Working with prisoners from a person-centered, experiential-existential approach: Pathways to posttraumatic growth and pro-social change

Unexpected circumstances such as disease, divorce, accidents and violence disrupt our lives in dramatic ways. These stressful life events can lead to a loss of meaning on many levels. Clients are challenged to make sense of what happened and to find new meaning and purpose in life. Eventually, most of them succeed in finding new ways to appreciate life. Moreover, by working through the loss of meaning that was initiated by a seismic life event, many people experience posttraumatic growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). Posttraumatic growth can be defined as a fundamental shift in how people experience themselves, others, and the world. Janoff-Bulman (2013) argues that people can also experience a loss of meaning as a consequence of their own actions. Committing a crime can lead to an existential crisis and imprisonment can amplify this experience. We explored whether prisoners experience a loss of meaning, how they cope with this loss, and whether prisoners experience posttraumatic growth. Posttraumatic growth among prisoners and offenders has been associated with desistance from crime. Knowing that person-centered and existential therapies are very suitable to facilitate posttraumatic growth, these therapies have a rich – and largely unexplored – potential to help offenders to choose new pathways in life. In this presentation, we will address the most interesting results of our research. Based on our qualitative, quantitative, and case studies, we will propose a person-centered, experiential-existential framework that can help the therapist to support posttraumatic growth in prisoners. We will highlight specific micro processes and therapeutic interventions which support growth and change in this special client population. We will illustrate how exploring the loss of former meanings, exploring unmet existential needs, and integrating the dark side of the self into the larger self can help prisoners to lead a more meaningful and pro-social life in the future.status: publishe