THE ROLE OF SUFFERING IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS (Atena Editora) (original) (raw)
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Journal of Psychology and Theology, 2010
Should alleviating suffering always be the primary goal in treatment? This paper proposes that suffering can best be understood in the context of the flourishing life, from the intersecting vantage points of positive psychology, philosophy of theology. We further argue that in this context, we can articulate a role for suffering. Suffering can be understood as a marker of disordered living, a means of cultivating characteristics that are essential to the flourishing life, or an opportunity for worldview orientation. In sum, the role of suffering is not to endure it for its own sake, but for the sake of cultivating the flourishing life. Finally, we will consider some implications of this conceptualization for the practice of therapy.
Suffering in Contemporary Society
2021
Suffering points in every direction. It unites and separate us, makes us feel alive, yet close to death. Suffering makes us hide and act, love and kill. From the primal scream of the newly born to the oftenpainful last sip of air that we breathe, suffering pervades our entire lives. We feel it through the core nerve of our being, and suffering, in Kierkegaard's words, "nails us to ourselves". There is nowhere to hide and yet there is. The world was always one of others and through them, our lives acquire its form and its bearing. Yet these others cannot be trusted; they betray, grew old, sick and finally, they too must die. The relational shields that protect and mark who we are can alleviate but not protect us from suffering. As Løgstrup (1997) has suggested, it is through the irrevocable unshareability of suffering that the need to attest our inner experiences and articulate these through language or action emerges. It is thus the solitude of suffering that creates the active need to connect with others, and on the one hand, we find ourselves, with Alphonso Lingis' (1994) words, in "the community of those who have nothing in common". On the other, riots and revolutions often testify to the potential of suffering to unite across the borders that otherwise tends to diverge us. As Martin Hägglund (2019) has pointed out, all of us find ourselves thrown into a world that leaves much to wish for-none of us have asked for this life, and yet we are asked to carry it; to "own our lives". Mental states are never identical to brain states (Kripke, 1980) and the agonies that humans undergo always point to us as spiritual beings, to suffering being more than pain. Shortly after the world has begun to make sense, reflexivity kicks in and we all become, as Augustine puts it in his Confessions, "questions unto ourselves". Being human means experiencing that-while our actions are earnest attempts of responding to these questions, final answers remain out of reach, and we find
Human Suffering and Contemporary Psychoanalysis Contemporary
2003
SUMMARY Nowadays there are evidences the psychoanalysis traditional clinic is insufficient to deal with human suffering generated by the traumatic conditions of the current life. Considering this, we have researched in “Ser e Fazer” (Being and Doing), about clinic strategies to consult inspired in Winnicott psychoanalysis and based in Bleger concepts. These strategies basically introduce expressive materiality as emotional communication mediation and use a specific way of therapeutic intervention, known as holding or setting handling. Fortunally we have got good clinic results and our clinic service has inspired plenty of master degree, doctorate and scientific initiation projects.
Problems of Suffering. The Philosophical Perspective compressed (1)
International Journal of Religion and Culture, A Journal of the Association of the African Theologians, 2015
Abstract This work aims at looking at suffering and the problems of suffering from a philosophical perspective. Suffering or pain in a broad sense is an individual basic affective experience of unpleasant things and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. It might be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity from mild to intolerable. The work has at the same time, looked at what causes suffering from the point of view of religion and cultural beliefs to back up the philosophical beliefs on this. The implications and or impacts of suffering on the sufferer and the society have been highlighted. Another interesting aspect of this work that is given attention to is the reason why suffering persists; whether God is unable to avert suffering in a world He created and then seek for ways it can be mitigated or eradicated. Also, suggestions are n1ade where necessary.
Suffering and the Emergence of Meaning in Life
2021
Philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists pose deep and difficult questions about pain and suffering and try to provide answers to these questions: What is pain? Is pain in the brain? Is there meaning in suffering? What makes pain unpleasant? This article provides a rich and wide-ranging exploration of these questions and offers important new insights into the philosophy of pain. To complement the author's reflection on pain, suffering and the emergence of meaning in life, he has gathered information about the said topic from various sources that could enrich the article and have reflected some concepts that help us understand the topic better.
The World According to Suffering
The Philosophy of Suffering, 2019
On the face of it, suffering from the loss of a loved one and suffering from intense pain are very different things. What makes them both experiences of suffering? I argue it’s neither their unpleasantness nor the fact that we desire not to have such experiences. Rather, what we suffer from negatively transforms the way our situation as a whole appears to us. To cash this out, I introduce the notion of negative affective construal, which involves practically perceiving our situation as calling for change, registering this perception with a felt desire for change, and believing that the change is not within our power. We (attitudinally) suffer when negative affective construal is pervasive, either because it colours a large swath of possibilities, as in the case of anxiety, or because it narrows our attention to what hurts, as in the case of grief. On this view, sensory or bodily suffering is a special case of attitudinal suffering: the unpleasantness of pain causes pervasive negative affective construal. Pain that doesn’t negatively transform our world doesn’t make for suffering.