Research projects are(co)funded by the Slovenian Research Agency.
|
Member of the University of Ljubljana |
UL Faculty of Theology |
|
Code |
J5-6825 |
|
Project |
Process of Confronting with Divorce and Relational Family Therapy |
|
Period |
1.7.2014 - 30.06.2017 |
|
Range on year |
1,04 FTE |
|
Head |
|
|
Research activity |
Social Sciences / Psychology |
|
Research organisations |
|
|
Abstract
|
The research project entitled The process of coping with divorce and relational family therapy focuses on exploring specific areas of family and marital relations when they came up against the fact that a couple or parents are being separated or they already broke up. Divorce or disintegration of a long-lasting relationship are, according to many studies, one of the most stressful and mentally exhausting non-normative life changes, as almost every divorce, regardless of the circumstances, represents a difficult experience that reaches deep into individuals' lives and life of a family as a system, and thereby also into the wider society. Divorce is a difficult and complex situation that affects the functionality of the functioning of the individual and the entire family system, since it has many emotional, social and economic consequences for the partner, children and extended family, which usually continue for a long time after all the formal aspects of divorce have already been arranged. According to statistical data, the number of divorces keeps increasing, which, in addition to mentioned difficulty of the process further dictates the need for a deeper examination of the situation of individuals when they are confronted with this experience (as partners or children of separated parents). Many complications arise primarily from deeper and unresolved emotional distress arising upon divorce and which remain enshrined in the experience of partners and children. Adjustment to the new situation following divorce, does not mean only rearranging the economic and marital status and arranging new living conditions, but also requires an individual to enter into an emotional process in which this experience becomes acceptable and emotionally manageable. The present research project is therefore focused on studying the emotional aspects of the process of divorce. The research project will focus on exploring the emotional circumstances upon divorce, the process of dealing with them, exploring the emotional needs of individuals and we will analyse the links with some other circumstances (relationship in primary family, past traumatic experiences, religiosity), which can either encourage or hinder this process of coping. All these aspects will be studied from the perspective of the paradigm of relational family therapy, which ranks among the contemporary relational psychotherapeutic approaches. Relational family therapy model focuses on the processing of painful emotions that are compulsively repeated in the life of a patient and represent disruptive affective conditions that prevent the establishment of healthy relationships. Relational family therapy, as such, allows patients deep addressing of the dynamics of all painful emotional states, even those that are waking up in different stages of the process of divorce. Emotional dynamics in recent years proved to be an extremely important factor in the successful therapeutic treatment in a wide area of perceived psychological problems and we can expect that it plays an extremely important role also in solving problems in the process of separating parents. Processes of emotional dynamics upon divorce and in conjunction with the process of relational family therapy will be studied within three interrelated content sets of the project: 1. Characteristics of emotion and emotional processing in the process of coping with divorce; 2. Exploring relational factors and past experience in relation to the performance of emotional coping with divorce; 3. The process of relational family therapy upon divorce. The basic purpose of the research project is thus to verify and define relational family therapy as an integrated model of (psycho) therapeutic treatment of families in the process of separating parents |
|
Researchers |
|
|
The phases of the project and their realization |
|
|
Citations for bibliographic records |