title: Suffering, choice, and freedom.
abstract: This article attempts to describe illness as a comprehensive individual experience quoting both sacred texts and writings of famous authors. Illness needs the concepts and the practices of soul, spirit, and meaning, which are the counterparts of the current medical notion of bodily and mental processes. In their absence, even the relationship from clinician and client transforms itself into a hopeless and compulsive interaction. Illness affects both feeling and thoughts in an unpredictable way and may allow an individual to rise through spiritual pathway it implies. The passage between pain and suffering toward the experience of freedom occurs by means of dark or even desperate moments, when active listening to the person in need and the operation of a Higher Power are necessary opportunities. Health professionals, nowadays in favor of medical technology and of the actions oriented to fighting the disease, may develop a therapeutic communication with their patients in order to help their understanding of the meaning that their illness has at the end for themselves.
authors.affiliation: Alcohol Centre, Research Group, Florence Health Agency, Florence, Italy. all.alcologico@asf.toscana.it
authors.forename: Allaman
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Allamani
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003142:Communication; D004194:Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005610:Freedom; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D019222:Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D012803:Sick Role; D013001:Somatoform Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D029181:Spirituality; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*