When suffering is not enduring suffering

Abstract

The author differentiates between two mental states in which one of them feels pain, but does not suffer it, and another that supports suffering it and, therefore, thinking about it. The pains suffered are considered pains of life, due to the very fact of living it. The pain felt lacks symbolization due to failures in a thinking link with caregivers in which the alpha function (Bion) does not occur in sufficient conditions to produce transformations in feeling towards suffering the pain of life. Addictions are instantaneous ways of numbing unsupported pain, untransformed pain, dismissed pain. A clinical case is presented to illustrate an addictive way of numbing pain. The author also proposes that we consider, as possible additions, the intense and extensive involvement of psychoanalysts with psychoanalysis, occupying time and space for other activities, including leisure activities, which could interact in a creative way with specifically psychoanalytic functions.