https://doi.org/10.4081/rp.2012.428
Knowing how to suffer
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Suffering is an inevitable part of psychoanalytic involvement. There are three fundamental positions that can be taken when dealing with pain: 1) pain is identified with illness and our aim is to resolve it as quickly as possible; 2) pain is an inevitable part of the experience of living and we must become capable of accepting it; 3) pain is a master of life and educates us towards redemption and self-knowledge. It is logical that adherence, consciously or unconsciously, to each of these three positions affects the way we work, especially as regards the analysis of defences. A particular painful experience to which the analyst is exposed is the loss of his patients, their death or simply the end of therapy. This makes our creative efforts similar to building sand castles by the sea and trains us to make non- narcissistic investments in the lives of our patients.
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