“カルト”問題に直面した家族の心理的プロセスの研究―曖昧な喪失に対する家族の反応―

抄録

The purpose of this study was to examine the psychological processes of families whose members have joined destructive cults and to comprehensively understand the families from the viewpoint of the Ambiguous Loss Theory. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 families. As a results, the psychological processes of families was organized from the viewpoint of interaction between the family and the said person, and it is inferred that the process goes through the stage of awaring the said person's involvement of the cult, and the stage of deteriorating the family relationship. This research also inferred that each stages affect each other with the negative experience caused by cult involvement. In addition, this research found that families have suffered with cult problems had experienced ambiguous loss. Up to the present, an ambiguous loss have been categorized into two types; however, based on the results of this research, using continuous indicators of "clear - unclear" rather than binary of "present / absent" is expected to be able to flexibly understand the current state of ambiguous loss.