Abstract
An investigation of those who suffer indicates that while many remain in a disabled and anguished state of being, others find personal meaning in their plight that allows them to transcend their anguish. It is shown here that the capacity to transcend anguish and find personal meaning is a socioemotional process that allows the sufferer to define himself in ways that respect his personal agency. Two literary sources are employed here to explore the issue of personal agency—Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Book of Job.
Notes
1My interpretation of Job as a moral agent has some similarities with C.G. Jung's (Citation1971) intriguing and controversial view of God as a highly paradoxic figure in the Jewish Bible. Jung contends that Yahweh has been portrayed contradictorily throughout the earliest biblical scriptures. A deity immodest in His passions, Yahweh often suffered for His fiery temper. He frequently admits to being eaten up with instinctual rage and jealousy that have no understandable origin—an awareness that disturbs Him. He recognizes that owning to His lack of Self-examination, He occasionally presents his ‘chosen people,’ the Israelites, with insoluble conflicts (Jung, Citation1971). In Jung's view, God could have permitted such cruel satanic mischief only because He forgot to use His omniscience. In the story of Job, for example, Yahweh did not recognize how much He actually favoured His dark son, Satan, over the welfare of humanity. However, Jung also points out, that Yahweh so often seen as raging and seeking vengeance in the Jewish Bible, is no less frequently portrayed as demonstrating loving-kindness and charity toward His chosen people. Jung contends that this paradoxic presentation of the deity manifests a psychological condition conceivable only when one does not consciously reflect upon one's actions and intentions or when one lacks a highly developed capacity for self-reflection. Jung, then, argues that Job has a more well-developed consciousness and mature sense of morality than does God. Job uses these assets to cleverly encourage God to separate His loving presence from His terrible, irrational rage and to become an advocate for Job in protecting him from Yahweh's own madness.
2I am referring to the madness that is reactive to psychological conditions, and am sidestepping here the question of the role that genetic and constitutional factors play in functional psychosis.