A Self-Narrative Research: ‘‘Companion with Cats—The Pursuit of Love and Self.”

• Main Authors: Jiang, Ming-Chiu, 江明秋
• Other Authors: Hsu, Shao-Ling
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/11133099598920649903

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 教育研究所 === 101 === The purpose of this research is to explore my story about ‘‘self in the relationships’’ and focus on how the companion with cats repair my “self” and the way relating to others. Through self-narrative approach and the Object Relations theory, I tried to get a holistic understanding from my life experience. The results of text analysis are as follows: 1. From the experience of being rejected by my primary caregiver, I felt "I am unloved and not good enough". So I learned to keep relationships with others destructively. I used to protect, rescue, please or leave the ones that I loved. Consequently, I underwent huge destruction of relationships continually, and such experience reinforced the feeling of deficiency. 2. From the relationship with my cat, I perceived a secure object of love and support. Moreover, it became a corrective emotional experience to me by projecting the important relations to her. Such experience of interacting with my cat made me stronger and stronger. Afterwards, the experience extended to my interaction with human beings. I began to develop new patterns of interaction with others, and believed a wonderful future waiting for me. Throughout the research, a healing experience my cat brought to me was presented and discussed. Accordingly, in the future research, I suggest different writing styles of deepening self-narrative texts and different theories to interpret the materials. Besides, in the counseling practice, I encourage the helping professionals to discover and strengthen their clients’positive relationship, explore the objects their clients interest in and develop new possibilities of healing resources. Finally, this study result could be served as reference of future researches on pet therapy or related healing topics. Keywords: cat, object relations theory, pet, self-narrative research