The psychology of accident investigation: epistemological, preventive, moral and existential meaning-making

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney W.A. Dekker
2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sigrid Helene Kjørven Haug ◽  
Lars J. Danbolt ◽  
Kari Kvigne ◽  
Valerie DeMarinis

ABSTRACTObjective:An increasing number of older people in Western countries are living with incurable cancer, receiving palliative care from specialized healthcare contexts. The aim of our article was to understand how they experience the existential meaning-making function in daily living from a life-span perspective.Method:Some 21 participants (12 men and 9 women), aged 70–88, were interviewed in a semistructured framework. They were recruited from somatic hospitals in southeastern Norway. We applied the model of selective optimization with compensation (SOC) from life-span developmental psychology in a deductive manner to explore the participants' life-oriented adaptive strategies. A meaning component was added to the SOC model.Results:The participants experienced the existential meaning-making function on two levels. On a superordinate level, it was an important component for interpreting and coordinating the adaptive strategies of SOC for reaching the most important goals in daily living. The existential meaning-making framework provided for a comprehensive understanding of resilience, allowing for both restoration and growth components to be identified. The second level was related to strategy, in that the existential meaning-making function was involved in a complex interaction with behavioral resources and resilience, leading to continuation of goals and more realistic goal adjustments. A few experienced existential meaning-making dysfunction.Significance of results:The modified SOC model was seen as applicable for palliative care in specialized healthcare contexts. Employing the existential meaning-making framework with its complementary understanding of resilience as growth potential to the SOC model's restoration potential can help older people to identify how they make meaning and how this influences their adaptation process to being incurably sick.


2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Hetty Zock

The author argues that individual usage and appropriation of religious traditions has become increasingly important. Therefore, church leaders and pastors should pay more attention to the psychological functions of religion. On the one hand religion serves as a source of existential meaning-making and on the other hand as a powerful glue of group identities. By discussing the psychological theories of Erik H. Erikson, Hubert Hermans and James W. Jones, the Janus face of religion is highlighted. Religion may lead to intolerance and stereotyped behaviour (when it is only used to reduce identity anxiety and narcissistic problems), but it may also stimulate empathy and dialogical capacities.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1037-1048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sigrid Helene Kjørven Haug ◽  
Lars J. Danbolt ◽  
Kari Kvigne ◽  
Valerie Demarinis

AbstractObjective:An increasing number of older people are living with incurable cancer as a chronic disease, requiring palliative care from specialized healthcare for shorter or longer periods of time. The aim of our study was to describe how they experience daily living while receiving palliative care in specialized healthcare contexts.Method:We conducted a qualitative research study with a phenomenological approach called “systematic text condensation.” A total of 21 participants, 12 men and 9 women, aged 70–88, took part in semistructured interviews. They were recruited from two somatic hospitals in southeastern Norway.Results:The participants experienced a strong link to life in terms of four subthemes: to acknowledge the need for close relationships; to maintain activities of normal daily life; to provide space for existential meaning-making and to name and handle decline and loss. In addition, they reported that specialized healthcare contexts strengthened the link to life by prioritizing and providing person-centered palliative care.Significance of results:Older people with incurable cancer are still strongly connected to life in their daily living. The knowledge that the potential for resilience remains despite aging and serious decline in health is considered a source of comfort for older people living with this disease. Insights into the processes of existential meaning-making and resilience are seen as useful in order to increase our understanding of how older people adapt to adversity, and how their responses may help to protect them from some of the difficulties inherent to aging. Healthcare professionals can make use of this information in treatment planning and for identification of psychosocial and sociocultural resources to support older people and to strengthen patients' life resources.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-214
Author(s):  
Mattias Bengtsson ◽  
Marita Flisbäck

Current discussions on the importance of retirement are largely built on statistical analyses of longitudinal data showing that well-being seldom changes from before to after entering retirement, but is rather mainly dependent on the individual’s social resource position. In contrast, qualitatively oriented researchers underline that the retirement process is a complex life transition that needs to be further illuminated. To do this, however, we need to advance new theoretical and methodological perspectives. In this article, an existential sociology approach is outlined, emphasizing the multifaceted spectra of lived experiences and meaning-making in the retirement process. The phenomenological approaches of existential sociology allow us to consider how the exit from working life is created in the processes of motion rather than as expressions of static positions. A merit of this approach is that retirement as an empirical case may say something general about being in transition as a basic social condition. In the article, we discuss how a socio-biographical methodology, based on longitudinal qualitative interviews, helps us capture how existential meaning is formed and reformed in the ambiguous situations which arise in similar life-course transitions. Theoretically, we especially draw on concepts from the existential anthropologist Jackson and the phenomenological tradition of existential philosophers such as Arendt and Heidegger.


Author(s):  
Line Bruun Hansen ◽  
Niels Christian Hvidt ◽  
Katrine Ernst Mortensen ◽  
Chunsen Wu ◽  
Christina Prinds

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-280
Author(s):  
Iris D. Hartog ◽  
Michael Scherer-Rath ◽  
Tom H. Oreel ◽  
Justine E. Netjes ◽  
José P.S. Henriques ◽  
...  

Abstract The theoretical model: ‘Narrative meaning making and integration of life events’ hypothesizes that life events such as falling ill may result in an ‘experience of contingency’. Through narrative meaning making, this experience may be eventually integrated into patients’ life stories, which, in turn, may enhance their quality of life. To contribute to our understanding of this existential dimension of falling ill and to further validate the theoretical model, we examined the relationships among the concepts assessed with the RE-LIFE questionnaire. Two hypothesized mediation models were assessed using regression-based serial multiple mediation analysis. Model 1, assessing the influence of ‘experience of contingency’ on ‘acknowledging’, was significant and showed partial mediation by indirect influences through ‘negative impact on life goals’ and ‘existential meaning’. Model 2, assessing the influence of ‘experience of contingency’ on ‘quality of life’, was also significant, with a full mediation by the variables ‘negative impact on life goals’, ‘existential meaning’ and ‘acknowledging’. In conclusion, several hypothesized relationships within the theoretical model were confirmed. Narrative meaning making and integration significantly influence people’s self-evaluation of their quality of life.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Fereshteh Ahmadi ◽  
Mohammad Rabbani ◽  
Xiaohe Yi ◽  
Hiroko Kase ◽  
Nader Ahmadi

The present article is written on the basis of a sociological international project on meaning-making coping. The aim of the project has been to understand the role of culture in meaning-making coping. The project embarrasses studies among cancer patients in 10 countries. The present article is confined to the results obtained in the study in japan. The main aim was to investigate the impact of culture from a sociological perspective on the choice of coping methods. Twelve participants with various kinds of cancer were interviewed.Several meaning-making coping methods are found in the present study. This study underlines the importance of investigating cultural and social context when investigating into the use of the meaning-making coping methods in different countries.


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