Academic literature on the topic 'Meaningful suffering'
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Journal articles on the topic "Meaningful suffering"
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Pihlström, Sami. "Meaningful and meaningless suffering." Human Affairs 29, no. 4 (October 25, 2019): 415–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/humaff-2019-0036.
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Abstract The problem of suffering crucially focuses on meaninglessness. Meaningful suffering—suffering having some “point” or function—is not as problematic as absurd suffering that cannot be rendered purposeful. This issue is more specific than the problem of the “meaning of life” (or “meaning in life”). Human lives are often full of suffering experienced as serving no purpose whatsoever – indeed, suffering that may threaten to make life itself meaningless. Some philosophers—e.g., D.Z. Phillips and John Cottingham—have persuasively argued that the standard analytic methods of philosophy of religion in particular ought to be enriched by literary reading and interpretation, especially when dealing with issues such as this. The problem of evil and suffering can also be explored from a perspective entangling literary and philosophical approaches (Kivistö & Pihlström, 2016). This double methodology is in this paper applied to the problem of evil and suffering by considering an example drawn from Holocaust literature: Primo Levi’s work is analyzed as developing an essentially ethical argument, with a philosophical-cum-literary structure, against theodicies seeking to render suffering meaningful. By means of such a case study, I hope to shed light on the problem of meaningless suffering, especially regarding the moral critique of “theodicist” attempts to interpret all suffering as meaningful.
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Jollimore, Troy. "Meaningless Happiness and Meaningful Suffering." Southern Journal of Philosophy 42, no. 3 (September 2004): 333–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2004.tb01936.x.
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Billhult, Annika, and Karin Dahlberg. "A Meaningful Relief From Suffering." Cancer Nursing 24, no. 3 (June 2001): 180–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00002820-200106000-00003.
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Tudor, Steven. "Accepting One's Punishment as Meaningful Suffering." Law and Philosophy 20, no. 6 (November 2001): 581. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3505157.
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Nevoenna, Olena, and Kateryna Kadyhrob. "Meaningful Values of Life of Women Suffering Perinatal Losses." Visnyk of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. A Series of Psychology, no. 71 (December 27, 2021): 15–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.26565/2225-7756-2021-71-02.
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The article considers the issues of modern perinatal psychology related to the problem of experiencing an existential crisis, namely, the features of the meaningful life orientations of women, who are at the reproductive age, with the experience of desired pregnancy. We have conducted a comparative analysis of the meaningful life orientations in women who have experienced perinatal losses and women who have children without perinatal losses in the anamnesis. We have recorded significant differences in the life values of "active life". Women who have suffered perinatal losses have a significantly higher rate of this value. We explain this by the fact that the activity of these women is mediated by their life goals of high personal importance, the most significant of which are childbearing and childbirth, while the activity of mothers without perinatal losses in the anamnesis corresponds with their hedonist meanings. Existential meanings of women with pregnancy or newborn losses are related to their perceptions of family happiness and need for it, while women whose pregnancies have ended successfully, the meanings are caused by the importance of love and freedom, the latter is the subject to conscious women's control. The importance of freedom, as an opportunity to realize their own goals, of women who suffered from perinatal losses due to the need to fulfill their life purpose and search for sense of life, in women mothers without loss in the anamnesis the value of life itself is in all its displays. In general, women who have suffered perinatal losses, despite strong ambivalence due to the feeling of failure in childbearing, tend to build their lives according to their meaningful life orientations, the priority of which are motherhood, activity in behavior and altruistic self-realization. In our opinion, it makes lives of women more organized and productive, allows them to restore the idea of themselves as people whose lives have formed.
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Fordahl, Clayton. "Suffering and sovereignty." Thesis Eleven 146, no. 1 (June 2018): 42–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0725513618776678.
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This article investigates the recent martyrdom of the French Catholic priest Jacques Hamel in order to assess the possibilities of sacrificial commemoration in a world that is increasingly globalized, increasingly secularized, and also increasingly subject to the capricious violence of religiously-infused terrorism. I argue that under contemporary conditions it has become increasingly difficult to articulate a meaningful form of sacrifice that exists beyond the logic of sovereignty. However, I conclude by identifying rare and fleeting instances of martyrdom which seem to promise the return to the concept’s counter-sovereign heritage.
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Helin, Kaija, and Unni Å. Lindström. "Sacrifice: an ethical dimension of caring that makes suffering meaningful." Nursing Ethics 10, no. 4 (July 2003): 414–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/0969733003ne622oa.
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This article is intended to raise the question of whether sacrifice can be regarded as constituting a deep ethical structure in the relationship between patient and carer. The significance of sacrifice in a patient-carer relationship cannot, however, be fully understood from the standpoint of the consistently utilitarian ethic that characterizes today’s ethical discourse. Deontological ethics, with its universal principles, also does not provide a suitable point of departure. Ethical recommendations and codices are important and can serve as general sources of knowledge when making decisions, but they should be supplemented by an ethic that takes into consideration contextual and situational factors that make every encounter between patient and carer unique. Caring science research literature presents, on the whole, general agreement on the importance of responsibility and devotion with regard to sense of duty, warmth and genuine engagement in caring. That sacrifice may also constitute an important ethical element in the patient-carer relationship is, however, a contradictory and little considered theme. Caring science literature that deals with sacrifice/self-sacrifice indicates contradictory import. It is nevertheless interesting to notice that both the negative and the positive aspects bring out the importance of the concept for the professional character of caring. The tradition of ideas in medieval Christian mysticism with reference to Lévinas’ ethic of responsibility offers a deeper perspective in which the meaningfulness of sacrifice in the caring relationship can be sought. The theme of sacrifice is not of interest merely as a carer’s ethical outlook, but sacrifice can also be understood as a potential process of transformation towards health. The instinctive or conscious experience of sacrifice on the part of the individual patient can, on a symbolic level, be regarded as analogous to the cultic or religious sacrifice aiming at atonement. Sacrifice appears to the patient as an act of transformation to achieve atonement and healing. Atonement then implies finding meaningfulness in one’s suffering. The concept of sacrifice, understood in a novel way, opens up a deeper dimension in the understanding of suffering and makes caring in ‘the patient’s world’ possible.
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McKenna, Michael. "PUNISHMENT AND THE VALUE OF DESERVED SUFFERING." Public Affairs Quarterly 34, no. 2 (April 1, 2020): 97–123. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/26921122.
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Abstract An assumption central to some forms of retributivism is that it is noninstrumentally good that a culpable wrongdoer suffers in receiving a deserved punishment. A justification for this can be built from a conversational theory of moral responsibility, and in particular deserved blame. On such a theory, deserved blame is fitting as a response to a wrongdoer insofar as it is conversationally meaningful as a reply to a wrong done. Punishment, it might be argued, has this feature too. The conversational aim in both deserved blame and punishment is for the guilty to grasp the meaning conveyed by those who blame or punish and then respond meaningfully by, for example, apologizing or expressing remorse. Ideally, a culpable agent would experience a form and degree of guilt suitable for a wrong done. So, a conversational theory of punishment can then be justified in terms of providing conditions conducive for a culpable wrongdoer to respond to punishment by manifesting an appropriately pained response of guilt.
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Jardine, David W., Graham McCaffrey, and Christopher Gilham. "The Pedagogy of Suffering: Four Fragments." Working Compassion 21, no. 2 (September 21, 2020): 5–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/1071561ar.
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This paper is a collection of small, formal and informal writings and is part of the early groundwork we have been doing together on the topic of the pedagogy of suffering, a phrase that has certainly given pause to many colleagues we have spoken to. We are trying to understand and articulate how and why suffering can be pedagogical in character and how it is often key to authentic and meaningful acts of teaching and learning. We are exploring threads from both the hermeneutic tradition and from Buddhism, in order to decode our understandable rush to ameliorate suffering at every turn and to consider every instance of it as an error to be avoided at all costs. We also look to these traditions to begin to formulate how a pedagogy that turns away from suffering suffers a great loss, and how a pedagogy that turns towards suffering can become a locale of great teaching and learning, great wisdom and grace.
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Mijatović, Franjo. "(In)active God—Coping with Suffering and Pain from the Perspective of Christianity." Religions 12, no. 11 (October 28, 2021): 939. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel12110939.
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Colloquially, suffering and pain are usually and exclusively concerned with the human body. Pain and suffering are clearly objective facts, as well as lasting and memorable experiences. Are suffering and pain purely biological phenomena and neurological states, or can they be interpreted by culture, religion, philosophy, sociology, Christianity, etc.? To what extent can it, therefore, be said that the body is sufficiently cognitively, motorically, and sensibly equipped to accept or reject unpleasant situations. Except biological, neurological, and medical, i.e., physical, views about suffering and pain, the Christian solution is one of the essential elements of human life which can serve as a bridge between adaptive and cognitive management and control of the body and mind and learned (parents, culture, society) patterns of dealing with pain and suffering. Our article aims to show how Christianity, in describing suffering and pain as the physiological fact and subjective experience, can be gathered up into a meaningful whole and a powerful sense of (in)active God.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Meaningful suffering"
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Feller, Ray. "Collecting Away Their Suffering: Meaningful Hobbies and the Processing of Traumatic Experience." Antioch University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1317735299.
Full textBooks on the topic "Meaningful suffering"
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Corbett, Lionel, and Guild of Pastoral Psychology Staff. Can Suffering Be Meaningful? Penguin Random House, 2015.
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Martyrdom in literature: Visions of death and meaningful suffering in Europe and the Middle East from antiquity to modernity. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004.
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Landau, Iddo, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life. Oxford University Press, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190063504.001.0001.
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This volume presents thirty-two essays on a wide array of topics in modern philosophical meaning in life research. The essays are organized into six parts. Part I, Understanding Meaning in Life, focuses on various ways of conceptualizing meaning in life. Among other issues, it discusses whether meaning in life should be understood objectively or subjectively, the relation between importance and meaningfulness, and whether meaningful lives should be understood narratively. Part II, Meaning in Life, Science, and Metaphysics, presents opposing views on whether neuroscience sheds light on life’s meaning, inquires whether hard determinists must see life as meaningless, and explores the relation between time, personal identity, and meaning. Part III, Meaning in Life and Religion, examines the relation between meaningfulness, mysticism, and transcendence, and considers life’s meaning from both atheist and theist perspectives. Part IV, Ethics and Meaning in Life, examines (among other issues) whether meaningful lives must be moral, how important forgiveness is for meaning, the relation between life’s meaningfulness (or meaninglessness) and procreation ethics, and whether animals have meaningful lives. Part V, Philosophical Psychology and Meaning in Life, compares philosophical and psychological research on life’s meaning, explores the experience of meaningfulness, and discusses the relation between meaningfulness and desire, love, and gratitude. Part VI, Living Meaningfully: Challenges and Prospects, elaborates on topics such as suicide, suffering, education, optimism and pessimism, and their relation to life’s meaning.
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Landau, Iddo, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life. Oxford University Press, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190063504.001.0001.
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This volume presents thirty-two essays on a wide array of topics in modern philosophical meaning in life research. The essays are organized into six parts. Part I, Understanding Meaning in Life, focuses on various ways of conceptualizing meaning in life. Among other issues, it discusses whether meaning in life should be understood objectively or subjectively, the relation between importance and meaningfulness, and whether meaningful lives should be understood narratively. Part II, Meaning in Life, Science, and Metaphysics, presents opposing views on whether neuroscience sheds light on life’s meaning, inquires whether hard determinists must see life as meaningless, and explores the relation between time, personal identity, and meaning. Part III, Meaning in Life and Religion, examines the relation between meaningfulness, mysticism, and transcendence, and considers life’s meaning from both atheist and theist perspectives. Part IV, Ethics and Meaning in Life, examines (among other issues) whether meaningful lives must be moral, how important forgiveness is for meaning, the relation between life’s meaningfulness (or meaninglessness) and procreation ethics, and whether animals have meaningful lives. Part V, Philosophical Psychology and Meaning in Life, compares philosophical and psychological research on life’s meaning, explores the experience of meaningfulness, and discusses the relation between meaningfulness and desire, love, and gratitude. Part VI, Living Meaningfully: Challenges and Prospects, elaborates on topics such as suicide, suffering, education, optimism and pessimism, and their relation to life’s meaning.
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Rushton, Cynda Hylton. Afterword. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190619268.003.0012.
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A new paradigm for addressing the consequences of moral adversity, especially when it produces moral suffering, is an urgent priority for the healthcare system. The time is now for clinicians, leaders, healthcare organizations, and communities to align their values and commitments and to design for sustainable and meaningful results. More empirical and scholarly work is needed to expand upon the concepts offered in this book. We must foster innovation that sources our inner capacity, shifts patterns that no longer serve a useful purpose, and creates new methods and programs to cultivate moral resilience and a robust and lasting culture that supports ethical practice. Together we hold the keys to transforming moral suffering in healthcare.
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Falque, Emmanuel. The Guide to Gethsemane. Translated by George Hughes. Fordham University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823281961.001.0001.
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Already widely debated upon its publication in French, this book offers a provocative account of Christ’s Passion in terms not of faith but of a “credible Christianity” that can remain meaningful to nonbelievers. For Falque, anxiety, suffering, and death are not simply the “ills” of our society but the essential horizon of what we confront as humans. Doubtful of Heidegger’s famous statement that the notion of salvation renders Christians unable authentically to experience anxiety in the face of death, Falque explores the Passion with a radical emphasis on the physicality and corporeality of Christ’s suffering and death, and on continuities with the mortality of our bodies. Written in the wake of a friend’s death, Falques’s study is theologically and philosophically rigorous, yet engagingly written and deeply humane.
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Rushton, Cynda Hylton, ed. Moral Resilience. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190619268.001.0001.
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Suffering is an unavoidable reality in healthcare. Not only are patients and families suffering but also the clinicians who care for them. Commonly the suffering experienced by clinicians is moral in nature, in part a reflection of the increasing complexity of health care, their roles within it, and the expanding range of available interventions that challenge their moral foundations. Moral suffering is the anguish that arises occurs in response to moral adversity that challenges clinicians’ integrity: the inner harmony that arises when their essential values and commitments are aligned with their choices and actions. The sources and sequelae of moral distress, one type of moral suffering, have been documented among clinicians across specialties. Transforming their suffering will require solutions that expanded individual and system strategies. Moral resilience, the capacity of an individual to restore or sustain integrity in response to moral adversity, offers a path forward. It encompasses capacities aimed at developing self- regulation and self-awareness, buoyancy, moral efficacy, self-stewardship and ultimately personal and relational integrity. Whether it involves gradual or profound radical change clinicians have the potential to transform themselves and their clinical practice in ways that more authentically reflect their character, intentions and values. The burden of healing our healthcare system is not the sole responsibility of individuals. Clinicians and healthcare organizations must work together to transform moral suffering by cultivating the individual capacities for moral resilience and designing a new architecture to support ethical practice. Used worldwide for scalable and sustainable change, the Conscious Full Spectrum approach, offers a method to solve problems to support integrity, shift patterns that undermine moral resilience and ethical practice, and leverage the inner potential of clinicians and leaders to produce meaningful and sustainable results that benefit all.
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Landau, Iddo. Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190657666.001.0001.
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After explaining what meaning in life is, the book moves to criticizing certain presuppositions about the meaning of life that unnecessarily lead many people to believe that their lives are meaningless. Among others, it criticizes perfectionism about meaning in life, namely, the assumption that meaningful lives must include some perfection or some rare and difficult achievements. It then responds to recurring arguments made by people who take their lives to be meaningless, such as the arguments claiming that life is meaningless because death eventually annihilates us and everything we do; whatever we do is negligible when examined in the context of the whole universe; we have no free will and, thus, deserve no praise for what we achieve; everything, including meaning, is completely relative; we do not know what the purpose of life is; whenever we achieve something we stop sensing it as valuable; and there is so much suffering and evil in the world. The book also offers strategies that may help people identify what is meaningful in life and increase its meaningfulness. The final chapters consider questions such as whether only religious people can have meaningful lives; whether meaning of life should be discussed only by psychologists; and whether existentialism is a good source of guidance on the meaning of life.
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Quijije, Nadia. Trauma in the Medical-Surgical Patient. Edited by Frederick J. Stoddard, David M. Benedek, Mohammed R. Milad, and Robert J. Ursano. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190457136.003.0018.
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This chapter reviews psychiatric consultation for trauma and stress in medical-surgical patients. Hospitalization can induce psychologic or psychiatric disturbance and worsen the clinical condition of patients who are suffering from medical and surgical comorbidities. Some medical conditions can be related to stress related disorders indirectly, while others, such as critical illness/intensive care unit treatment or direct physical injury, are themselves traumatic stressors that can promote trauma and stressor-related disorders (TSRDs). Given the negative impact of stress-related disorders on quality of life, mental health clinicians should diagnose TSRDs to ensure patients receive appropriate care. Treatment and management can be provided in multiple forms of psychological therapies and psychopharmacology, and within a multidisciplinary team, particularly for the medical surgical patient. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers must assist patients with terminal illnesses by optimizing end-of-life care, supporting patients and their families, and encouraging approaches to allow the transformative process of dying to be meaningful.
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Pollin-Galay, Hannah. Ecologies of Witnessing. Yale University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300226041.001.0001.
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This book reassesses contemporary Holocaust testimony, focusing on the power of language and place to shape personal narrative. Oral histories of Lithuanian Jews serve as the textual base for this exploration. Comparing the remembrances of Holocaust victims who remained in Lithuania with those who resettled in Israel and North America after World War II, the analysis reveals meaningful differences based on where they chose to live out their postwar lives and whether their language of testimony was Yiddish, English, or Hebrew. The differences between their testimonies relate to notions of love, justice, community—and how the Holocaust did violence to these aspects of the self. The argument illuminates the multiple places that the Holocaust can fill in Jewish historical memory. Beyond the particular Jewish case, the book raises fundamental questions about how people draw from their linguistic and physical environments in order to understand their own suffering. The analysis challenges the assumption of a universal vocabulary for describing and healing human pain.
Book chapters on the topic "Meaningful suffering"
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Eibach, Ulrich. "Medical Technique and Our Coping with Suffering." In Meaningful Care, 101–12. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2000. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9516-2_7.
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Welters, Ron. "Ascetic cycling and meaningful suffering in pandemic times." In Philosophy, Sport, and the Pandemic, 202–17. London: Routledge, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003214243-16.
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Langeland, Eva, and Hege Forbech Vinje. "Applying Salutogenesis in Mental Healthcare Settings." In The Handbook of Salutogenesis, 433–39. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79515-3_39.
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AbstractThis chapter deals with salutogenesis for a specific and growing group of people with mental health challenges. It emphasizes the importance of high-quality social support in interplay with positive identity development thus promoting salutogenic capacity. Aaron Antonovsky’s core concept of sense of coherence has been shown to be more closely related to mental health than to physical health. Thus, the application of salutogenesis on clients in mental healthcare settings is rather obvious. First, the expression “mental health challenges” is used because it is less disease-focused and encourages one to keep in mind that, despite suffering from mental illness, there always is some level of health and resources present that can be recognized, utilized, and nurtured. Second, it can result in specific forms of salutogenic therapy, for example, talk-therapy groups that aim to support positive salutogenic identity building as a specific resistance resource and to improve the sense of coherence of participants by specific offers of social support. Third, as in all health care, the material and social setting itself should be designed by salutogenic principles as empowering by being comprehensible, meaningful, and manageable. This is especially important for more sensitive people with mental health challenges who also might experience longer stay in mental healthcare organizations.
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Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, Daniel. "Divine Suffering and Covenantal Belonging." In Atonement and Comparative Theology, 149–66. Fordham University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823294350.003.0008.
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Post-supersessionist theologies identify soteriology as a primary site for the articulation of supersessionist Christian theology. A common point of departure for supersessionism is reading God’s covenant with Israel as meaningful only in so far as it prepares for the saving activity of Jesus Christ centered in his atoning death. As such, any attempt to develop a non-supersessionist Christian theology requires a re-articulation of soteriological narratives and claims that retain the integrity of both Israel’s covenant and Christ’s death. This chapter offers a comparative reading of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Jürgen Moltmannn on divine suffering to argue that understanding covenantal belonging is necessary for articulating a non-supersessionist Christian theology of the atonement.
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Simko, Christina. "The Problem of Suffering in the Age of Prozac." In To Fix or to Heal. NYU Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479878246.003.0003.
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Personal stories about depression and anti-depressants have become a ubiquitous facet of American culture. Such depression memoirs represent a crucial forum for grappling with the problem of suffering; they also illuminate the narrative templates people utilize in the face of depression. An analysis of the literature shows both the increasing salience of the biomedical model for depression, and also the various ways it is co-opted into the project of recasting the self in light of mental illness. Much as biomedical language runs through the pages of these memoirs, so do broader narrative templates, such as spiritual discovery and therapeutic self-reconstruction. Collectively, these narratives represent an enduring effort to find sense in suffering: to work with and around the biomedical model in order to find a place for depression in a meaningful self-narrative.
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Adelman, Rebecca A. "A Radical and Unsentimental Attention." In Figuring Violence, 245–50. Fordham University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823281671.003.0008.
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This conclusion posits ethical anger as an alternative to the forms of affective investment critiqued in the preceding chapters. It notes that none of the figures described in this book are permitted to be angry, a prohibition that sustains militarism by making it easy to imagine that no one objects to it. This ethical anger is distinct from that which is felt vicariously for suffering others, or on their behalf, as forms of second-hand feeling that short-circuit the possibility of the other’s anger and subjectivity. The form of anger that this conclusion endorses is a way of registering the suffering of others without making any kind of epistemological or affective claim on it. This anger notes what is unknowable about the suffering of others, and it is a frustration not with that unknowability (rooted in a greed for experience and sensation) but with the efforts to make it falsely intelligible. Consequently, such anger has the potential to serve as the foundation for a more meaningful ethical response to the suffering that militarism engenders.
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Mizruchi, Susan L. "5. Masterpieces." In Henry James: A Very Short Introduction, 82–101. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780190944384.003.0006.
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‘Masterpieces’ focuses on three of Henry James’s novels that are generally considered his greatest: The Ambassadors (1902), The Wings of the Dove (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). The Ambassadors is a meditation on the nature of ambition, destiny, and what makes a life meaningful. The Wings of the Dove deals with illness and suffering, and the moral conundrum presented by a dying girl possessed of great wealth she cannot enjoy, and her needy friends who seek to inherit it. The Golden Bowl is about the institutions of marriage and family, and how they are disrupted by passion. The chapter also examines James’s travel narrative, The American Scene (1907).
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Kamm, F. M. "Death, Dying, and Meaning." In Almost Over, 57–84. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190097158.003.0003.
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Chapter 3 discusses Atul Gawande’s views about the choice between trying to live on by way of medical treatment and trying to retain meaning during one’s dying process through hospice care. It first compares medical and philosophical conceptions of death and dying. It then considers how Gawande’s views relate to Bernard Williams’ distinction between categorical and conditional desires and how they compare with views discussed in Chapter 2 about when it can make sense not to resist the end of one’s life. There is discussion of Gawande’s conception of the dying role, fear, the importance of how things end, and meaning in life. Suggestions are offered about possible meaningful use of suffering and death.
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C.G. Lely, Jeannette, and Rolf J. Kleber. "Treating Trauma-related Disorders in Later Life: Moving Forward." In Stress Related Disorders [Working Title]. IntechOpen, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102499.
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Among stress-related disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) takes a central position. Although the percentage of older adults suffering from this condition appears to be lower than among younger adults, PTSD among them often presents a serious condition with high comorbidity rates. In this contribution, recent insights into post-traumatic stress disorder among older people as well as psychotherapeutic treatments are discussed. In particular, the results of recently completed investigations are discussed. In this research, treatment outcomes of two psychotherapeutic approaches considered suitable for older PTSD patients (Narrative Exposure Therapy or NET and Present Centered Therapy or PCT) were compared in terms of psychopathology and psychosocial adjustment. For older patients suffering from PTSD with varying backgrounds, both NET and PCT showed the potential for a significant reduction of symptoms (PTSD, depression and subjective distress). Moreover, it was found that older adults can change long-standing beliefs, even after long-past childhood trauma. In a patient’s own words: “I am still here, the past didn’t bring me to my knees”. These findings disconfirm unfounded pessimism regarding psychotherapy in later life. Currently available treatment approaches in later life can be meaningful in improving the quality of life in older adults for years to come.
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Kamm, F. M. "Harms, Wrongs, and Meaning in a Pandemic." In Rights and Their Limits, 341–48. Oxford University PressNew York, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197567739.003.0015.
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Abstract This chapter considers the comparison that was made when the numbers of U.S. deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 were said to have reached the level of deaths of U.S. soldiers in several wars in the twentieth century. It argues that equal numbers may conceal other crucial differences among these deaths. This includes the amount of harm done to each of the people who died in war or due to COVID-19 and the degree to which pandemic victims and soldiers were wronged (as distinct from harmed) by their own country, other countries, and fellow citizens by contrast to their suffering being due to their own actions. Finally, the chapter examines the extent to which the deaths of soldiers and victims of the pandemic were meaningful or not.
Conference papers on the topic "Meaningful suffering"
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Gritti, Fabiano. "The silence of God in the poetry of Father David Maria Turoldo." In The Figurativeness of the Language of Mystical Experience. Brno: Masaryk University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/cz.muni.p210-9997-2021-6.
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The article concerns the last phase of poetic production of father David Maria Turoldo, notably the last collection published when he was still alive – the Final Chants. In his very long work or religious poet, liturgist, and essayist, he treated a number of topics, incl. social themes and current affairs. In his last phase of his poetic, he doesn’t speak to the society, to the poor, and to marginalised people like in the past, but he addresses God directly – by forming an intense dialogue with the Absolute. In this poetical and mystical dialogue, he interrogates God about the most impenetrable mysteries for human understanding. These mysteries overwhelmed theologians and mystics of all times. Here, we shall focus notably on the topic of God being far from His creation – which is manifested through the divine silence. God seems not to hear the invocations of the faithful; it looks as though He doesn’t care about the problem of suffering (especially of the weakest persons) that remains apparently unrelieved by divine intervention. We shall present some meaningful short examples of such deep and complex issues, in order to introduce the reader to the knowledge of the peculiar Turoldian approach, by providing a possible interpretative key.
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Brito da Silva, Andressa, Gabriela Gonzaga Magalhães da Silva, Caroline de Souza e Silva Guimarães, Carla Aparecida Lourdesdos S. de Azevedo, and Patrick Wagner de Azevedo. "Taking care of the caregiver: the meanings unveiled to the caregiver of people with disabilities." In 7th International Congress on Scientific Knowledge. Perspectivas Online: Humanas e Sociais Aplicadas, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.25242/8876113220212450.
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In the act of caring, it was widely disseminated as important lookingat the person being cared for and the needs that could be revealedin the construction of the relationship throughout the care process with the caregiver. In this research, our gaze is directed to the caregiver, making it possible to enablewhich meanings, values and beliefs are presentedin the conduct of their lives and how thedialogue with the current speechesin society try to capture them from modelsthat obscure the production of their subjectivity. In this regard, human relationships can be created and always recreated,and any dogmatic forms of relationship can produce limitations of meaning and existential suffering. As a general objective, we sought to understand the production of subjectivity of the caregiver of people with disabilities in the encounter with the disabled subject to be cared for. As specific objectives, to analyze the meanings that permeate the relationship between the caregiver and the person with a disability, in addition to investigatethe meanings unveiled in work relationships and in the affectiverelationships between the caregiver and the person with a disability. The specific objectives analyze the meanings related to the work relationship and affection that goesthrough the crossingswith a care character. In this way, families received specialattention, as many caregivers are family members, withoutdisregardingthe importance of professionals hired to exercise the role of caregiver. With regard to methodology, the guiding methods of the research were Cartography and Phenomenology, using semi-open interviews, as well as a systematic literature review. Ten interviews were produced frompeople of the professional field tocaregivers whose familymembers demanded care due to being disabled. It was possible to noticeresults about the phenomenonand singularities of the established relationshipsthat care implied in a deep existential investment by all respondents, both those who proposed to be involved by job function and those which life directed them in favor of a family member or close person. The speeches that initially seemed well structured, gradually unveiled meanings that indicated a deep regret for the suffering and the severe condition of limitation of the person to be cared for. The searchingfor meaning went beyond mere rationality, and spirituality became a key element in the attempt to nurture existential anxieties. Several participants emphasized that despite the constant physical fatigue and emotional exhaustion, consideringthe complexity of each case in particular, the satisfaction of being able to help, reciprocate or even be useful by applying care made this relationship lighter and more meaningful. Contradictory feelings such as love and a feeling that the caregiver's life is paralyzed, due to the dedication to the person to becared for, clearly emerged
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Creus, Fernando Luis. "The Digital Transformation of the Knowledge Worker." In SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. SPE, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/205879-ms.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Technological advances unveil a dual reality in the oil and gas Industry. On one hand, the benefits of blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), among others, has arrived to revolutionize the industry. On the other hand, industry professionals remain trapped in bureaucratic processes that undermine their performance. The diagnosis: knowledge workers, responsible for optimizing the recovery and economic performance of the fields, are the missing link in the digital transformation chain. They are suffering the digitalization of the status quo. This paper puts forward a broad digital transformation framework designed to increase the knowledge worker's productivity. Digital transformation is not just about the implementation and use of cutting-edge technologies. It is also the response to digital trends, and about adopting new processes and redesigning existing ones to compete effectively in an increasingly digital world. Prioritizing technology as the ultimate goal puts the business processes and the knowledge workers aside from the discussion. The key to this proposal is rethinking the business model according to the possibilities of new technologies based on a six-dimension scheme:Corporate strategy: It defines the long-term vision and investment criteria for value creation. Technology is an element within a business scheme that should not be analyzed in isolation.Digital strategy: Within the corporate strategy, what operational and strategic role does technology play? Should it only support the company's operation, or should it drive strategic reinvention?Culture: While digital transformation is the company's response to digital trends, culture is the muscle that provides (or not) the attributes required to succeed in this transformation endeavor. Innovation and creativity should be promoted as part of the company's DNA.Knowledge processes: A business model, built on new technologies, will necessarily impose new and automated practices. While the automation of physical processes is a fact, the automation of knowledge processes is the weakest link.Data governance: It defines the necessary conditions that guarantee the quality of the information and its strategic acquisition. Two elements are a must: the automation of processes, thereby avoiding arbitrariness in data management; and centralized databases, thereby eliminating data duplicity and criteria discrepancy.Data Science: At this point in the model, the company has efficient, automatic, and fast processes, assuring the quality and availability of the data from its conception to the final storage. Then, data scientists will have all the means, and a clear and aligned vision (corporate strategy) to extract meaningful insights for the business.