The familiar stranger
on the loss of self in intense bodily pain
pp. 51-73
in: George, P. G. Jung (eds), Cultural ontology of the self in pain, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
The self is not an unchanging substance but a way of being that can be destroyed and regained. As the embodied and narratively sedimented way of being toward other persons and the world as such, the identity of the self is a thickly layered and dynamic formation of meaning. One of the enigmatic experiences that can trigger the loss and destruction of the self is intense bodily pain. Destruction of the self in pain comes to mean that one is weary with one's being, leading to the experience of selfhood in its worldless bareness. The worldless self, thrown up by intense bodily pain, is an extreme form of the "I" that is a stranger even to oneself, having to persist without the intimate layers of meaning associated with the "I myself." Hence, the layers that vest the self with meaning and significance like the world and other persons become unmeaningful in intense bodily pain. The damage that totally aversive pain inflicts upon the self is often short-lived, but it can also be terminal, permanent and sometimes lastingly self-diminishing. Human culture as such and the caring gesture of others can be seen as two specific ways of assisting persons to regain their lost selfhood. The chapter develops these themes with reference to the philosophical works of Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt, the last poem of Rainer Maria Rilke named "Komm du…" and Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain.
