Healing Experience:It’s Influence on Worldviews,Analyzed with Coping Theory

• Main Author: Kieke, Gerrit
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för humaniora (HUM) 2013
• Subjects: Healing; Coping Theory; Worldview; Alternative Medicine; Religious Concepts
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-22161

This essay is about the worldview of Swedish people, who experienced healing. I presumed that concepts, which underpin healing phenomena and thereby express the healer’s worldview, could differ from many people’s concepts and worldviews. The question was, if people with a different worldview attended a healing session and experienced positive results for their health, would that give them reasons to reconsider their worldview? Four people were chosen for this research, who had experienced healing and were willing to talk about it. Based on a participating observation, I describe a personal and their healing session, to create an understanding of their experience. Moreover, the healing method Laying on of Hands, which is used during these sessions is described. With the following in-depth interviews, I documented the worldview history of the interviewees, with focus on religious aspects, and compared it with their worldviews after they were convinced, that healing was working for them. In the analysis, coping theory was applied, to describe processes around the healing, which possibly contributed to the change in the patient’s worldview. The results showed a connection between the patient’s goal to regain health and the acceptance of new concepts in their worldview.