PERSONAL SUFFERING

This document defines suffering as the affective aspect of the pain experience while the cognitive aspect of the pain experience is the sensation of pain. It considers personal suffering, which mean's one's own suffering, and not the suffering of other people. It notes that a particular interpretation of suffering may be formulated in any number of perceptual statements and that a perception of suffering, an affective reaction to that interpretation, and the action tendency resulting from the perceptual and affective responses to suffering constitute the attitude toward suffering. Attitudinal components gathered from listening to reports of patients about their suffering, reading therapists ' reports, and analyzing the literat-re on suffering are discussed and categorized into 11 attitudes toward personal suffering: (1) punitive; (2) testing; (3) bad luck; (4) submission to the laws of nature; (5