Jakub Wasiewicz

Celem prezentowanych badań było ukazanie predyktorów i moderatorów poczucia opuszczenia przez Boga jako jednego z doświadczeń religijno-duchowych katolików. Zasadniczym zagadnieniem badawczym było określenie, jaki, jeśli w ogóle, istnieje związek pomiędzy wiekiem, poziomem deklarowanej wiary, częstotliwością i intensywnością codziennych doświadczeń religijno-duchowych a poczuciem opuszczenia przez Boga. W artykule omówiono psychologiczną konceptualizację poczucia opuszczenia przez Boga oraz jego operacjonalizację w narzędziach badawczych, a także wagę tej problematyki dla badań nad zmaganiami z boskością. Na podstawie statystycznej weryfikacji hipotez badawczych zbadano zależności pomiędzy przyjętymi zmiennymi i ustalono predyktory i moderatory związków pomiędzy zmienną wyjaśnianą a zmiennymi wyjaśniającymi. Choć wszystkie przyjęte hipotezy uzyskały statystyczne potwierdzenie, tak że udało się wskazać predyktor i moderator poczucia opuszczenia przez Boga, w artykule wskazano ograniczenia niniejszego badania i kierunki dalszych badań.

The majority of patients with advanced neoplasms have religious/spiritual needs, and for most of them religion and/or spirituality is important. The psychology of religion and spirituality is one the forms of support offered to patients with advanced cancer. R/S are factors which impact health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The aim of this paper was to assess the influence of R/S on the HRQoL of patients diagnosed with MM. The patients filled out anonymous questionnaires about R/S and the HRQoL scale. The clinical data were collected from medical records. The study sample consisted of 83 patients with MM (51.8% women), with a mean age of 64.9 years. The leading denomination among the respondents was Catholic (N=83, 100%): 36% described themselves as deep believers (N=30), 53% as believers (N=44), and 11% as non-practicing believers (N=9). Most patients were receiving ongoing treatment (59.8%), while 40.2% were in remission from the disease. Patients in remission declared a significantly higher interest in R/S issues than patients in active treatment and had a higher rate of intrapsychic R/S struggles dominated by anxiety and guilt. A moderate negative correlation between interest in R/S issues and unfavorable assessment of physical functioning and role functioning was observed. Anger towards God positively correlated with a negative assessment of emotional functioning. The findings highlight the importance of R/S for the HRQoL of MM patients and show that their QoL depends on the types of R/S coping used.

Spiritual dryness, understood as a type of divine struggle, is the feeling that God is distant or absent, no matter how much one tries to approach him. Spiritual dryness is concurrent with symptoms of depression, job burnout, stress, and experiencing negative emotions. The purpose of this article was to present the psychometric properties of the Polish version of the Spiritual Dryness Scale (SDS) and the measurement equivalence of this tool for people involved and not involved in religious practices. Two groups of respondents (184 religiously committed and 199 uncommitted people) participated in the study. The results of the confirmatory factor analyses showed that this tool has a unidimensional. The measurement equivalence analysis conducted may suggest that, for those engaged in religious practices, the feeling of being completely abandoned by God and distanced from him despite efforts to get closer to him is a stronger descriptor of spiritual dryness.

The current article presents the factor structure of the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) in a Polish-Christian sample. The DSES is a scale that attempts to measure a person’s perception of transcendent experiences in daily life. It covers the following constructs: awe, gratitude, mercy, a sense of connection with the transcendent, and compassionate love. Most validation studies on the DSES show the scale loadings on a single factor, although different populations can show different factor loadings. The study aims to verify the factor structure of the DSES results and to test the psychometric properties of its Polish version. The results of exploratory factor analysis conducted on a sample of 246 individuals and confirmatory factor analysis performed in a sample of 738 participants supported the single-factor model, which includes all 16 items of the DSES. Therefore, it was concluded that qualitatively different spiritual experiences have one common and integrated core with a homogeneous structure. Very high values of internal consistency measures indicate the excellent reliability of the Polish version of the DSES.

The aim of the study was to find out if Christians experience God’s silence and if so, what are its correlates during the COVID-19 pandemic. The second purpose of the study was to identify the connections between the experience of God’s silence and depressive mood disorders and the impact of God’s silence on other spiritual experiences. The study was conducted online on a group of 771 people, mostly Christians. The experience of God’s silence was declared by 82.1% of the respondents. This experience does not depend on the sex of the respondents, but correlates with their age. The experience of God’s silence is commensurate with the joy that comes from having a relationship with God through daily spiritual experiences. Additionally, the conducted research shows that experience of God’s silence resembles a state rather than a permanent feature with a visible ending, which is associated with a change in the image of God. The consequences of experiencing God’s silence need not to be negative. The conducted research shows that the most frequently mentioned effect of this experience is the strengthening and consolidation of faith.