This study uses the coping theory and search for significance by Kenneth Pargament (1997) applied to the issue of occupational burnout among parish deacons in the Church of Sweden. The Social Insurance Report of 2020:8 presents deacons and priests as a profession at high risk of falling ill in stress related mental illness and sick leaves. The aim with this essay is to try to find whether there are aspects of Pargament’s coping theory that can be applied on this problem. Two main questions were answered:- What does the Church of Sweden’s governing documents state regarding the deaconry related to structure and role clarity? - How can we use Pargament’s coping theory on search for significance to understand the burnout issue among deacons as it is presented in the Social Insurance Report of 2020:8? Through a thematic analysis, three themes were distinguished: Clarity of Mission, Religions as Motivation and Structure and Management. These themes set the foundation for the result presented in this report. The chapter of Analysis deepens the connection to the coping theory and three specific assumptions of Pargament. The conclusion is that the governing documents are quite vague in presenting the deaconry related to structure and role clarity. There is also a lack of understanding, regarding deaconry and diakonia of the church, amongst parish leaderships which in turn leads to challenges and frictions for the local parish deacons. Many of them also wish for more liturgical elements and time for religious praxis within their working hours which results in a discussion of conserving or transforming the individuals’ significance.

The aim of this study is to analyse the thematic purpose of death in J.M. Barries play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. Peter Pan, the Darlings and Neverland each get analysed in separate chapters, to get a fuller understanding of their relation to death. This has been done through the use of copingtheory, and comparisons to earlier myths about catabasis, Pan, and British changelings. Further support has been found through earlier works written about the subject, to deepen the understanding of death’s part in this play for children. The essay concludes that the children in the play are deathly ill – and thus Neverland and Peter Pan are representations of the afterlife, and a spirit which guides children on from this life in to the next.

This thesis investigates the interdependence of religiosity and a life situation changed by cancer, focusing especially on the coping process. This implies analyses of a number of identified expressions of religiosity regarding prerequisites and functions in the coping process. In order to synthesize the results from the studies, the aim has been operationalized into three comprehensive research questions that were posed to each of the empirical studies of the thesis: 1) What are the functions of the analysed expressions of religiosity during the coping process? 2) What prerequisites for the influence of religiosity on the coping process can be identified?  3) How is religiosity influenced by a life situation changed by cancer? The empirical studies are presented in four separate articles. Each of the studies has its own specific research questions that are related to the comprehensive research questions. The method was qualitative and explorative. The research material was gathered with qualitative interviews of 20 Swedish informants of varying gender, age, congregational affiliation and diagnosis. The informants defined themselves as Christians and practised their Christian faith and had or had had a cancer disease. There is longitudinal data from half of the group. The theoretical framework was based on the coping theories developed by Kenneth Pargament and Ruard Ganzevoort and complemented by, among other things, the object-relations theoretical concept of transitional objects. The results show that most of the analysed expressions of religiosity function as a preserving coping method but some of them also function as a reconstructing coping method. In some cases, the expressions of religiosity also function as methods of attributing control, either to God or to the individual. Two main groups of prerequisites for the expressions of religiosity were identified in conjunction with the coping process: contextual and psychological. The former could in turn be divided into religious and medical contexts; the latter into several different kinds, such as perceptual psychological factors, the need to create and use transitional objects, locus of control, and personality traits. Reconstructing coping methods imply varying degrees of changes in the informants’ religiosity, both regarding the analysed expression of religiosity and other expressions of religiosity. In addition to gaining insights into the interdependence of religion and coping for Christians living with cancer, the study contributes to the development of the psychology of religion coping theory by adding to the theory: 1) suggested specifications to the current concepts of Pargament’s coping theory; 2) the concept coping tool; 3) the distinction between functional and relational regarding the concepts of coping mechanism and coping method; 4) the coping mechanism attributing, and 5) the distinction between unilateral and bilateral deferring coping styles. The results indicate that the coping process can include a creative element in the form of a search for, or creation of, functional coping methods and/or coping tools which enhance the functionality of the coping process.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur socialarbetare upplever och hanterar de känslor som väcks i mötet med klienter.  I studien användes en kvalitativ metod där sex semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med socialarbetare i Mellansverige. Det empiriska materialet analyserades genom en tematisk analys. De teman som framkom under analysen var känslomässig påverkan, stress och empatitrötthet, att ta på sig den profesionella rocken, kollegor, arbetsmiljö och egenvård. Vi har även analyserat det empiriska materialet med hjälp av tidigare forskning och teoretiska perspektiv. De teorier som användes i studien var Goffmans dramaturgiska perspektiv och Lazarus och Folkmans copingteori. Resultatet av studien visade att socialarbetarna upplevde olika känslor i möten med klienter och att de känslomässiga påfrestningarna som jobbet medför har påverkat de på olika sätt. Socialarbetarna kunde beskriva olika strategier de använde sig av för att hantera arbetets olika påfrestningar. Resultaten visade att användandet av strategier och andra förebyggande faktorer bidrog till att ge socialarbetarna en bättre förmåga att hantera arbetet för att må bra både i arbetslivet och utanför arbetet. Några av de bidragande faktorer som framkom i samtalen med socialarbetarna var vikten av kollegialt stöd, en fungerande arbetsmiljö samt egenvård. / The aim of this study was to examine how social workers experience and cope with emotions that occur in meetings with clients. Using a qualitative method, we interviewed six social workers in central Sweden. The empirical material was analyzed through a thematic analysis. Themes that emerged during the analysis were emotional impact, stress, compassion fatigue, being a professional, colleagues, work environment and self-care. We also analyzed the empirical material with the help of previous research and theoretical perspectives. The theories used were Goffman's dramaturgical perspective and Lazarus och Folkman’s coping theory. The results showed that social workers experience different emotions in meetings with clients and that the emotional strains that the job entails affect them in different ways. The social workers could describe different strategies used to handle the different strains of work. The results showed that the use of strategies and other preventive factors contributed to giving social workers a better ability to handle work to feel good both at work and outside of work. Some contributing factors that were highlighted in the interviews were the importance of collegial support, a functioning work environment and self-care.