상실의 시대에 머무는 목회상담

Abstract

This paper proposes a pastoral counseling of staying in times of loss. Modern society is replete with collective loss, such as the Sewol ferry tragedy and the MERS outbreak. In addition, there is a great deal of personal loss in relationships, locations, job opportunities, and dreams. However, in the achievement-oriented social and economic system of neoliberalism, we force the so-called consolation by saying, “Are you okay? Yes, you are okay,” rather than experiencing the loss. Before people who experience the loss feel okay, the environment forces them to be so. This highlights the need to deal with the experience of loss, on which this paper is based. I had a conversation with the admirable philosopher Han Byung-chul, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and object relations theorist Donald Winnicott. First, I critically reflect on Korean society and the church as the environment that imposes being okay when people experience loss. While South Korean society became results-oriented in the neoliberal achievement-centered system, the church did the same under the influence of religious ideas; however, the people experiencing loss were not all right. Second, I examine depression and obsessive-compulsive behaviors as symptoms that appear from not being okay. The expansion from a disciplinary society of negativity into a more positive one seems to have strengthened the oppression of individuals. Thus, I attempt to understand the symptoms through love and aggression. Finally, I propose a pastoral counseling of staying. By staying and experiencing loss, the transitional space provides a good-enough environment, and within it, we talk about play as condolences that integrate love and aggression; and even ones who experience loss can have an experience of their existence. Staying is paradoxical, yet dynamic, and it is where the opposite effects of love and creativity destruction and creation, occur. A dynamic pastoral counseling of staying allows individuals to recreate the meaning of life in the achievement oriented, neoliberal society; hence, I make this proposal.