A lie exposed is a fantasy revealed, and here, in the cases of James Frey and JT LeRoy, was the fantasy underlying contemporary autobiographical writing: Suffering produces meaning.
"[The psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor] Viktor Frankl said that despair is suffering without meaning" says Farber, who suggests that taking part in the play gives "a sense of purpose in going to that darkness".
He worried about suffering and meaning, torn between a conviction that we have a responsibility to make the world a better place, and a doubt that anything could really be done.
"I don't believe that suffering gives meaning," Benatar said.
Many times I was simply struck dumb, especially when challenging questions were sent in my direction, from people asking me, for example, what I meant when I said suffering had meaning for those suffering the suffering inflicted upon them.
In China, too, on a visit last summer, I heard over and over from young people fortunate enough to be thriving that their nation was unmoored, lost, morally confused, suffering a crisis of meaning often hard to perceive in the shadows of frothing growth.
To draw good from bad, meaning from suffering.
An important step to provide such interventions is to assess the nature of psychological (psychological, social, existential) suffering and understand it's meaning for the patient, as well as to assess the physical aspects of suffering, taking into account that one may affect the other.
The people have given this time of violence and suffering its own name, chidudu — meaning "the fear".
