ABSTRACT
In Chapter 4 we observed how anaesthetic regimes help people avoid their primary problems, and the productive suffering that accompanies confronting them and working through them successfully. We also explored why there is a shortage of `productive' suffering in contemporary life, and a surplus of `unproductive' suffering. This is due to two factors: ®rst, the ascendancy since the early 1980s of the negative vision of suffering (which has taught people that all suffering is harmful and therefore best avoided), and second, the rise of anaesthetic regimes, which, by capitalising upon this negative vision, have claimed to offer easy solutions for problems that do not lend themselves to quick and super®cial treatments.
