A Research of Clinical Sociology on the Narrative of Dying People and Spirituality

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Almost all traditional Communities, which gave meanings of life and death, collapsed in modern societies. Many people must die alone in hospitals and have spiritual pain in front of their own death. Terminal care became one of the important special fields of medical care. It made out the dying process as psychological one and used the narrative-listening communication to control the process. Spiritual care is an essential element of the terminal care. However, it has superficial support of dying people because almost all theories and practices of the spiritual care regard the spiritual pain only as diverse. This research made dear the following points to conquer those difficulties of the spiritual care. It made clear the structure of the spiritual pain, the essential relations between dying and spirituality, the functioning of spirituality in social relations, and the dimensions of the meanings which was found by the functioning of spirituality. The existent spiritual care supports the pursuing the active meaning of life such as self-realization and neglects the meaning of life of those who cannot act independently because of collapse of body. The analysis of the narratives of dying people found another dimension of meaning, passive meaning. Spirituality starts functioning in front of death and changes the gaze of the dying people. They can find out the principle fact of co-existence of others, of which they are not aware because of its fundamental self-evidence in everyday world. Awareness of the principle fact of co-existence of others gives any dying people who cannot act independently passive meaning of their life.