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Philosophers and psychologists both have been concerned with the nature of the self and how it comes into being. Neither of these disciplines, however, appears to have definitive ideas about how the self is developed and constituted, with some people responding to their human condition with courage and fortitude, while others are lost to suffering and despair.
Suffering is not a subject to which philosophers have paid sufficient attention. Georg Simmel is reported to have remarked that suffering is not what philosophy is about, as if there is something tainted or unclear about the subject matter . Moreover, the suffering of others can be easily ignored. Unlike related subjects, like evil, which requires an audience, suffering can be borne silently and alone. Psychologists have not done much better with suffering. Those of us who are clinicians are expected to be concerned with human suffering as part and parcel of our daily endeavors. But we have done little more than treat the symptoms of suffering. Few philosophers or psychologists have attempted a penetrating examination into the etiology and meaning of human suffering.