Journal of Korean Geriatric Psychiatry

노인정신의학

pISSN 1226-6329 / eISSN 2733-4600


노인정신의학

대한노인정신의학회 (8권1호 46-48)

Spiritual Approach to Healthy Aging

건강한 노화의 영적접근

송우용(Woo Yong Song)

Abstract

Everyone has his/her own life story on the personal experience. C. Y. Gerkin called the story ‘The Living Human Document.’Pastoral counseling is to listen to and to analyze the story, to integrate past experiences with newly-analyzed experiences, and to give the story a new meaning and to make the subject construct a hopeful world. Ultimately, pastoral counseling is to make the subject to live ‘a spiritual life,’ a life in which the activities of God for human beings are recognized. In general, people are anxious and afraid of ‘sin’ and ‘death,’ and the latter becomes serious when they are in their old age, the time when people have to think of their own death instead of others’ death. Therefore, it is important in one’s old age how one makes use of the remaining time, and whether the last chance could be applied may decide whether one can live ‘a spiritual life.’ The mention of death for the elderly is not ‘the close of life’ but ‘the completion of life,’ and should be considered a course in order to complete ‘the remaining time’ or ‘the remaining life.’

Keywords

목회상담,영적 삶,죽음,남아있는 시간, Pastoral counseling,Spiritual life,Death,Remaining time