The audio file below, on the subject of “The Question of Existential Suffering,” is the second part of my conversation with my dear friend Ms Maryam Foroumand, a psychologist living in Virginia in the United States. She is also a graduate of a Jungian psychoanalytic institute and works in the field of Life Coaching.

The first question Ms Foroumand initiated in this series concerned the emphasis that existentialist philosophy and psychology place on the “suffering and anxiety” of existence as the most important truth of life and as a point of departure for thinking and even for therapy.

In the first part of this conversation—which I will repost below for friends who have joined us more recently—the central question was: why place so much emphasis on the sufferings of life and make them so prominent within the philosophy I present, whose approach to suffering can be understood as fundamentally existentialist?

My response to that question is available in the first file. Given the importance of the subject and the new questions generated by the first answer, Ms Foroumand decided to continue the discussion. Her questions in the second part focus on classifications of suffering, and on her justified concern that continually emphasising suffering as fundamental to life might lead to a form of glorification of suffering, or even to surrender before it.

She also considered the relationship between suffering and meaning in life and raised several questions in that connection. My responses aim first to clarify existential suffering as a form of suffering that lies beyond her distinction between necessary and unnecessary suffering, and beyond good and evil; then to use her useful distinction to examine necessary and unnecessary forms of suffering in life; and finally to consider ways of overcoming both existential suffering and unnecessary suffering.

You can watch the full conversation in the MP4 file or through the link to the YouTube channel.

Thank you for your attention,
Aydin Areta