Suffering is not pain

Abstract

The experience of suffering is analyzed in the text. It is not intended to guide the therapeutic act but only to understand this common and universal experience. A distinction is made between pain and suffering, in the manner of ideal types, to show that suffering is not only physical but affects the whole human being, in all its dimensions. Two axes of analysis of this experience are proposed: the self-other relationship and the relationship between doing and suffering. All suffering and all expression of suffering can be understood in this framework. but does suffering teach? To avoid pain and sentimentality it is preferable to say that suffering “interrogates” and “appeals”. Suffering is also an “endure” and to persevere in the effort to exist. This is how a herme-neutical phenomenology of suffering is traced.