story was also dependent on parents' ability to become engaged in emotional patterns and interactions that are based on the Biblical view of the 'dance' of marriage. In this 'dance' of study it was found that parents' new alternative dominant story after traumatic child death developed by means of Narrative Therapy towards a new emotional attachment between them as marriage partners. Thereby, as soon as gender differences were balanced, and parents were liberated from other taken-for-granted truths of the broader social culture and their families of origin, a meaningful and alternative marital discourse emerged. The pastoral trauma therapist, as a conversational artist, had to facilitate a therapeutic dialogue that had the ability to direct the 'dance' towards a happy ending.

[发布机构] University of the Free State