No Ordinary Suffering

Psychoanalysis responds to an experience of perplexity turning on the particular ways that a human being is divided against him/herself; their active beliefs that work against their libidinal dynamism (desire in its formless aspect). Those perceptions/beliefs that give rise to suffering are in some, often very subtle, way misperceptions.  An inner knowing arising from a more fundamental, 'unconscious' access to truth objects and 'suffering' arises as a signal calling for clarification. 

In day-to-day life this suffering presents in the form of diverse symptoms, which may go unrecognised for a long time, or even a lifetime. Psychoanalysis becomes feasible for a subject, a person, at a moment of recognition where they themselves (or a carer in the case of a child) become aware that something is off-key, and that it is being given expression in language. It can be in the form of reactions or questions; something like: ‘What's going on?’ ‘What's happening to me?’, ”Why is this happening to me?’ Sometimes, it may be a “What am I doing?”, or “Why do I always do this?", or "Why am I here?” At any rate, it is clear is that ‘something is happening’ and that the subject doesn’t know what it is, how to respond, or how s/he is entangled in it.

As someone takes the step to address a psychoanalyst, the mystery at the heart of their intimate experience is beginning to be put to work to find a way through and beyond the maze. 

Suffering is not a straightforward matter for the human being. It mingles with necessity, contingency, neglect and excess in the field of the sacred (around the object of supreme value). With these intimate bonds, the separation of the subject and their suffering remains a delicate matter turning on error but always closely entwined with an elusive truth.

The subject's disorientation, in producing unbearable symptoms, is making an insistent call for realisations of what is being overlooked in how they are living their life. From another perspective, it is their potential, their dynamism, their desire that is calling for new forms of expression. Such realisations demand attention without prejudgement, allowing for what is unique and impossible to anticipate to take its form and place. 

In today’s culture with its incessant state of flux, is destabilising identities; calling them into question at every turn. As the moorings of identity loosen, anxiety is unbound and the subject experiences its symptomatic effects as inhibitions, symptoms, and anxieties (Freud). Although its forms are transient, the symptom gives a place and consistency to the subject who suffers it. So, for psychoanalysis, the symptom is an attempt at a solution and acts to bind and to localise identity and anxiety.

While scientific and technological advances in modernity have transformed our capacity to treat the ailments of the body, sometimes something resists. The mind remains more clearly resolute in its resistance to ‘being fixed’ from the outside. The treatment of mental suffering is not a procedure that can be applied to the subject by someone else. It is not a matter of a doctor who will sedate us before applying a procedure, of which we are largely ignorant. On the contrary, our ignorance is no longer workable and, the signal of failure to sustain our bliss, confirms that being open to knowing something about it is required. 

Psychoanalysis takes up the question of suffering beyond any notion of ‘quick fix’ or short term solutions of erasing symptoms. While experience demonstrates that psychoanalysis has therapeutic effects, treatments aiming at these directly tends to reinforce symptoms.

Psychoanalysis takes another path, raising the most profound and interesting questions concerning the subject; their sense of how they experience their being in their world. The effects of this work, an undertaking by the Analysand and facilitated by a Psychoanalyst, cannot be predicted in content, scope, sequence or direction.

If this work resonates with you, and you want to speak to a psychoanalyst, please do contact us.

Unlike the medical doctor, the analyst responds to suffering by putting the obscure knowledge of the ‘patient’ to work. It is not the supposed knowledge of the expert, but the fine awareness of the analysand that harbours the divine details necessary for the transformation of suffering.

A crucial way with knowledge that the Psychoanalyst can offer is termed a ‘non-knowledge’. This includes the capacity to set aside cliches and prejudice, paying attention to what is said in its utmost originality and unrepeatable precision. This allows the human being to come to realise what s/he is saying.