Abstract:

The aim of the paper is the analysis of hope expressed in the prisoners’ narratives about romantic relationships. The study included 301 prisoners from different prisons and 253 persons forming the control group. Participants wrote stories about their close romantic relationships. The narrative indicators of hope were as follows: the number of positive ending of the stories, the number of optimistic views of the situation, temporal approach of the story, mental processes. Intergroup comparisons have been conducted. The results showed that prisoners have a less optimistic view of their romantic relationship, their stories have positive ending less often, they also have a lower level of the mental processes’ indicator. However, they describe their stories in present and future tenses which may indicate to some level that hope is present in their narratives. Insight seems to be an important factor constituting the basis for building personal resources, which positively correlates with an optimistic view of the future.

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