Time Together–Time Apart: Nothingness and Hope in Teenagers

Mothers’ perceptions of the role of religion in parent–child communication about a death in the family.

“…We also anticipated, based on prior quantitative and qualitative research, that parents would describe both positive and negative roles for their religious beliefs and express positive and negative views of God (Bakker & Paris, 2013;Pargament et al, 1990;Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1998). A specific theme we anticipated in parents' comments was hope, in part because "hope is on intimate terms with despair" (Winther-Lindqvist, 2016, p. 150) and coping with family death typically entails hoping for comfort and resilience (Winther-Lindqvist, 2016). Finally, we intentionally sampled families with older children than in typical studies, which have focused on families with preschool-aged children (e.g., Miller et al, 2014;Nguyen & Rosengren, 2004;Renaud et al, 2015;Rosengren, Gutiérrez, & Schein, 2014).…”

“…Hope can be understood as a naturally occurring coping strategy to the despair and loss of control brought by a family death; we expected mothers and children would produce this existential counterpoint while discussing death with each other. The theme of hope would be reflected in displays of mothers' explicit expressions of expecting or desiring a better future and/or reunion with the loved one in an afterlife of some sort (Bonanno, 2009;Winther-Lindqvist, 2016). The other a priori constructs-God's Plan, Loving God, and Punitive Godwere derived from the religious coping measures and literature (Pargament et al, 1990;Pargament et al, 1998), in particular the processes of positive religious coping and negative religious coping.…”

“…For many children and parents, a family member's death causes feelings of sadness, anger, and fear, all within a larger existential challenge where the primary certainty is uncertainty (Winther-Lindqvist, 2016). These emotions can make discussion about death difficult.…”

Lack of Universality of a Psychological Problem: Epistemological Implications on Psychological Problems

“…I will consider the role of Gegenstand with a more precise example, but the focus remains clear: The topic of this analysis is not to define a psychological problem, but to examine its common sense reality/non-reality and determine how Gegenstand could be useful in reflecting upon psychological problems if we consider psychological language to be a relevant topic in cultural psychology. 6 As Valsiner (2014, p. 153) and Winther-Lindqvist (2016 describe the phenomenon Gegenstand: lost or non-real words keep carrying significance, their meanings can remain, if only to make us re-evaluate and provide Gegenstand to "stand against us" as a thought in a philosophical and psychologically reflective sense. Building on Valsiner (2014), Luca Tateo (2018, p. 5) describes such non-real notions, the Gegenstand:…”