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There are only two services which [one] can offer the afflicted. One is to find the story which expresses the truth of their affliction. The second
is to find the words which can give resonance, through the crust of external circumstances, to the cry which is always inaudible:‘Why am I being hurt?
(Simone Weil in Berger, 2013, p. 173)
Psychoanalysis attempts to translate the truth of affliction by giving voice to those who have been excluded and dispossessed. The impulse behind this psychoanalytic translation is the opposite of philanthropy. It is deeper than kindness. It involves recognising and witnessing the other’s suffering, of being able to ask ‘what is your plague’ and feeling that no- one is exempt from it, that no one excepts the worst is going to happen … until it does.