Necessary Suffering? - Investigating Existential Suffering in Youth through Everyday Experiences of Bad Conscience
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/qs.v6i1.124448Keywords:
Existence suffering, Youth, Patholocization, Normativity, Bad conscienceAbstract
The purpose of this article is to develop an account of existential suffering in youth. According to recent studies, a growing amount of young Westerners has come to suffer from mental disorders, stress, and a general lack of well-being. It is suggested however that the massive concern for young people's mental health might risk contributing to an increased pathologization of all kinds of suffering in youth. In continuation hereof the article aims at disclosing a suffering that is not pathological in kind but quite the contrary clings to existence. Based on interviews with three Danish high school students, regarding their experiences of bad conscience in their everyday lives, it is revealed how they suffer from matters conceivable as normative implications of fundamental conditions of existence such as freedom, finitude and the Other. In the end, critical concerns are raised regarding the normative evaluation of existential suffering as a necessity. That is, should we not always be against suffering?
References
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Bojesen, L. B., & Lindhardt, J. (1979). Samvittigheden. Berlingske leksikon bibliotek.
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Bech, et al. (2001). The sensitivity and specificity of the Major Depression Inventory, using the Present State Examination as the index of diagnostic validity. 66 J Affect Disord 159-164.
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Brinkmann, S. (2014). Languages of suffering. Theory & Psychology, 24(5), 630-648.
Brinkmann, S. (2016). Diagnostic cultures: A cultural approach to the pathologization of modern life. Routledge.
Butler, J. P. (2005). Giving an account of oneself. Fordham Univ Press.
Cooper, M. (2011). Eksistentielle terapier. Dansk Psykologisk Forlag.
Crawford, R. (1980). Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International journal of health services, 10 (3), 365-388.
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Critchley, S., & Cederström, C. (2010). How to Stop Living and Start Worrying: Conversations with Carl Cederstrm. Polity.
Curt, B. C. (1994). Textuality and tectonics: Troubling social and psychological science. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Davies, J. (2012). The importance of suffering: The value and meaning of emotional discontent. Routledge.
Due, P., Diderichsen, F., Meilstrup, C., Nordentoft, M., Obel, C., Sandbæk, A., & Nielsen, A. T. (2014). Børn og unges mentale helbred: forekomst af psykiske symptomer og lidelser og mulige forebyggelsesindsatser.
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Eckersley, R. (2011b). Troubled youth: an island of misery in an ocean of happiness, or the tip of an iceberg of suffering?. Early intervention in psychiatry, 5, 6-11.
Ehrenberg, A. (2016). The weariness of the self: Diagnosing the history of depression in the contemporary age. McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP.
Ehrenreich, B. (2010). Smile or die: How positive thinking fooled America and the world. Granta books.
Fernandez, A. V. (2018). Beyond the Ontological Difference: Heidegger, Binswanger, and the Future of Existential Analysis.
Finlay, L. (2009). Debating phenomenological research methods. Phenomenology & Practice, 3 (1), 6-25.
Galvin, K., & Todres, L. (2013). Caring and well-being: A lifeworld approach. Routledge.
Garmy, P., Clausson, E. K., Berg, A., Steen Carlsson, K., & Jakobsson, U. (2019). Evaluation of a school-based cognitive–behavioral depression prevention program. Scandinavian journal of public health, 47 (2), 182-189.
Giorgi, A. (2006). Facts, values and the psychology of the human person. Indo-Pacific journal of phenomenology, 6 , 1-17.
Gjernes, M. F. (2020). Diskurser om livsmestring: En kritisk analyse av hvordan livsmestring konstrueres som emne i skolen (Master’s thesis, The University of Bergen)
Goldie, P. (2004). On personality. London, UK: Routledge.
Greco, M. (2004). The politics of indeterminacy and the right to health. Theory, culture & Society, 21 (6), 1-22.
Grøn, A. (2008). The concept of anxiety in Søren Kierkegaard. Mercer University Press.
Görlich, A., Pless, M., Katznelson, N., & Graversen, L. (2019). Ny udsathed i ungdomslivet: 11 forskere om den stigende mistrivsel blandt unge.
Halling, S., & Nill, J. D. (1989). Demystifying psychopathology understanding disturbed persons. In Existential-phenomenological perspectives in psychology. Springer, Boston, MA.
Halling, S. (2008). Intimacy, transcendence, and psychology: Closeness and openness in everyday life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Heidegger, M. (2010). Being and Time. Suny Press.
Horwitz, A. V. (2011). Creating an age of depression: the social construction and consequences of the major depression diagnosis. (1), 41-54.
Horwitz, A. V., & Wakefield, J. C. (2005). The age of depression. Public interest, (158), 39.
Horwitz, A. V., & Wakefield, J. C. (2007). The loss of sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder. Oxford University Press.
Howard, J. J. (2014). Conscience in moral life: rethinking how our convictions structure self and society. Rowman & Littlefield.
Janesick, V. J. (1994). The dance of qualitative research design: Metaphor, methodolatry, and meaning. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 209–219). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Jackson, P. (1968). Life in classrooms New York. Holt Rinehart Winston.
Jensen, H. A. R., Davidsen, M., Ekholm, O., & Christensen, A. I. (2018). Danskernes sundhed- Den nationale sundhedsprofil 2017.
Joseph, F., & Reynolds, J. (2014). Existentialism, Phenomenology and Philosophical Method. The Bloomsbury Companion to Existentialism. Bloomsbury Publishing
Joseph, F., Reynolds, J., & Woodward, A. (2014). Introduction. The Bloomsbury Companion to Existentialism. Bloomsbury Publishing
Kaufmann, W. (2016). Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Pickle Partners Publishing.
Kierkegaard, S. (2014). The concept of anxiety: A simple psychologically oriented deliberation in view of the dogmatic problem of hereditary sin. Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Kierkegaard, S. (2013). Kierkegaard's Writings, XIX, Volume 19: Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. Princeton University Press.
Kleinman, A. (2008). Rethinking psychiatry. Simon and Schuster.
Kofod, E.H. (2016). Sorg som grænsediagnose. In S. Brinkmann & A. Petersen (Ed). Diagnoser: perspektiver, kritik og diskussion. Klim.
Køster, A. & Fernandez (in press). Investigating Modes of Being in the World: An Introduction to Phenomenologically Grounded Qualitative Research.
Lane, C. (2008). Shyness: How normal behavior became a sickness. Yale University Press.
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Levinas, E. (1981). Otherwise than being or beyond essence. Springer Science & Business Media.
Levinas, E. (1984). Ethics as First Philosophy.ǁ 1984. Hand, 75-87.
Macquarrie, J. (1972). Existentialism. Hammondsworth.
Madsen, O. J. (2018). Generasjon prestasjon: hva er det som feiler oss?.
Madsen, O. J. (2017). «Hvordan har dere det egentlig?» Som man spør, får man svar. Samtiden, 125(03), 40-45.
Orr, J. (2006). Panic diaries: a genealogy of panic disorder. Duke University Press.
Ottosen, M. H., Andreasen, A. G., Dahl, K.M., Hestbæk, A., Lausten, M., Rayce, S. B. (2018). Børn og unge i Danmark – velfærd og trivsel 2018. Det nationale Forsknings- og Analysecenter for velfærd.
Packer, M. J. (2011). The science of qualitative research. Cambridge University Press.
Pisinger, V., Thorsted, A., Jezek, A. H., Jørgensen, A., Christensen, A. I., & Thygesen, L. C. (2019). UNG19 - Sundhed og trivsel på gymnasiale uddannelser 2019 Statens Institut for Folkesundhed
Petersen, A. (2016). Præstationssamfundet. Hans Reitzels Forlag.
Richardson, F. C., Rogers, A., & McCarroll, J. (1998). Toward a dialogical self. American Behavioral Scientist, 41 (4), 496-515.
Rose, N. (1998). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power, and personhood. Cambridge University Press.
Rose, N. (2019). Our psychiatric future. Polity press.
Rose, N. (2006). Disorders without borders? The expanding scope of psychiatric practice. BioSocieties, 1(4), 465-484.
Salecl, R. (2011). The tyranny of choice. Profile Books.
Scheff, T. J. (1994). Microsociology: Discourse, emotion, and social structure. University of Chicago Press.
Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The “big three” of morality (autonomy, community, divinity) and the “big three” explanations of suffering. Morality and health, 119 , 119-169.
Szasz, T. S. (1961). The uses of naming and the origin of the myth of mental illness. American Psychologist, 16 (2), 59.
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Harvard University Press.
Taylor, C. (1992). The ethics of authenticity. Harvard University Press.
Thomsen, S.U. (2011) Shaken Mirror: Poems. Gyldendal.
Twenge, J. M., Cooper, A. B., Joiner, T. E., Duffy, M. E., & Binau, S. G. (2019). Age, period, and cohort trends in mood disorder indicators and suicide-related outcomes in a nationally representative dataset, 2005–2017. Journal of abnormal psychology, 128(3),
van den Berg, J. H. (1972). A different existence: Principles of phenomenological psychopathology.
van Deurzen, E., Längle, A., Schneider, K. J., Tantam, D., & Du Plock, S. (2019). The Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy. E. Craig (Ed.). Wiley Blackwell.
van Manen, M. (1990). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Althouse Press, Ontario.
van Manen, M. (2017). Phenomenology in its original sense. Qualitative Health Research, 27(6), 810-825.
Welz, C. (2008). Keeping the secret of subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Levinas on Conscience, Love and the Limits of Self-understanding In Despite Oneself: Subjectivity and its Secret in Kierkegaard and Levinas. Welz, C., & Verstrynge, K. (Ed.). Turnshare Ltd.- Publisher.
Young, I. M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Žižek, S. (2001). The fragile absolute: or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? Verso.
Aho, K. (2019). Contexts of Suffering: A Heideggerian Approach to Psychopathology. Rowman & Littlefield International.
Bojesen, L. B., & Lindhardt, J. (1979). Samvittigheden. Berlingske leksikon bibliotek.
Bauman, Z. (2007). Consuming life. Polity, Cambridge.
Bech, et al. (2001). The sensitivity and specificity of the Major Depression Inventory, using the Present State Examination as the index of diagnostic validity. 66 J Affect Disord 159-164.
Bellah, R. N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W., Swidler, A., & Tipton, S. M. (1985). Habits of the heart: middle America observed. London: Hutchinson.
Brinkmann, S. (2014). Languages of suffering. Theory & Psychology, 24(5), 630-648.
Brinkmann, S. (2016). Diagnostic cultures: A cultural approach to the pathologization of modern life. Routledge.
Butler, J. P. (2005). Giving an account of oneself. Fordham Univ Press.
Cooper, M. (2011). Eksistentielle terapier. Dansk Psykologisk Forlag.
Crawford, R. (1980). Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International journal of health services, 10 (3), 365-388.
Critchley, S. (2007). Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment. Politics of Resistance. Verso.
Critchley, S., & Cederström, C. (2010). How to Stop Living and Start Worrying: Conversations with Carl Cederstrm. Polity.
Curt, B. C. (1994). Textuality and tectonics: Troubling social and psychological science. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Davies, J. (2012). The importance of suffering: The value and meaning of emotional discontent. Routledge.
Due, P., Diderichsen, F., Meilstrup, C., Nordentoft, M., Obel, C., Sandbæk, A., & Nielsen, A. T. (2014). Børn og unges mentale helbred: forekomst af psykiske symptomer og lidelser og mulige forebyggelsesindsatser.
Eckersley, R. (2011a). A new narrative of young people's health and well-being. Journal of youth studies, 14 (5), 627-638.
Eckersley, R. (2011b). Troubled youth: an island of misery in an ocean of happiness, or the tip of an iceberg of suffering?. Early intervention in psychiatry, 5, 6-11.
Ehrenberg, A. (2016). The weariness of the self: Diagnosing the history of depression in the contemporary age. McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP.
Ehrenreich, B. (2010). Smile or die: How positive thinking fooled America and the world. Granta books.
Fernandez, A. V. (2018). Beyond the Ontological Difference: Heidegger, Binswanger, and the Future of Existential Analysis.
Finlay, L. (2009). Debating phenomenological research methods. Phenomenology & Practice, 3 (1), 6-25.
Galvin, K., & Todres, L. (2013). Caring and well-being: A lifeworld approach. Routledge.
Garmy, P., Clausson, E. K., Berg, A., Steen Carlsson, K., & Jakobsson, U. (2019). Evaluation of a school-based cognitive–behavioral depression prevention program. Scandinavian journal of public health, 47 (2), 182-189.
Giorgi, A. (2006). Facts, values and the psychology of the human person. Indo-Pacific journal of phenomenology, 6 , 1-17.
Gjernes, M. F. (2020). Diskurser om livsmestring: En kritisk analyse av hvordan livsmestring konstrueres som emne i skolen (Master’s thesis, The University of Bergen)
Goldie, P. (2004). On personality. London, UK: Routledge.
Greco, M. (2004). The politics of indeterminacy and the right to health. Theory, culture & Society, 21 (6), 1-22.
Grøn, A. (2008). The concept of anxiety in Søren Kierkegaard. Mercer University Press.
Görlich, A., Pless, M., Katznelson, N., & Graversen, L. (2019). Ny udsathed i ungdomslivet: 11 forskere om den stigende mistrivsel blandt unge.
Halling, S., & Nill, J. D. (1989). Demystifying psychopathology understanding disturbed persons. In Existential-phenomenological perspectives in psychology. Springer, Boston, MA.
Halling, S. (2008). Intimacy, transcendence, and psychology: Closeness and openness in everyday life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Heidegger, M. (2010). Being and Time. Suny Press.
Horwitz, A. V. (2011). Creating an age of depression: the social construction and consequences of the major depression diagnosis. (1), 41-54.
Horwitz, A. V., & Wakefield, J. C. (2005). The age of depression. Public interest, (158), 39.
Horwitz, A. V., & Wakefield, J. C. (2007). The loss of sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder. Oxford University Press.
Howard, J. J. (2014). Conscience in moral life: rethinking how our convictions structure self and society. Rowman & Littlefield.
Janesick, V. J. (1994). The dance of qualitative research design: Metaphor, methodolatry, and meaning. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 209–219). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Jackson, P. (1968). Life in classrooms New York. Holt Rinehart Winston.
Jensen, H. A. R., Davidsen, M., Ekholm, O., & Christensen, A. I. (2018). Danskernes sundhed- Den nationale sundhedsprofil 2017.
Joseph, F., & Reynolds, J. (2014). Existentialism, Phenomenology and Philosophical Method. The Bloomsbury Companion to Existentialism. Bloomsbury Publishing
Joseph, F., Reynolds, J., & Woodward, A. (2014). Introduction. The Bloomsbury Companion to Existentialism. Bloomsbury Publishing
Kaufmann, W. (2016). Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Pickle Partners Publishing.
Kierkegaard, S. (2014). The concept of anxiety: A simple psychologically oriented deliberation in view of the dogmatic problem of hereditary sin. Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Kierkegaard, S. (2013). Kierkegaard's Writings, XIX, Volume 19: Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. Princeton University Press.
Kleinman, A. (2008). Rethinking psychiatry. Simon and Schuster.
Kofod, E.H. (2016). Sorg som grænsediagnose. In S. Brinkmann & A. Petersen (Ed). Diagnoser: perspektiver, kritik og diskussion. Klim.
Køster, A. & Fernandez (in press). Investigating Modes of Being in the World: An Introduction to Phenomenologically Grounded Qualitative Research.
Lane, C. (2008). Shyness: How normal behavior became a sickness. Yale University Press.
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Levinas, E. (1981). Otherwise than being or beyond essence. Springer Science & Business Media.
Levinas, E. (1984). Ethics as First Philosophy.ǁ 1984. Hand, 75-87.
Macquarrie, J. (1972). Existentialism. Hammondsworth.
Madsen, O. J. (2018). Generasjon prestasjon: hva er det som feiler oss?.
Madsen, O. J. (2017). «Hvordan har dere det egentlig?» Som man spør, får man svar. Samtiden, 125(03), 40-45.
Orr, J. (2006). Panic diaries: a genealogy of panic disorder. Duke University Press.
Ottosen, M. H., Andreasen, A. G., Dahl, K.M., Hestbæk, A., Lausten, M., Rayce, S. B. (2018). Børn og unge i Danmark – velfærd og trivsel 2018. Det nationale Forsknings- og Analysecenter for velfærd.
Packer, M. J. (2011). The science of qualitative research. Cambridge University Press.
Pisinger, V., Thorsted, A., Jezek, A. H., Jørgensen, A., Christensen, A. I., & Thygesen, L. C. (2019). UNG19 - Sundhed og trivsel på gymnasiale uddannelser 2019 Statens Institut for Folkesundhed
Petersen, A. (2016). Præstationssamfundet. Hans Reitzels Forlag.
Richardson, F. C., Rogers, A., & McCarroll, J. (1998). Toward a dialogical self. American Behavioral Scientist, 41 (4), 496-515.
Rose, N. (1998). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power, and personhood. Cambridge University Press.
Rose, N. (2019). Our psychiatric future. Polity press.
Rose, N. (2006). Disorders without borders? The expanding scope of psychiatric practice. BioSocieties, 1(4), 465-484.
Salecl, R. (2011). The tyranny of choice. Profile Books.
Scheff, T. J. (1994). Microsociology: Discourse, emotion, and social structure. University of Chicago Press.
Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The “big three” of morality (autonomy, community, divinity) and the “big three” explanations of suffering. Morality and health, 119 , 119-169.
Szasz, T. S. (1961). The uses of naming and the origin of the myth of mental illness. American Psychologist, 16 (2), 59.
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Harvard University Press.
Taylor, C. (1992). The ethics of authenticity. Harvard University Press.
Thomsen, S.U. (2011) Shaken Mirror: Poems. Gyldendal.
Twenge, J. M., Cooper, A. B., Joiner, T. E., Duffy, M. E., & Binau, S. G. (2019). Age, period, and cohort trends in mood disorder indicators and suicide-related outcomes in a nationally representative dataset, 2005–2017. Journal of abnormal psychology, 128(3),
van den Berg, J. H. (1972). A different existence: Principles of phenomenological psychopathology.
van Deurzen, E., Längle, A., Schneider, K. J., Tantam, D., & Du Plock, S. (2019). The Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy. E. Craig (Ed.). Wiley Blackwell.
van Manen, M. (1990). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Althouse Press, Ontario.
van Manen, M. (2017). Phenomenology in its original sense. Qualitative Health Research, 27(6), 810-825.
Welz, C. (2008). Keeping the secret of subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Levinas on Conscience, Love and the Limits of Self-understanding In Despite Oneself: Subjectivity and its Secret in Kierkegaard and Levinas. Welz, C., & Verstrynge, K. (Ed.). Turnshare Ltd.- Publisher.
Young, I. M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Žižek, S. (2001). The fragile absolute: or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? Verso.
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2021-01-21
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Meier, J. (2021). Necessary Suffering? - Investigating Existential Suffering in Youth through Everyday Experiences of Bad Conscience. Qualitative Studies, 6(1), 116–141. https://doi.org/10.7146/qs.v6i1.124448
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