Suffering and the Sleeplessness of Clinicians

Abstract

The story of a patient’s illness and the history of a disease may look very different. But the latter can often miss the real suffering of the patient in the attempt to clothe what is happening in scientific terms. Suffering itself sometimes does not fall easily into the scientific pigeonholes we create for it in that it is not always proportionate to what doctors might call the severity of the disease causing it but is intimately tied to many other factors. The Lacanian concept of repetition explores unresolved suffering as a tuche or trauma that can escape scientific signification but that draws the physician back to ‘the wound’ (in his/her clinical persona) resulting from an inability to respond to the patient’s suffering). Engaging with the patient’s unresolved suffering requires us to understand the cycles of integration and signification by which a person constructs their Image of themselves as a person. The Imago and the illness are connected and hold the key to the healing process that allows both patient and physician to address whatever is causing their mutual suffering.