Final Examination of
Cabrini Pak
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Abstract
Transcendence in Resilient American POWs: A Narrative Analysis
Director: William Barbieri, Ph.D.
What is it about some American service members that enable them to bounce back from something like a POW experience, which may include daily conditions like filth, disease, starvation, torture, murder, and unscrupulous behavior among fellow prisoners and guards? Is it possible to transcend those experiences and make meaning of them in ways that allows one to heal and move on? How does one survive these stressors and manage to do things well, like get married, have a family, and live a productive life for decades after the traumatic experience? This study explores these questions.
Transcendence is an under-appreciated aspect of human experience with potentially significant positive contributions to the study of "spiritual fitness" and resilience in the military, two factors attributed to successful navigation of the military life cycle. Transcendence, as a possible influencer of resilience, can be tracked in various forms, including narrative. I propose that resilient service members who survived and bounced back from something like a POW experience, and who wrote about it later, left traces of transcendence in their stories, which can be studied.
I also propose that transcendence is an experiential meaning-making process, rather than an event or state of being. In my model of transcendence there are at least two possible outcomes. The first outcome, stabilization of one's sense of self, enables the person to more firmly root him or herself in a response to the question, "What am I?" The second outcome, extraordinary connections within and beyond the self, in space-time, gives the person coordinates in moral space and allows the person to draw from those coordinates in future situations, particularly those that might be morally hazardous.
Eight memoirs of American POWs from two time periods were analyzed: World War II and the Vietnam War. The memoirs were selected based on public availability and known resilience of POW survivors (no known attempt to commit suicide within five years of discharge). Evidence was found for transcendence as meaning-making process and for the outcomes proposed.
More about Pak
Cabrini earned her undergraduate degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995. After working in the biomedical industry, she earned her MBA in Management Information Systems and Marketing on a Global Managers Fellowship Award at The George Washington University in 2000. After working in the corporate sector for several more years, she earned her MA Theology at Villanova University in 2012. While at The Catholic University of America, Cabrini served as a Teaching Fellow at the Busch School of Business and Economics, teaching Management of Information, Ethics, and Marketing. Cabrini now serves as a Field Theologian and Consultant for The Oblates of the Virgin Mary (OMV), an international congregation of priests and brothers founded in 19th century Carignano, Italy. She will be promoting the cause of their founder, Ven. Bruno Lanteri, and studying different OMV communities around the world to aid in the development of culturally relevant dialogue and in the writing of two books on Lanterian spirituality.