探索逆境對生命發展的重要本質

Abstract

雖然近年物質文明大幅進步，但人心理的壓力似乎愈來愈大。有心理疾病的、婚姻或親子關係出問題的、年輕人有網路成癮問題的，人口比例也似乎愈來愈高。但從許多成功人士後面的奮鬥故事、歷史文化的教訓、以及近年關於復原力和災後成長的研究，卻指出逆境能帶給人生命成長的幫助。所以順境不一定帶來祝福，而逆境反而是生命的轉機。因此本研究的目的是探索逆境有哪些重要本質能因此帶來生命更好的成長。 本研究的性質是一個探索性研究，而研究方法是以質性為主的混合研究，其中質性方法為紮根理論的方法，而量化方法為調查法。研究對象為20歲以上的成年人，包括172位問卷回答者和7位受訪者，其中共有71位提供其逆境歷程的描述。為能增加研究結果的可信度，研究透過多個方法和多個角度進行，包括：從歷史文化脈絡來探索逆境的內涵，從不同心理學角度來收集對逆境價值和因應的看法，經由問卷收集和統計分析來探討什麼是逆境和逆境帶會來什麼收穫，透過71位研究參與者的逆境描述和質性分析來對逆境歷程有更深入的看見，並使用心理評量以更好的瞭解6位受訪者目前的心理狀態。 根據研究目的，本論文進行以下研究問題探索：「逆境是什麼」、「逆境帶來有哪些收穫」、「什麼是有效逆境因應」、以及「逆境對生命成長的重要本質」。經由以上研究方法，研究者有以下發現：（1）逆境有強迫性和傷害性，人因生之欲而必須面對；（2）一個逆境會同時對生命有多方面衝擊，在軟弱的地方就會感到特別痛苦，但也經由生命的保護作用而成長成熟；（3）逆境對人一生有長久的影響，而發生逆轉勝的改變通常也需要很長的時間；（4）有效逆境包含三種保護作用和階段：積極面對問題、具體解決問題、獲得更成熟的生命；（5）個體因受逆境刺激而啟動保護作用，並因保護作用而獲得原來沒有的保護因子；（6）逆境帶來生命更好的成長是出於逆境的三個重要本質：因破壞性和強迫性帶來成長刺激、經由對生命強度的考驗使人愈加成熟完全、因逆境帶來的深刻感受給一生留下不會忘記的記號。從以上研究發現，家庭支持和給予適當挫折是幫助生命健康成長的兩個重要因素，其中家庭支持提供面臨逆境需要的保護因子，而挫折能刺激更多更重要的保護因子獲得。

Although there has been significant progress in the development of high standards of living in recent years, people seem to feel more pressure and suffer more from mental illness, marriage issues, parenting troubles, and online addictions. However, many touching stories of disadvantaged people striving for successful lives, lessons learned from history books, and recent studies on resilience and post-trauma growth, all indicate that adversity can actually bring surprising growth in human life. The purpose of this thesis thus tries to explore the important elements of adversity that contribute to a better life. The nature of this research is explorative, and the method used is a hybrid of a qualitative method – the grounded theory, and a quantitative method – a questionnaire survey. Participants in this research were required to be at least 20 years old, where 172 answered the questionnaire and 7 had interviews about their adversity experience. To achieve trustworthiness in research results, the research was conducted through multiple methods and from different angles, including: reviews of adversity from the perspectives of Eastern-Western cultures and psychology literatures, analyses and inductions from the questionnaire, and interview results. Based on the purpose of the research, this thesis tries to answer the following questions: “what is adversity”, “what values can adversity bring”, “what are effective strategies to cope with adversity ”, and “what are the important elements of adversity that contribute to growth in life”? Through the above research methods, the researcher has the following findings: (1) adversity has the nature of creating affliction and trauma to individuals who will then fight back out of their instinct to live; (2) adversity will bring different forms of hurt to an individual who can grow through it and become more mature because of the resilience mechanism; (3) the impact of adversity on an individual extends for long periods of time, and the time to overcome it can also be very long; (4) a successful coping process consists of three steps: facing the problem, solving the problem, and achieving a more mature life; each of the three steps requires certain resilience functions; (5) the resilience mechanism will produce the necessary resilience functions if an individual is lack of; and (6) the three important elements of adversity to life growth thus are: forceful and destructive stimulations of growth, life strength tests that stimulate more resilience functions to be born, and unforgettable life marks to remember for the future. The above findings reveal that parental care and appropriate challenges or frustrations in childhood are two important factors to healthy growth, where parental care delivers the necessary protections for children, and challenges or frustrations can stimulate growth of new and more resilience functions.