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KMID : 0378019790220070079
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New Medical Journal
1979 Volume.22 No. 7 p.79 ~ p.86
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A Psychoanalytic Study on Korean Traditional Funeral Rites
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Abstract
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The author studied the funeral rite, one of the Korean traditional rituals of passage, from the psychoanalytic viewpoint and summarizes the significant results as follows:
1. On the concept of death.
The Korean´s concept of death is characterized by the soul´s immortality. The postmortem body is reduced into the nonbeing (the soil), but it´s soul is immortal. Death is considered not as reduction into the nonbeing but as a transformed mode of the being by Koreans. Following are a few psychoanalytical interpretations of this concept of death.
First, it is considered as a defense mechanism against death phobia, and also the fantasy of eventual reunion with the dead is utilized for this purpose. Second, the souls of the dead are personified as. omnipotent figures who are able to rule offsprings´ happiness or unhappiness and their health or illness, and therefore the archaic parentchild relationship is projected upon the relation between the dead and their descendants.
2. The mourning process in the funeral rites.
The various funeral rites seem to be the self-preserving device to resolve gradually the acute psychic trauma caused by the permanent seperation from the dead. The process of mourning can be subdivided into three stages according to this author´s opinion.
1) The first stage: Seperation from the living organism( at the time of the end ) . Man accepts death neither ideationally nor emotionally, but only as the biological or physical end of the life process. This is a defense mechanism because the severe psychic trauma, which is caused by realization of the death wish toward the dead, and the following guilt, and also the feeling of rejection that the prospective mourner feels when left behind are experinced as psychic numbness.
2) The second stage: Ideational seperation( the time of shifting from dansack(filling the cup at once) and danbae(single bow) to chumsan(refilling the cup)and jaibae (twice bows)).
Now the grief is resolved to some degree through the previous funeral rites and the mourning process begins. to shift from the previous one to the emotional seperation. Until that time, the funeral rites are focused on the dead person, bu from that time of the samojae. rite onward they are focused on the mourners. Then the mourners feel a sense of relief and their mood changes.
3) The third stage: Emotional seperation(the end of the three-years-mourning) About three months after the funeral, the mourners are able to accept emotionally the death of the departed without experincing excessive psychic trauma. Since the emotional tie with the departed is much decathexised´ about one year later, mourners can finish ritually the two-year period of mourning for the female mournee, if the mourners want to do so. For the male mournee, on the other hand, the mourning process ends in the last ritual(called daesang)two years after the funeral(chosang). This is so called the three-year period of mourning(samnyeonsang) in Korea. By the time the mourners feel comfortable with the exception of the severe pathological mourner.
The monument stone is considered as an expression of filial piety(Hyao), which is thought to result from the sublimation of the unconscious death wish toward the departed.
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