Relinquishing a Handgrip on Suffering
Rosemary Williams
Student Counsellor
Australian Catholic University
One of the remarkable features of counselling practice is that the deepest complaint one encounters
is often not so much over the event precipitating distress but, rather, over the reaction of others to
the suffering person.
Ruth Park (1994) expresses something of its dynamics in her recent
autobiography, Fishing in the Styx :
In need, which so often translates as defencelessness, there is some mysterious component which brings out
the worst in many people; regrettably, too, in all races. It is as if defencelessness, no matter the cause poverty, age, gender, physical weakness or anything else - instantly marks you out as an appropriate victim.
The victim, it seems, is always wrong.
In counselling practice, students who grieve the loss of a relationship, a child, physical or mental
health, or employment invariably find that those with whom they relate consider, consciously or
unconsciously, that their suffering is their own fault. A number of questions and comments are put
before them. “You knew he intended to join the army. Why did you let yourself get so involved?”
“Was she wearing a seatbelt/child harness/stack hat?” “If you'd expressed your feelings instead of
suppressing them, you could have avoided breast cancer”. “Have you tried massage, acupuncture,
surgery, faith healing, physiotherapy, swimming, counselling, prayer?” “If you study that much, of
course you’ll get sick.” “You always were highly strung.” “If you’d try harder, get up earlier, I'm
sure you'd land a job.” Inherent in these reactions is a quid-pro-quo approach to human suffering.
In this view, suffering is the consequence of some sort of wrongdoing on the part of the sufferer.
The sufferer has been thoughtless, negligent, psychologically inept, inefficient, inherently flawed or
lazy. Under the quid-pro-quo stance, the corollary - that happiness results from goodness - applies.
Because “the Clinic and society reciprocally influence each other” (Harari 1995), it is not surprising
to discern the same quid-pro-quo stance in contemporary Australian life. It is acknowledged in our
literature. Thomas Keneally’s (1988) casualty in Victim of the Aurora observes: “There are some
who claim that polar heroes should enjoy all the safeguards that ordinary seamen sail under.
Others, however, think the sea will overlook our little omissions on account of our holy cause”.
The Australian press reports it: “He could not believe that such a horrific accident could occur to an
organisation that had done such good work throughout the community” (The Age, 3/11/93).
Everyday Australian conversations report it: “Look mate, to tear his hamstring in the first quarter,
he can’t have been training”. The commentators of Australian Rules football hold to it. When
Essendon's Michael Long complained of suffering racial abuse on the field - of being called a
black bastard - he was accused of over-sensitivity. “Even his manliness has been challenged...”
(The Age, 2/5/95). And his protagonist was said to have accused him “you took it the wrong way
mate!” (The Age, 9/5/95). The view emerged in the case of the Queensland teenager who died of
toxic shock syndrome. “Since her sister’s death, Mrs Lawrenson has had people stopping her in the
streets of Mount Isa to tell her that if Peta-Ann had been a Ôclean’ girl then she would still be alive”
(The Sunday Age, 5/2/95). Finally, the homeless women of my own community, who often weep
over the loss of their children, find that the voice of the harsh judge within them combines with that
of the harsh judge outside them to declare failure (Tellefson, 1995).
On a deeper level again, the quid-pro-quo stance is evident around the Holocaust - that twentieth
century event for which a new voice must be found. The cyanide gas chambers, the careful
bookkeeping, the extraction of gold teeth, the huge crematoriums and the millions of Jewish people
systematically murdered leave survivors with barely tolerable memories of limitless horror. Yet
these are met, often enough, with quid-pro-quo thinking:
“Not only were Holocaust survivors not heard, they were often blamed for the crimes committed
against them. They had failed to resist, to run away, had been too passive, their families had gone
to the gas chambers like lambs to the slaughter. Even their very survival was questioned. Did they
survive at the expense of others by collaborating with the enemy, or by committing immoral acts?”
(Lang, 1995).
The origins in history of the quid-pro-quo approach to human suffering are complex. Certainly, the
Sumerians c. 3000-2400 BCE did not subscribe to it. For them, no-one could be certain of
immunity from suffering because they expected their gods to be brutal and indiscriminate as were
the forces of nature of which they were personifications. In the second millennium, a profound
change took place when the Babylonians “tried to fit the universe into moral laws springing from
the human conscience” (Lambert, 1960). They had relinquished the analogy to natural forces and
imagined the gods in their own image. So, the orthodox friend in “The dialogue of human misery”,
Babylonian poetry of 1200-800 BCE, believes that his companion’s suffering is a result of his
failing relationship with the deity : “Unless you seek the will of the god, what success can you have
/ Seek the favourable breath of the god / What you have lost in a year you will make up in a
moment” (Pritchard, 1969).
Later literature of the ancient Near East, the Book of Job, 500-200 BCE, suggests that this profound
change in perception was a consequence of the advent of agriculture. The friends of Job observe
the orderliness of the process of organic growth : “Can papyrus grow where there is no marsh / Can
reeds flourish where there is no water?” (Job 8:11). They regard it as a clue to the moral realm. It,
too, has a reliable order. Job’s great sufferings, then, are a consequence of his wickedness (Job
22:4-5). By the end of the book, though, their flinty stance has been dismissed out of hand and their
moral calculus revealed as jejune and superficial in the face of the sharp paradoxes of the natural
and animal worlds (Job 38-41, Alter, 1985).
The paradoxical nature of reality has been emphasised in recent times by the insights of psychology
- a discipline more readily embraced in twentieth century Western society than the writings of the
ancient Near East. In particular, Jungian thought has reminded us of our tendency to set up values
in opposition to each other - winning in opposition to losing; choice to duty; action to passivity;
decisiveness to observation; masculinity to femininity; sex to celibacy; tenderness to aggression;
sharp consciousness to meditative consciousness. Instead of holding each value as a contradiction
to the other, Jungian thinking encourages us to accept these opposing elements, to endure the
collision of them in full consciousness and, so, to embrace paradox. Then, masculinity and
femininity, tenderness and aggression, sex and celibacy, for example, are each made valid and are
each transformed by its opposite. So, a tenderness which knows nothing of aggression will be selfexploitative or Pollyanna-ish.
“To transform opposition into paradox is to allow both sides of an issue, both pairs of opposites to
exist in equal dignity and worth... If I can stay with my conflicting impulses long enough, the two
opposing forces will teach each other something and produce an insight that serves them both. This
is not compromise but a depth of understanding that puts my life in perspective and allows me to
know with certainty what I should do” (Johnson, 1991).
When we take refuge in dichotomies about human anguish - good/bad; prosperity/suffering - we
take refuge in an illusion. We avoid what, at some deep level, has seemed contradictory to us human innocence together with human suffering. It is difficult, of course, to consent to any paradox
for it is to suffer the mystery of duality.
“We hate paradox since it is so painful getting there, but it is a very direct experience of a reality
beyond our usual frame of reference and yields some of the greatest insights. It forces us beyond
ourselves and destroys naive and inadequate adaptations” (Johnson, 1991).
When we consent to the idea of human innocence and human suffering, we come up against our
fear of the arbitrary nature of human anguish. I put one particular question to students who come
before me disheartened by judgement on their suffering. What do you think it says about the person
pronouncing the verdict? Very often students comment that it does seem to speak of the other’s
fear of the random quality of suffering. A fear which they hope to limit by placing human pain
within the control of the individual - who can avoid it by a good life. In seeing it as an issue for the
other, the student can step back from the distress, guilt and added burden which the judgement has
evoked in him or her. It is wearying, all the same, to be so often mopping up the effects of this
particular piece of relating. Of course, a counsellor is not immune either from a fear such as this
and its blundering expression. Hence the emphasis on self-insight in the helping professions. An
unexamined or forgotten life can wreak havoc on a person already in anguish.
If the suffering involved in the acceptance of duality, and, if fear of the arbitrariness of human
anguish are two explanations for the popularity of the quid-pro-quo response, another lies in the
function it serves as a disclaimer of responsibility or care for the suffering of another. We take up
again and consider the reaction to Michael Long, the footballer who complained he had suffered
racial abuse. The Age reports:
“It is easy to see why Aboriginal sportsmen are not keen to speak up against racial taunts. They get
whacked about the ears for their trouble... Peter Cameron a former AFL umpire of 306 games’
experience, actually offered the theory that it was an Essendon Football Club plot to secure Long an
easier run with the umpires. Leon Wiegard believes if Long can’t take a bit of racial abuse, then he
should not play AFL footy. Mal Brown says what’s the problem. People used to call him fat and
he did not lose sleep over it. Ron Barassi thinks such incidents should be left on the field. Is
anybody sure what Crackers Keenan thinks?” (The Age, 2/5/95).
It is a reaction which puts the “wrong man in box” (The Age, headline) and sidesteps the appalling
injustices Aboriginal people have endured through history. The Age continues:
“Brown says he was called fat when he was playing footy. Didn't worry him. So he figures what is
the problem with being called a black bastard? The difference, of course, is monumental.
Historically, fat people, or bald people or men with knobbly knees have not been hunted with sheets
over their heads and guns in their hands. They have not been taken from their families on
government insistence to be brought up “correctly”. And they have always been allowed to vote.
They have not grown up watching their parents and grandparents barred from hotels, restaurants,
swimming pools ... Call Long a skinny bastard and he’ll turn the other cheek, call him a black
skinny bastard and you have a problem because you automatically fall on the side that has treated
his people so disgracefully” (The Age, 2/5/95).
If we blame Long for his own suffering, we distance ourselves from his lived experience. And we
avoid awareness, acknowledgment and responsibility for our treatment of Aboriginal Australians.
The quid-pro-quo response can act as a dissuasive force, then, against social justice - in this instance
for the Aboriginal people, but just as likely for students on campuses of higher education.
Is there any truth in the quid-pro-quo stance to human anguish? Clearly, there are ways of
proceeding which will cause suffering. If a student takes up heroin, it is certain that they will
become addicted, sick and desperate for money to fund their habit. If a student denies their anger,
they will develop symptoms of depression, headache, anxiety, for example. There are physical and
psychological principles which, if breached, cause human beings difficulty. Even so, the fact that a
person infringes against one of these principles with its resultant suffering can hardly be evidence in
itself of any wrongdoing. I have seen people turn to heroin as a means of tolerating unbearable
emotional pain. Wrongdoing is the least of it.
In the context of another’s suffering, the quid-pro-quo response always exacerbates distress. For,
when we deal a suffering person, the quid-pro-quo cards, we leave them, like many of the students I
see, with stark and solitary hands. Or like the sufferer in, “The dialogue of human misery” - hurt
and attacking. Or we leave them like Mrs Lawrenson, whose sister died of toxic shock syndrome,
“bitter that people might think Peta-Ann in some way contributed to her own death” (The Sunday
Age, 5/2/95). Or like Michael Long, the Aboriginal footballer, “I stood up for what I believe in but
I’ve been made a fool of” (The Age, 8/5/95). We advance accusation and judgement as formidable
intruders into the arena of personal pain. We deny the fact of innocent human suffering.
Which brings us back again to the Holocaust, for a major source of the rage and pain of its survivors
today can be located in the attempts to deny that it even happened. The quid-pro-quo response is a
variation on this particular denial. It denies the innocence of the Jewish people - the utterly
undeserved character of their suffering. “...they were blamed for the crimes committed against
them. They failed to fight, they didn’t try to escape. They were often asked in an accusing manner
‘How come you managed to survive when so many did not?’” (Lang, 1995).
This is uttered within the context of a particular sensitivity to denial that Holocaust survivors rightly
have. For the Nazi’s heinous plan was abetted by the use of “official language” (of denial). The
systematic attempt to exterminate the Jews was “The Final Solution”; the inmates of the
concentration camps were not people, just “numbers”; human corpses were “dolls”; gassing human
beings to death was “special treatment”. Secondly, the Holocaust survivor is never just telling a
story. He or she is also a witness, someone who is providing testimony. “Their impossible task is
to show somehow that their words are material fragments of experience, that the current existence
of their narratives is casual proof that its objects also existed in historical time” (Young, in Harari
1995).
It is not difficult, then, to apprehend the brutality of quid-pro-quo thinking about the
Holocaust.
Yet, we think it all the same - and about all sorts of suffering. For 3000 years and more, this belief
has preserved a strategy to avoid the mystery of human anguish. The poets have reminded us of the
illusion of its dichotomies. William Blake put it “Joy and woe are woven fine / A clothing for the
soul divine”. Later, Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1970) wrote “Light and sister shade / Shape each mortal
morrow / Seek not to evade / Love’s companion sorrow”. In The Land of Walking Trees :
Meditations for the seriously ill, Michael Hansen (1993) writes “I used to think suffering was
jaggered with pain, but it has a smooth shape, smooth as a black night. It has no handles”. The
quid-pro-quo response is a handgrip on suffering which has to be relinquished in favour of standing
in solidarity in the darkness with the one who suffers. It has to be abandoned for earthy
acknowledgment and understanding of another's anguish. It has to be laid aside to the benefit of
accompanying the other on their pilgrimage and, then, on into social action.
References
Alter, R. (1985) The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York : Basic Books, 88, 102.
Book of Job, The Holy Bible. NRSV (1989). U.S.A. : World Bible Publishers, Inc., 461, 474, 488-492.
Hansen, M. (1993) The Land of Walking Trees. Aust : Collins Dove, 151.
Harari, E. (1995) The longest shadow. A clinical commentary on Moshe Lang’s ÔSilence : Therapy with Holocaust
Survivors and their families’. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 16, 1, 11.
Johnson, R. (1991) Owning your own shadow. San Francisco : Harper, 77-79, 82, 86.
Keneally, T. (1988) Victim of the Aurora. London : Sceptre, 22.
Lambert, W.G. (1960) Babylonian Wisdom Literature. OUP, 7.
Lang, M. (1995) Silence : Therapy with Holocaust Survivors and their families, Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Family Therapy, 16, 1, 9.
Park, R. (1994) Fishing in the Styx. Aust : Penguin, 47-8.
Pritchard, J. B. (1969) Ancient Near Eastern Texts. Princeton University Press, 603.
Tellefson, J. (1995) Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. Kairos, 6, 7, 39.
The Age, 3/11/93, 2/5/95, 9/5/95.
The Sunday Age, 5/2/95.
Walker, K. (1970), now known as Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Song, in My People. Aust : Jacaranda, 76.
The author may be contacted at:
Rosemary Williams
Student Counsellor
Australian Catholic University
412 Mount Alexander Rd
Ascot Vale
Victoria 3032