The purpose of this study is to find out what change in mind people experience in times of crisis by examining the experiences of senior convicts in their prison lives. During the process, the attempt to understand their conversion more extensively wi...
The purpose of this study is to find out what change in mind people experience in times of crisis by examining the experiences of senior convicts in their prison lives. During the process, the attempt to understand their conversion more extensively with the philosophy of Jung analysis psychological approach in particular has been made. Furthermore, the directions for Christian counselors who can help those suffering from inner conflicts with their effective repentance have been proposed so as to convert the lives of convicts.
This study has sampled 10 senior convicts 60-year old or over prisoned in the "K" Detain Center. They have been taken with a therapy program called, ̏Trip with Art in Search of Oneself" ten times for four months since March, 2010. Counseling took place between 90 and 120 min once or twice per individual during the therapy in progress since April.
Van Manen research method has been taken in order to better reveal the essence of conversion. According to four elements for the existence of oneself proposed by Van Manen: Experienced body, experienced space, experienced time and experienced relationship, the structure of the conversion experienced by the senior convicts has been analyzed with the analytical phenomenology so as to extract 140 composition meanings, 27 subjects and 13 basic themes and categorize the phenomenon by grouping them by their world of lives.
The themes have been extracted for each world of lives as follows: <Mal-functioning Body> and <Re-born I> for the experience world of body, <Once Upon a Time>, <Time Puzzle>, and <A New Day> for the experienced world of time, <Hard Prison Life>, <Still A Place to Live>, and <Prison School>, and <Lonely Wild Goose> for the experienced world of space, <A Bird on Thorns>, <A Life with the God>, <Dark Night of the Soul>, and <New Mind and New Hope> for the experience world of relationship.
The results of this study are as follows: The factors affecting the conversion are family, cognitive dissonance, feeling of loss, weak self-identity and existential crisis, etc. Among such factors, family means some godly existence for them with an absolute influence.
Changes made by the experience of conversion are comfort, feeling of guilt, regretfulness and stability, etc. From the confusion to the conversion through family members, knowledge and encounter with God, senior convicts recover their own stability and get to have some hope for the up coming days. Even after the conversion, senior convicts may still go through some confusion with frequent inner conflicts but such seems to be a continuous cycle of steps to take to the path in search of oneself, and a way converged into the gradual balance of emotional highs and lows.
In conclusion, this study demonstrates that the conversion has been an existential problem based on the time of frustrations and pains. It has been an overall transformation in aspect of behaviors and an opportunity for a growth towards the process of personalization. That is to say, the conversion is a way in search of oneself, and in company with others and towards an unity with God by uniting the broken oneself with antithetic conflicts in the world of time, space, body and relationships.
Implications of this study are as follows: The experiences of the previously overlooked minority of senior convicts have been revealed and Van Manen's analytical phenomenology approach has been taken to touch on the individual experiences of conversion. In addition, the directions for effective corrective measures have been proposed so as to point out what efforts counselors can make to better help people with their conversion.
Finally, through sincere meetings between researchers and participants, it is more significant than the value of research itself to have the new corrective emotional experience. This study has demonstrated what to do as a Christian counselor to save one soul overlooked by the world by providing an opportunity to inspire with the vocational calling after examining the research participants in search of themselves through the reflection on their lives, thereby giving a confirmation on the archetype of human-beings.