TRAUMA AS CHANCE AND CHALLENGE: HOW TO DRAW BENEFIT FROM MEMORIZED CHILD EXPERIENCES IN WORLD WAR II

Re-experiencing of traumatic memories becomes a social core-phenomenon concerning people of advanced age, and, thus, a core-challenge for coping-strategies. Therefore, adult educators and counselors are looking for an appropriate approach how to help their clients coping with such memories successfully. This study aims to demonstrate one possible approach based on religious coping and on the evalua¬tion of published memories of elder German people (Dierig, 2012; Jakobi & Link, 1997), who remember their child¬hood shortly after World War II. It also evaluates published studies about this issue concerning their contribution to educational and/or counseling purposes. One main aspect is the comparison between the deferring, collaborative, and self-directing style of religious coping (Pargament, 1997), compared with secular analogies. Another aspect concerns the question, whether religious people are primary intrinsic or extrinsic oriented. In order to find out, why people prefer a particular strategy, an elementary form of grounded theory is chosen, which facilitates particular key categories and terms. The study does neither intend any own empirical research, nor evaluating therapeutic issues, because it is done from a German educational and counseling point of view. Thus, it emphasizes the religious, psycho¬logical, and cultural aspects of experiences and coping-strategies of people, who experienced War and post-war time as children in Germany, or of children expelled from Eastern Europe .