Leal Miriam Martins, Nwora Emmanuel Ifeka, de Melo Gislane Ferreira, Freitas Marta Helena
Catholic University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil.
Saint Bonaventure Institute, Affiliated to the Pontifical Saint Bonaventure (Rome), Brasília, Brazil.
Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 21;13:840851. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.840851. eCollection 2022.
The belief in miracle, as a modality of spiritual/religious coping (SRC) strategy in the face of stress and psychic suffering, has been discussed in psychological literature with regard to its positive or negative role on the health and well-being of patients and family members. In contemporary times, where pseudo-conflicts between religion and science should have been long overcome, there is still some tendency of interpreting belief in miracle - as the possibility of a cure granted by divine intervention, modifying the normal course of events in a bleak medical diagnosis - as having unhealthy impacts in the care and treatment of health. This position seeks to find a base in the three characteristics of hoping in a miracle, frequently pointed out by psychological literature: (a) it would imply a negation of reality instead of its confrontation; (b) it would be a coping strategy focused on emotion instead of the problem; (c) it would imply seeking to modify the supposed desire of God by extra-natural facts. In this study, we shall critically discuss this position and the dangers of its crystallization by the use of SRC scales in which the act of praying for a miracle is previously classified as a negative strategy. We revisit some tendencies in psychological literature about the subject, taking into consideration the various facets of miracle, sociocultural facts, elements of idiographic nature, and their profound outcomes in the lives of people especially in health contexts. We illustrate the dangers of a hasty generalization of the results of nomothetic studies about the role of belief in miracle with two examples of research in the Brazilian context: one carried out with pregnant women with fetal malformation and the other with family members caring for children and adolescents with cancer under chemotherapeutic treatment. In both studies, the results do not confirm the predominance of the negative aspects associated with the act of praying for a miracle, which we discuss and analyze in light of the phenomenological perspective. In this perspective, "pray for a miracle", as experienced by patients and caregivers, can be recognized as an act of openness to life (instead of isolation in a bleak perspective), bolstering hope, and the resignification of reality in the psyche.
面对压力和精神痛苦时，将相信奇迹作为一种精神/宗教应对（SRC）策略，心理学文献中已探讨过其对患者及家庭成员的健康和幸福所起的积极或消极作用。在当代，宗教与科学之间的伪冲突早应被克服，但仍存在一些倾向，即将相信奇迹——如神的干预带来治愈的可能性，改变严峻医疗诊断中的正常病程——解读为对健康护理和治疗有不良影响。这一观点试图基于心理学文献中经常指出的相信奇迹的三个特征找到依据：（a）它意味着否定现实而非面对现实；（b）它是一种关注情感而非问题的应对策略；（c）它意味着试图通过超自然事实改变上帝的假定意愿。在本研究中，我们将批判性地讨论这一观点及其因使用SRC量表而固化的危险，在该量表中，为奇迹祈祷的行为先前被归类为消极策略。我们重新审视心理学文献中关于该主题的一些倾向，考虑到奇迹的各个方面、社会文化事实、独特性质的要素，以及它们在人们生活尤其是健康背景下的深远影响。我们用巴西背景下的两个研究例子来说明对关于相信奇迹作用的实证研究结果进行草率概括的危险：一个是对患有胎儿畸形的孕妇进行的研究，另一个是对照顾接受化疗的癌症儿童和青少年的家庭成员进行的研究。在这两项研究中，结果均未证实与为奇迹祈祷行为相关的消极方面占主导，我们将根据现象学视角对其进行讨论和分析。从这一视角来看，患者和护理者所体验到的“为奇迹祈祷”可被视为一种对生活开放的行为（而非陷入黯淡的孤立状态），增强希望，并在心理层面重新诠释现实。
