Investigation of the spiritual processes of university students with and without traumatic grief in the context of objective and projective tests

Traumatic grief is defined as experiencing the pain appearing as a result of losing a loved one in a sudden, severe, or unexpected way. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the personality traits, mental symptoms, reflections of responses to Beier Sentence Completion Test, dream content themes, and defense mechanisms of university students with and without traumatic grief are different. A total of 30 university students with traumatic grief (n=15) and without traumatic grief (n=15) were included in the study. The Convergent Parallel Design, which is among the mixed method designs, was used in the study. In this respect, quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously. The "Causal Comparative Research" method was used in the quantitative stage of the study, and the "Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis" was used in the qualitative stage. The Nvivo 12 Qualitative Analysis Program was used in the analysis of the data that were obtained from the qualitative part of the study, the SPSS 22.00 Statistical Package Program was used in the analysis of the data that were obtained from the quantitative part. The "Mann-Whitney U Test" was used to determine the differences between the mental processes of university students with and without traumatic grief (intergroup differences), the Spearman Correlation Analysis was used to determine the relations between psychological symptoms, personality traits, defense mechanisms, and traumatic grief severity of university students with and without traumatic grief. It was found as a result of the quantitative study findings that there were no significant relations between traumatic grief severity and psychological symptoms, personality traits, and defense mechanisms of the traumatic grief group. However, when compared to university students who did not experience traumatic grief, it was seen that the psychological symptoms (except for somatization and paranoia) and the personality traits (except for hypomania) scores were significantly higher in university students who experienced traumatic grief. Also, as a result of qualitative research findings, it was also found that individuals with traumatic grief had more intense traumatic memories in their past, and their defense mechanisms such as suppression and denial were dominant in their dream contents. Keywords: Traumatic Grief, Projective Tests, MMPI Test, Mental Functioning, Dreams, Defense Mechanisms, Psychodynamic Approach, Psychological Evaluation