行政院國家科學委員會補助專題研究計畫成果報告 - 國家災害防救科技 ...

Posttraumatic cultural-transformation and meaning-making: A longitudinal
study of the 921 earthquake victims’ psycho-social reconstruction processes (Ⅰ)
The calamitous “921” earthquake was an important major event in
Taiwan, it entailed long-term systematic research for the improvement of
life quality of the survivors. This longitudinal study was based upon the
multiple research paradigms, including participation observation, depth
interview, and interpretive interactionism, and aimed to explore the dynamic
processes of psychopathological depth and psychological growth of the
victims from the developmental-constructivist view. Subjects are divided
into four groups in light of their situation of life threat and experience
disruption. Twenty-one cases were interviewed for at least one session at a
certain disastrous site of central Taiwan from August 2001 to June 2002.
As the discursive data showed, the basic structures of the psychosocial
experiences of the survivors are ‘the confrontation of suffering’, ‘the
identity of selfhood’, ‘the transformation of home’ and ‘the reconstruction
of life-world. Further, the survivors faced the realities nothing would be “as
before” after going through the disastrous event. But they struggled to
accomplish ex-life tasks on the one hand, and they grieved over the dead in
the light of different relationships (e.g. spouse, offspring, sidling, friend)
and expressed different emotions (e.g. anger, remorse, quilt, hate) on the
other hand. The bereaved family suffered with broken bonds than broken
hearts. Meanwhile, the meaning of home was transformed beyond the
concrete and territorial space, but as the Heideggerian ‘homely’ lived space
of the ontological security. How to create and maintain the function and
cohesion and support of the reconstructed home was a vital task during the
posttraumatic periods.
To sum up, the global outcomes of the study were analyzed through the
concept of the ‘double bind’ borrowed from G. Bateson and from the
narrative. Inferred from the research of the first year project, we found the
trauma is a repeated suffering of the event, but it is also a continual leaving
of its site. It is a challenge to our very comprehension of what constitutes
pathology about the trauma.
Keyword: trauma, cultural-transformation, meaning-making, double bind,