ABSTRACT
This chapter explores when, and in what way, the materials of our sensitivity – the painful and the pleasant – appear as vital elements encouraging the growth of the personality and spiritual development, and in which conditions they obstruct them. Supported by a psychoanalytic and a Buddhist perspective, I ask: How much pain does it take to move us to act towards liberation from our misery-generating patterns? When, and in what circumstances, does pain get in the way of this process, entangling and holding it back? How much pleasure – and of what type – is needed for the psyche to develop in a healthy manner, so it has the strength for further growth? When and in what circumstances does pleasure interfere, shroud, and block?
Louise’s case serves to describe the challenge of holding an infant, so sensitive to small nuances, well enough, and the value of the sheer work of attunement and adjustment to the therapeutic process. The Buddha’s doctrine of the Middle Path between self-indulgence and self-deprivation, as well an outline of some factors cultivated through Vipassana meditation, demonstrate that any sensation, no matter its source, may function to reinforce existing addictive habits or as a precious resource and guide into the nature of things.
