Meaning-making in stories on transcendent experiences of continuing bonds.

Abstract

This paper explores meaning-making in stories about transcendent experiences of continuing bonds with deceased loved ones. In doing so, we assume an ontologically neutral position on the veridicality of the experience and focus on the narration and interpretation of experiencers themselves. We describe and characterize a corpus of personal stories on transcendent experiences with regards to (i) narrative meaning-making and tellability, (ii) the way in which the transcendent experience affects the narrator's relationship to the loss, and (iii) the stories' epistemic framing and consequent epistemic attitudes of the narrator. We found that synchronicity and symbolism play an important role in interpreting transcendent experiences as meaningful. Furthermore, the stories showed a positively valanced transformative trend, with narrators often emphasizing how transcendent experiences provided comfort and a new perspective on their loss. Lastly, narrators often assumed an ambiguous epistemic attitude toward their experiences, sometimes describing how these triggered a change in their attitude toward death and the afterlife.