Our hearts are educated by the suffering of the other. Our hearts cannot be educated by ourselves. We must enter into the mystery of the suffering of ourselves and the other person. The human condition is characterized by fragility, vulnerability and suffering, as well as resourcefulness. We need to offer caring attention to fragility, to the marginalized among us, to the marginalized parts of ourselves. They can become our teachers. Our humanity is not  a given, it is a potentiality we must develop, especially in our encounters with the suffering other and suffering parts of ourselves. An old African proverb says “I am sick in my [sister]brother.” By this they meant, the suffering one is part of oneself. I see myself also in the other and the other in myself. The marginalized are needed by us, to be integrated into our human community. Each person needs a place in community. This reminds me of Martin Buber’s saying: “All real living is meeting.” Finnish psychiatrist-psychoanalyst and colleague Martti Siirala spoke of the existential loneliness and placelessness of those diagnosed with a “psychotic disorder.”  He and many other psychoanalysts wrote of how each of us are strangers to ourselves. As interpersonal psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan reminded us, we are more simply human than otherwise.

Brian Koehler

New York University