Psychology of Suffering: Week 4 Reflection - Closure, Reclusivity, and The Plague

                This week’s discussions have me thinking about a few different things.  While doing some research I ran across an article titled “The Myth of Closure.”  After having recently read the article, I thought it was pretty relevant to some of the things we’ve been discussing lately, particularly today’s (Thursday’s) discussion.  I’ve also been doing some research on Terror Management Theory and while doing some reading for that I found an interesting paradoxical theory.  This paradoxical claim is that grief / trauma / stress can cause two extreme occurrences to take place.  A dramatic shaking of our core could cause us to strengthen and turn to, perhaps out of desperation and longing for security and understanding, our relationships and connections with other people.  However, the opposite may also occur.  Rather than strengthen our bonds and relationships it is also possible that suffering could drive a wedge in and separate the sufferer from their relationships.  The last thing that I’ve been sitting with is some of our post-class lunch time discussions.  (Feel free to join us in the UCC any time!)  Jodi referenced Albert Camus’ “The Plague” and suggested to Tom that it would be a good read fitting to our discussions.  Camus has been very influential in my life, so I decided to re-read “The Plague” over the last week.

                What I found most interesting in the article I read about closure is that it suggests, and I am tempted to agree, is that closure never really occurs.  The article suggested that the media reporters have beaten the term to death and used it to propagate fairytale-fashioned “happy” endings to their stories.  The article then asserts that the only closure that is taking place is for the reader of the news clipping and the reporter writing it.  The initial sufferer, on the other hand, is still suffering and will continue to do so.  Closure implies a fixing or “getting over” whatever is causing the suffering.  Even ignoring the practical possibilities of this process, I think it is much more “healthy” to grow and move with the post-suffering-events.  What I liked about the article was the point implied notion that life is not like it is in news clippings, books, television, and movies.  The world and your world, hopefully, do not end once suffering has been introduced to it.  Rather, the world and your life continue in spite of it.  We are left to struggle and grow with our suffering as it is now a part of us, not something to be “fixed” or neatly wrapped and billed on a silver screen.

As mentioned earlier, I’ve also been thinking about how relationships are affected by suffering.  On the one hand it is possible that the suffering will ignite our resilience and cause us to dig deep into our relationships as a source of reluctant and comforting understanding.  However, that is an optimistic, perhaps fatally so, outlook.  It is also quite possible that in lieu of suffering one will become reclusive and withdrawn.  We may become divided and overwhelmed by feelings of hopeless and helplessness.  I want to make the point that both categories could be either “healthy” or “unhealthy” outcomes.  Of course a strengthening of relationships would seem the preferred outcome, but what if a dependency builds on those relationships?  What happens when that support structure starts to crumble?  For example, if when dealing with the loss of a loved one you turn to another family member for support you then have to deal with the death of that family member who has provided you with so much comfort?  On the other side, becoming reclusive may seem unhealthy at first, but perhaps it also has its positives.  How many of us have every used (on any scale of “suffering”) the expression “It’s just something I have to deal with by myself”?  Perhaps this reclusiveness provides an opportunity to teach us future resilience and, when called into question, our support structures and coping mechanisms are ultimately strengthened.

                Lastly, The Plague.  I could certainly write an entire essay in great detail about “The Plague”’s revelations of suffering.  However, there are a few parts that really stuck out to me.  During one passage there is a conversation, I do not remember the exact dialogue off hand, in which the doctor is asked “Who taught you all of this?”  He replies, “Suffering.”  I’d like to just leave it at that and let it sit for a while.  The second thing that stuck out to me was the conclusion of the book.  The town’s people are celebrating having “survived” the plague.  But the ending is bittersweet as the doctor reflects his knowledge of the plague, knowledge of which the other people are ignorant.  That is, the fact that plague does not die.  Rather, it comes and goes as it pleases.  It is steadily destructive and after having “runs its course” lies dormant for an indeterminable period of time; maybe weeks, or years, or decades.  In reference to my earlier comments on closure, I think this helps deliver the punchline.  Just as we talked about in class today:  when someone survives a disaster and they say that they “don’t care about their ‘stuff’, their just thankful everyone is alive” ask them in a week or a month if they care about not having a home, or food/water, or electricity, a car, or a job.