ABSTRACT
The chapter explains the existing knowledge of suffering in revealing that suffering has a complex, social developmental structure. Suffering among seriously ill elderly women and men living in care facilities is a multifaceted experience-personal, intersubjective, and social developmental-that involves many contexts, social systems, and environments. The Maternal is a pervasive experience and a frame of reference for elders as the origin of social development. Spirituality, the third central system resting on the Maternal Ground, interacts with agency and sociality and has meaning for elders in their suffering and decision-making experiences. Suffering is a changing and complex social developmental structure that is rooted in the Maternal dimensions of experience and has agentic, emotional, and other dimensions. Phenomenology's contribution to understanding the ethical encounter with the other as subject is perhaps its most unique and lasting contribution, and one that holds the greatest promise for breaking new ground in bioethics.
