The importance of suffering : the value and meaning of emotional discontent / James Davies.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davies, James (James Peter)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Suffering.

Emotions.

Mental health.

Physical Description:

viii, 198 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Hove ; New York : Routledge, 2012.

Summary:

In this book James Davies considers emotional suffering as part and parcel of what it means to live and develop as a human being, rather than as a mental health problem requiring only psychiatric, antidepressant, or cognitive treatment. This book therefore offers a new perspective on emotional discontent and discusses how we can engage with it clinically, personally and socially to uncover its productive value.

The Importance of Suffering explores a relational theory of understanding emotional suffering, suggesting that suffering does not spring from one dimension of our lives, but is often the outcome of how we relate to the world internally - in terms of our personal biology, habits and values, and externally - in terms of our society, culture and the world around us. Davies suggests that suffering is a healthy call-to-change and shouldn't be chemically anesthetised or avoided. The book challenges conventional thinking by arguing that if we understand and manage suffering more holistically, it can facilitate individual and social transformation in powerful and surprising ways.

The Importance of Suffering offers new ways to think about, and therefore understand, suffering. It will appeal to anyone who works with suffering in a professional context including professionals, trainees and academics in the fields of counselling, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychiatry and clinical psychology. Book jacket.

Contents:

The relational perspective on suffering

Positive and negative models of suffering: a battle for supremacy

Anaesthetic regimes and the unproblematic life

The consequences of avoiding our primary problems: unproductive suffering

Productive suffering as a ritual process

as useful descent

The period of transition in the ritual of productive suffering.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780415667791

0415667798

9780415667807

0415667801

OCLC:

724641555