Suffering With(out) Meaning: Moral Masochism, Moral Injury, and the Sense of an Ending

Introduction

Human beings are meaning-making creatures. We endure pain and hardship more readily when these experiences seem to mean something – whether as punishment, sacrifice, or part of a larger story. Psychoanalytic theory, especially in the Lacanian tradition, suggests that much of this meaning-making happens unconsciously, through cultural narratives and symbols that we absorb from birth. But what happens when those cultural narratives break down? This essay explores how the unconscious creation of meaning depends on a relatively stable cultural framework (what we might call the collective Symbolic and Imaginary orders), and how suffering can be transformed – for better or worse – by the search for meaning. We will compare moral masochism, moral injury, and eschatological narratives (stories of ultimate endings), examining historical and literary examples along the way. From the medieval flagellants scourging themselves in the streets, to “holy anorexics” starving in the name of God, to Saul Bellow’s hapless Tommy Wilhelm suffering without purpose in Seize the Day, to the shattering loss of meaning after the Holocaust – all illustrate the psyche’s fragility when meaning collapses. We will also consider how apocalyptic or end-times narratives (from religious end-days to modern climate collapse fears) impact the “cultural unconscious” and our ability to imagine a healthy future. The central thesis is that the meanings we unconsciously create are only as healthy as the cultural unconscious that sustains them; when our shared Symbolic world is in crisis, genuine meaning is hard to come by. Finally, we ask whether a “sense of an ending” can ever be truly healthy – or if psychological health is always something deferred, a “health to come,” rather than a tidy ending.

Lacanian Theory: Symbolic, Imaginary, and Unconscious Meaning

Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan famously declared that "l'inconscient est structuré comme un langage," or "the unconscious is structured like language," emphasizing how our inner world of desires, fears, and fantasies is organized by symbolic systems—language and culture—into which we are immersed from birth. However, Jacques Derrida's insights compel us to reconsider Lacan's formulation, revealing that the unconscious is not merely structured but inherently "deconstructuring" (my term), participating in the constant movement of signification marked by deferral, difference, and instability. Rather than existing as a stable and coherent system, the unconscious continually disrupts and unsettles established meanings.

Lacan situates the Symbolic order as the vast network of language, norms, laws, and social customs. Although this might superficially resemble Hegel's concept of "objective spirit" (objektiver Geist)—a realm of collective rationality and shared cultural identity—such a comparison risks obscuring fundamental differences. Hegel's notion implies a stable, coherent intersubjectivity and historical progression toward unified cultural meanings. In contrast, Lacan's Symbolic order emphasizes precisely the opposite: it constitutes subjects while simultaneously destabilizing them through language's inherent incompleteness and fragmentation. Like Heidegger, Lacan critiques traditional conceptions of subjectivity as stable and self-contained. Thus, the Symbolic should be understood not as a domain of intersubjective coherence but rather as an inherently unstable and trans-subjective field continually disrupted by the unconscious's "deconstructuring" activity.

In other words, the Symbolic is the "big Other," the field of cultural codes enabling meaning. Alongside it exists the Imaginary order, the realm of images and identifications—how we form an image of ourselves (the ego) and idealize others. The Imaginary encompasses perception and semblances, whereas the Symbolic involves structured signifiers. Together, these orders constitute what we might call the cultural unconscious—the unseen web of language and imagery through which our minds confer meaning upon experiences. According to Lacan, individual subjects "are what they are in and through the mediation of the socio-linguistic arrangements and constellations of the register of the Symbolic." citeturn0search0 Our personal unconscious is shaped by internalized symbolic codes; indeed, the unconscious itself is composed of "interlinked signifiers"—a signifying chain of meanings. citeturn0search0

When that chain breaks—when an experience cannot be integrated into the Symbolic/Imaginary framework—the result often manifests as psychological trauma or disturbance. Lacan observed this dramatically in psychosis, where a fundamental symbolic element (the "Name-of-the-Father," a primary signifier of authority and structure) is foreclosed, leaving the subject outside shared social meanings. On a collective level, instability or incoherence in the cultural Symbolic order can lead individuals to struggle profoundly in generating meaningful interpretations of their experiences. They may unconsciously gravitate toward extreme substitutes—symptoms, fanaticisms, or self-destructive behaviors—in desperate attempts to restore meaning or order. The Symbolic provides words and narratives to contextualize suffering ("I suffer for something"), while the Imaginary offers images (the martyr, the hero, the sinner, etc.) to render suffering intelligible. When these supports falter, suffering emerges as senseless pain—a condition humans find nearly intolerable. As Viktor Frankl succinctly expressed, "Despair is suffering without meaning," linking meaninglessness directly to existential despair. citeturn0search5 The subsequent sections will explore specific cases where meaning and suffering intersect pathologically or revelatorily, always mindful of the cultural unconscious's inherent instability.

Moral Masochism: Suffering as Self-Punishment

In Freudian psychoanalysis, moral masochism describes a paradoxical condition: a person unconsciously seeks out suffering and failure for its own sake, due to an internal need for punishment (Moral Masochism | Encyclopedia.com). Freud observed that some patients repeatedly got themselves into humiliating or painful situations even when no external force demanded it – as if guided by an “unconscious sense of guilt” that is only satisfied by suffering (Moral Masochism | Encyclopedia.com). Unlike erotic masochism, moral masochism isn’t overtly sexual; it’s “the suffering itself” that matters, regardless of who or what inflicts it (Moral Masochism | Encyclopedia.com). As Freud wrote, “the true masochist always turns his cheek whenever he has a chance of receiving a blow” (Moral Masochism | Encyclopedia.com). In moral masochism, the individual’s superego (their internalized moral authority) has become cruel and overbearing, punishing the ego with feelings of guilt and worthlessness. The person then arranges (unconsciously) for real-life punishment or misery as a way to appease that guilt. In Lacanian terms, we might say the subject is trying to secure a place in the symbolic order of “justice” or “law” by offering themselves as the guilty victim. They derive a twisted satisfaction (jouissance) from this self-punishment, even as it causes conscious pain. Crucially, moral masochism actually destroys genuine moral consciousness, as Freud noted: the suffering is no longer a signal of true ethical repair but an end in itself (Moral Masochism | Encyclopedia.com). The person isn’t really atoning or improving; they’re stuck in an endless loop of unconscious guilt and masochistic gratification, such that “all punishment is subverted to masochistic gratification” (Moral Masochism | Encyclopedia.com).

Moral masochism flourishes in a psyche that cannot find healthy meaning or forgiveness within its cultural context. If one’s cultural or religious framework makes no room for error and offers no true absolution (for example, an overly punitive religion or ideology), a person might internalize an unforgiving superego that demands continuous suffering. The medieval “flagellant” movements are an extreme historical example of collective moral masochism. During times of crisis like the Black Death, bands of penitents roamed Europe whipping themselves in public, believing that self-inflicted pain would redeem the community. Chroniclers describe flagellants lashing themselves with knotted cords and iron tips “until the blood ran down their backs,” convinced that their spilled blood could mingle with Christ’s and wash away sin (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine). This epidemic of self-punishment had a clear eschatological context: many flagellants thought the apocalypse was at hand and that only drastic penance could avert God’s wrath (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine). In such a cultural unconscious – saturated with the imagery of divine judgment and lacking the stabilizing influence of trusted institutions (the Church eventually condemned the flagellants as heretical) – suffering became a currency of meaning. People literally made themselves suffer to feel reconnected to a higher purpose or narrative. Flagellants even developed a radical edge: their movement, initially tolerated, spiraled into a kind of millenarian frenzy, at times turning its violent fervor outward (in 1349 some flagellant groups began persecuting Jews, having first “sanctified violence in their attacks on themselves” (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine) (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine)). This shows how moral masochism can flip into moral sadism once the framework of meaning is sufficiently disturbed – the aggression that was directed inward can suddenly find scapegoats.

Another example of moral masochism is the phenomenon of the “holy anorexic” in late medieval Europe. Young women like St. Catherine of Siena engaged in extreme fasting to purify themselves spiritually. Catherine ate virtually nothing but the Eucharist wafer, wasting away in what Rudolph Bell called “anorexia mirabilis” (miraculous anorexia). Her starvation was framed as a holy sacrifice: her mystical visions “were often centred around food and starvation as a way of embodying her love for Christ” (‘Holy Anorexia’: The Fascinating Connection between Religious Women and Fasting). In a culture that exalted ascetic self-denial, Catherine’s self-starvation was imbued with powerful Imaginary and Symbolic meaning – she was bride of Christ, a saintly victim whose suffering reflected the Passion of Jesus. Unlike ordinary anorexia nervosa, which today we view as a mental illness, Catherine’s anorexia had a widely accepted meaning in her cultural unconscious: it was a path to sanctity. Holy suffering was a kind of language everyone understood. However, even in her case we can see the fragility of the self: Catherine died at age 33, essentially from her “holiness.” The very culture that gave her suffering meaning also consumed her. The connection between feminine virtue and suffering (especially via food denial) was one of the only available narratives for a woman seeking power or identity in that era. Thus the unconscious impetus – to seek agency and recognition – was channeled into moral masochism because the stable, healthy outlets (education, institutional power) were barred. The cultural Symbolic was not healthy or egalitarian; it demanded female saints to be thin, wasted, and in constant pain as proof of their virtue. We might say that Catherine’s suffering had imaginary meaning (inspiring imagery of piety) and symbolic meaning (tied into religious narratives), but from a modern perspective it did not have healthy meaning. It was an adaptation to a restrictive, oppressive symbolic order.

Moral Injury: Suffering from Betrayed Values

Where moral masochism involves unconsciously inviting suffering due to guilt, moral injury refers to the psychic trauma that occurs when one’s moral expectations or values are deeply violated. Psychologist Jonathan Shay and others developed this concept to describe what many soldiers experience in war: a wound to the soul caused by perpetrating or witnessing acts that betray one’s core moral beliefs (Moral injury - Wikipedia). Unlike post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which often stems from fear and physical endangerment, moral injury is rooted in shame, guilt, and a crisis of meaning. It results in “profound feelings of guilt or shame, moral disorientation, and societal alienation” (Moral injury - Wikipedia). In Lacanian terms, moral injury is what happens when the Symbolic mediation of one’s actions breaks down. A soldier may have a cultural narrative like “I am a hero fighting for a just cause.” If in combat they commit or see an atrocity – e.g. killing civilians or abusing prisoners – that narrative is shattered. The act cannot be symbolized within their previous framework of meaning; it stands as an ugly Real that the Symbolic cannot accommodate. The result is often a collapse of the self’s coherence: the person feels they are no longer who they thought they were (imaginary identity crumbles) and that the world is no longer what they believed (symbolic trust collapses). One definition describes moral injury as involving “a profound sense of broken trust in ourselves, our leaders, governments and institutions to act in just and morally ‘good’ ways” (Moral injury - Wikipedia). We can see how this extends beyond individual guilt – it is an injury in the relational field of the big Other, the social pact. The culturally shared morals (thou shalt not kill innocents, leaders should protect the good) are betrayed, leaving the individual in a state of bitter disillusionment or self-condemnation.

Moral injury often leads to psychic fragmentation similar to trauma: intrusive memories, nightmares, spiritual numbness, rage, or self-harm. It can be seen as a failure of symbolic mediation; the usual processes that would reconcile one’s actions with one’s values (like confession, justice, or making amends) either aren’t available or don’t feel sufficient. For example, a Vietnam veteran might come home with an implicit question burning inside: How do I live with the fact that I killed children? If society provides no adequate rituals or narratives for this (and indeed many Vietnam vets returned to scorn or silence), the injury festers. In some cases, veterans engaged in self-destructive behaviors or sought punishment (a form of moral masochism spurred by guilt). Others turned their pain outward in anger or political alienation. The cultural unconscious of post-Vietnam America was highly unstable regarding the war – there was no consensus on whether the war was noble or evil, how to honor veterans, or how to assign blame. As a result, many veterans’ moral injuries went untreated at the symbolic level. Psychoanalyst Jared Russell (among others) has argued that healing moral injury requires new forms of symbolic mediation – essentially, creating a space where the traumatic act can be spoken, witnessed, and reintegrated into a framework of meaning (through acknowledgment, restitution, forgiveness, etc.). If that fails, the veteran remains an exile from the moral community, nursing a wound of “bad conscience” that isolates them.

It’s worth noting that moral injury is not confined to soldiers. Medical workers forced by circumstances to neglect patients, or individuals betrayed by religious institutions, or anyone who finds themselves complicit in something they consider profoundly wrong may experience moral injury. The modern discourse around racial injustice has also been connected to moral injury: for instance, Black American soldiers who faced racism in the ranks on top of the horrors of war suffered a double moral injury. One clinician reflecting on Vietnam noted that Black troops “daily experienced acute pervasive systemic racism” during their service – a fact long overlooked when assessing their higher rates of PTSD (An Exploration of Implicit Racial Bias as a Source of Diagnostic Error - PubMed) (An Exploration of Implicit Racial Bias as a Source of Diagnostic Error - PubMed). Only by acknowledging this moral injury (the betrayal of fighting for a country that discriminated against them) could their trauma be fully understood (An Exploration of Implicit Racial Bias as a Source of Diagnostic Error - PubMed) (An Exploration of Implicit Racial Bias as a Source of Diagnostic Error - PubMed). Similarly, a nation as a whole can carry moral injury: after episodes like Abu Ghraib or torture policies, Americans grappled (or failed to grapple) with collective shame. If such events are denied or rationalized away, the injury goes underground into the cultural unconscious, perhaps resurfacing as cynicism, political polarization, or endless “hauntings” by the past (“racial phantoms,” as one of our guiding blog titles puts it, suggesting unresolved national guilt around racial violence).

In sum, moral injury illustrates how much we rely on a healthy symbolic order to make sense of ourselves as moral actors. When “evil” or transgression can neither be fully punished nor fully forgiven, when it simply exists as a brute reality, it corrodes the psyche. The failure of the cultural unconscious to heal or contain the breach leaves individuals in a state of limbo – craving meaning, but finding none that can reconcile what happened. In these cases, suffering has no redemptive value felt by the person; it is purely destructive to their identity and faith in life. Moral masochism might be thought of as too much meaning (even misattributed meaning – the person imposes meaning by making themselves the guilty one), whereas moral injury is a case of meaning deficit – a void where cherished ideals used to be.

Suffering With Meaning: Flagellants and Holy Anorexics

As touched on earlier, the flagellants of the 13th–14th centuries and the holy anorexics of the Middle Ages demonstrate how cultural narratives can make suffering feel meaningful – even to the point of attracting masses of followers. These are instances of eschatological masochism, where personal pain is linked to cosmic stakes. During the Black Death, as social order broke down under the onslaught of plague, many people saw the catastrophe as divine punishment. The flagellants answered with a dramatic narrative: humanity’s sin has caused God’s wrath, and only by literally taking that wrath upon our own bodies can we redeem the world. In 1260, processions of flagellants spread “with such rapidity that to contemporaries it appeared a sudden epidemic of remorse” (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine). Imagine the psychological relief in this narrative: instead of random, senseless pestilence, the horror becomes part of a story – one where human suffering can avert apocalypse. For communities facing death and chaos, the sight of men whipping themselves bloody in public rituals (chanting hymns, processing from town to town) was compelling. It offered both a spectacle of atonement and a promise of salvation. The Imaginary order was engaged through vivid religious imagery (Christ’s Passion re-enacted; blood as sacred), and the Symbolic order through references to scripture and penance. In a way, the cultural unconscious of medieval Christendom, already steeped in the idea of redemptive suffering, seized on the flagellant movement as a meaning-making apparatus in a time of crisis. For a time, it had institutional support; even some clergy joined in.

However, the movement’s eventual condemnation as heresy (by 1349 the Pope outlawed it) indicates a reaction by the Church to reassert control over the Symbolic narrative. The flagellants had begun to develop their own apocalyptic prophecies and challenge Church authority, showing how too much uncontrolled meaning-making can threaten the official symbolic order. When the flagellants turned to persecuting Jews and claiming miraculous powers, the Church and secular authorities brutally suppressed them (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine) (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine). This might be seen as a clash between two modes of meaning: the orthodox symbolic order (penance under Church guidance, moderate asceticism, suffering within limits) and a radicalized symbolic/imaginary eruption (millenarian fanaticism, extremism). The eventual outcome – thousands of flagellants executed as heretics – is a grim reminder that who controls the narrative of suffering is a political as well as psychological question.

The “holy anorexia” trend, exemplified by women like St. Catherine, St. Angela of Foligno, and others, similarly turned private pain into a culturally revered performance of faith. These women’s voluntary starvation was interpreted as sainthood, giving them an unusual platform of spiritual authority in a male-dominated church. Their wasting bodies were texts on which religious meaning was inscribed. A modern observer might label this behavior self-harm or pathology, but within the 14th–15th century Catholic imaginary it was often celebrated. By the 15th century, “hundreds of saintly women were recorded as having survived on little or no food” (‘Holy Anorexia’: The Fascinating Connection between Religious Women and Fasting). This suggests a kind of contagious archetype in the cultural unconscious: the Holy Woman who needs no bread because she is filled with the spirit. It provided a rare avenue for women to achieve holiness outside marriage or convents. Yet it required literally embodying an extremely punitive ideal: perpetual fasting, sometimes combined with other mortifications (Catherine also scourged herself, and some holy women actively sought physical illnesses as purgative gifts). Here we see suffering with meaning taken to its extreme: health itself became suspect – true purity was proven by sickness and starvation. In such an environment, it’s almost impossible to define what “healthy meaning” would be. Was Catherine of Siena psychologically healthy? On one hand, she was revered, politically influential (she corresponded with the Pope, acting as a moral conscience), and achieved a lasting sense of purpose. On the other hand, she effectively committed slow suicide by austerity, dying from her “ideal.” The cultural narrative allowed her to defer worldly health entirely in favor of spiritual “health,” i.e. salvation. This raises a question: can there be a truly healthy form of meaning-making in a context that glorifies self-destruction? Perhaps not by our standards. But within that context, one might argue, Catherine’s life had coherence and an existential “ending” (in her mind, union with God) that was satisfying on its own terms. The cost was her body.

These historical cases illuminate how eschatological narratives (plague as punishment foreshadowing the End Times; the soul’s salvation outweighing bodily life) profoundly impact psychic life. When the collective Symbolic is dominated by apocalyptic or ultra-ascetic themes, individuals channel their suffering toward those ends. There is a moral masochism at work, but it is culturally sanctioned – a moral masochism with meaning. The flagellants and holy fasters were not ashamed of their suffering; they were proud, even ecstatic about it. Their self-inflicted pain was a badge of honor, a negotiation with God. In modern terms, one might say this protected them somewhat from trauma: they did not experience their pain as chaos or betrayal, but as sacrifice. The Imaginary gave them heroic identities (the penitent, the saintly bride of Christ), and the Symbolic gave them scriptural justification. However, this kind of meaning can be very brittle. It depends on everyone believing in the same story. The moment doubt creeps in – say, a skeptic calls the faster delusional or the flagellant heretical – the meaning can collapse, and all that’s left is blood and hunger. A striking contrast is with the Holocaust, where victims’ unimaginable suffering was stripped of any acceptable meaning by the surrounding culture… and to that we now turn.

Suffering Without Meaning: Modern Disillusionment and Trauma

In the modern era, especially after the atrocities of the 20th century, a recurring theme is the loss of meaning in suffering. The Holocaust is often cited as the ultimate example of meaningless suffering – a vast system of cruelty that annihilated not only lives but the very narratives that might make sense of those lives. Philosophers like Theodor Adorno grappled with this, famously asserting, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” In context, Adorno meant that the traditional forms of culture and meaning-making (like lyric poetry) become hollow or even obscene in the face of such radical evil ( Poetry After Auschwitz – What Adorno Didn’t Say | Persistent Enlightenment). The Holocaust presented an ethical and symbolic rupture: How could one reconcile the existence of Auschwitz with any narrative of progress, providence, or moral order? One response was the feeling that meaning itself died in the camps – that Auschwitz is a black hole in the Symbolic, an event that our cultural vocabulary fails to tame. Some Holocaust survivors, like Viktor Frankl, insisted on finding meaning even there (Frankl wrote of prisoners finding meaning in small acts of kindness or in the decision to spiritually resist despair). But many others concluded that any attempt to justify or give larger purpose to that horror is reprehensible. When suffering reaches a certain scale and arbitrariness – infants murdered, families destroyed for no reason but an accident of birth – the Symbolic Order of an entire civilization reels. The European cultural unconscious after WWII was saturated with trauma and guilt. The old stories (national glory, divine favor, even Enlightenment faith in reason) were gravely discredited. In that void, some turned to nihilism, some to existentialism (“we must create our own meaning in an absurd world”), and some to new totalizing ideologies. But the wound remains: a sense that there are events which undo meaning.

The character Tommy Wilhelm in Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day (1956) can be seen as a man floundering in a world where traditional meanings have lost currency. Wilhelm is a middle-aged failure in mid-century New York, estranged from his family, unemployed, swindled out of his last money. He doesn’t have a grand historical trauma to blame; rather, he’s afflicted by a personal kind of meaninglessness emblematic of modern life. He is not starving for God or sacrificing for a cause – he’s just suffering, seemingly for nothing. Throughout the novella, Wilhelm searches for some insight or help to make sense of his misfortunes, but he finds none. At one point his dubious mentor Dr. Tamkin advises him not to “marry suffering” – not to attach himself so much to his own pain (Seize the Day Chapter VI Summary & Analysis | SparkNotes). It’s good advice, since Wilhelm tends to wallow and flail, almost romanticizing his suffering as beyond his control. Unlike a flagellant who proudly “marries” suffering in ritual, Wilhelm’s attachment to suffering is unproductive; it brings him no redemption, only self-pity. Bellow’s story suggests that in a secular, transactional society (1950s America, prototype of modernity), a man like Wilhelm has no script to follow to convert his pain into purpose. Religion is remote (Wilhelm invokes God only in desperate, confused internal monologues), and social roles are alienating (his father coldly subscribes to a Social Darwinist view that Wilhelm’s failure is his own fault). At the novella’s climax, Wilhelm, at rock bottom, wanders into a stranger’s funeral and finds himself weeping uncontrollably – not for the deceased (whom he never met) but for himself and perhaps for the universal plight of mortality. It’s a powerful, ambiguous ending: Wilhelm’s tears are genuine and cathartic, but do they give him meaning or just emotional release? Bellow leaves it open. One might say Wilhelm achieves a moment of connection by mourning another, implicitly joining the human community of the suffering. In that shared humanity of death, there is a glimmer of meaning – or at least of belonging. Yet it’s not a full resolution. The “sense of an ending” here is just a borrowed funeral. There is no indication that Wilhelm’s life beyond that moment will be any less muddled. This is suffering largely without redemptive meaning, presented to evoke our empathy and perhaps critique the cultural emptiness of the time.

The Holocaust and Seize the Day are very different in scale, but both speak to a modern condition: a crisis of the cultural Symbolic such that suffering no longer fits into a reassuring narrative. After World War II and into the contemporary era, grand narratives (religion, nationalism, progress) have been destabilized. Many thinkers talk of living in a “disenchanted” world. In such a landscape, moral masochism might manifest as private neurosis (self-sabotaging behaviors, depression), and moral injury as private existential angst (“What’s the point of being good when the world is so evil?”). The collective rituals that once externalized these dynamics have weakened (less people participate in organized penance or religious fasting, for instance). Instead, we see their return in sometimes pathological forms: e.g. certain political or social movements can take on quasi-flagellant or puritanical characteristics, demanding public self-shaming and punitive moral purity. This suggests that the impulses for meaning through suffering haven’t vanished – they’ve just migrated to new domains, often without explicit acknowledgment. For example, in the United States, some culture-war rhetoric frames America in perpetual sin (whether that sin is racism, or conversely, secularism) and demands constant symbolic combat and contrition, a bit like a flagellation of the national soul. If done without a constructive framework, this can produce collective moral injury – communities that feel attacked or inherently stained with no path to absolution.

The Holocaust also haunts the modern cultural unconscious in subtler ways. It has become a reference point for ultimate evil, and thus it charges many later discussions of catastrophe or injustice. But because it exceeds meaning, it leaves a residue of what Freud might call the Real – the element of raw horror that resists symbolization. Art and literature after the Holocaust struggled with how to represent it. Many survivors could only narrate their experiences fragmentarily. There’s a sense that after such an event, any attempt to impose a neat “ending” or moral is suspect. This feeds into a broader modern skepticism toward eschatological narratives: we’ve seen utopian endgames go horribly wrong (Nazi and Stalinist “ends” justify any means, etc.), so there is fear of any story that promises a final redemption through destruction. Yet, paradoxically, our culture is saturated with apocalyptic imagery – but often of an unhealthy sort, which is the next topic.

The Sense of an Ending: Eschatological Narratives in Culture

The phrase “sense of an ending” comes from literary critic Frank Kermode, who argued that people naturally interpret their lives and histories in light of narrative endpoints – we look for patterns that suggest a meaningful conclusion. Traditionally, religions provided a cosmic ending (Apocalypse, Last Judgment, Messianic age) that framed present suffering as meaningful in a teleological arc. In secular modernity, we still crave that structure, but it often appears in ideological or speculative forms: revolution, doomsday, utopia, extinction scenarios, etc. Eschatological narratives can be double-edged: they can imbue existence with urgency and moral drama, but they can also be profoundly unhealthy if they destabilize the present or justify extreme measures. In Lacanian terms, an eschatological narrative can overrun the Symbolic order with a single Master Signifier (e.g. “The End is coming!”) to which all other meanings are subordinated, risking a collapse of nuance and a foreclosure of the unpredictable nature of the Real.

Modern culture is rife with crisis narratives. Consider the discourse around climate change. It is often framed apocalyptically (“extinction,” “irreversible collapse,” etc.), which indeed reflects legitimate danger but also shapes our collective psyche. As writer Rebecca Solnit observed, “Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis.” This applies to climate chaos: “We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing… possibilities for change.” (‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate | Climate crisis | The Guardian). Some climate stories lead to despair (e.g. the idea that it’s too late, humanity is inevitably doomed), which can be paralyzing – a kind of secular Last Judgment without salvation. Others inspire action (e.g. the narrative of a coming ecological rebirth if we act now). The key point is that how we frame the ending – inevitable catastrophe vs. avertible disaster vs. transformation – has real effects on whether people find meaning and motivation or succumb to fatalism. Unhealthy eschatological thinking can make the cultural unconscious fragile. For example, if a whole generation genuinely believes “the world will end in 12 years,” their investments in the future (education, careers, having children) might falter; on the flip side, those in denial may double down on fantasies of endless growth, which is another failure to adapt meaningfully. Solnit suggests we need new climate stories that neither ignore the bad news nor erase hope (‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate | Climate crisis | The Guardian) (‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate | Climate crisis | The Guardian). This is essentially a call to establish a healthier cultural unconscious around this crisis – one that can hold anxiety and agency together.

Historically, eschatological narratives have often had unhealthy influences when taken literally. Medieval millenarian cults sometimes led to violence (as with certain flagellants or the later Münster Rebellion). In modern times, secular apocalyptic ideologies (like fascism or extreme revolutionary movements) turned politics into a metaphysical battle of good vs evil, unleashing great suffering. Even today, conspiracy theories often have eschatological tinges (QAnon’s notion of a coming “Storm” that will purge evil, for instance). These show the enduring allure of an absolute Ending that resolves ambiguity – what Lacan might call a desire for the Real (ultimate truth) to finally merge with the Symbolic (the story we tell). That desire can become a kind of mass pathology if unchecked. It bypasses the difficult, incremental work of building shared meaning in favor of a fantasized final chapter.

Yet, people do need some sense of ending or purpose to remain psychologically oriented. Kermode noted that we live in the middest (the middle of the story) but we project potential endings to make sense of it all. The challenge is to do this without slipping into destructive absolutism or paralysis. Is a “healthy” sense of an ending possible? Perhaps in a personal sense: for example, an individual can make peace with their mortality by believing their life story has meaning (through legacy, faith, or acceptance of the life cycle). Culturally, maybe a healthy “ending” is more like a vision or goal that guides us but is flexible – what philosopher Jacques Derrida might call a “to-come” ( à venir ), an always deferred horizon of meaning that keeps us moving forward ethically without insisting on closure.

The Imaginary and the Sublime play roles here. When we contemplate the literal end of humanity – say through nuclear war or climate collapse – we enter the territory of the sublime, that which is beyond our capacity to fully imagine. The sheer scale of an event like human extinction or planetary devastation is mind-shattering; it provokes awe and terror more than understanding. Meanwhile, things that should be familiar (like our own technologies or environment turning hostile) become eerily unfamiliar, yielding the uncanny feeling Freud described – a haunting sense of something both strange and known, like the return of a repressed truth. The title of one blog reference, “The Uncanny, The Sublime, and the End of the Human,” suggests that confronting the possible end of our species brings both these sensations. Science fiction often grapples with this by creating Imaginary scenarios of the future that our Symbolic can handle (in books and films), perhaps as a way to diffuse the unthinkable into thinkable narratives. But when reality itself edges toward those scenarios (climate refugees, AI existential threats, pandemics), the cultural unconscious is put under immense strain. We see swings between denial (nothing will change) and doom (we’re all doomed). Both are coping mechanisms for the anxiety of an “ending” without meaning.

A telling modern image: climate protesters hoisting signs that read “THERE IS NO PLANET B.” On the streets, young people chant and march to demand action, essentially trying to insert meaning into what could otherwise be a nihilistic slide to disaster. The sign “There is no Planet B” encapsulates a grim truth but also a moral: we must save this one planet. It’s an attempt to create a rallying Symbolic phrase that steers the narrative away from resigned apocalypse toward urgent responsibility.

(Climate Protest Pictures | Download Free Images on Unsplash) At climate change protests, slogans like “THERE IS NO PLANET B” attempt to imbue an apocalyptic threat with a collective moral purpose – to avert the end through action. Such narratives can combat despair, illustrating how crafting healthier stories is essential in confronting crises (‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate | Climate crisis | The Guardian).

In this way, eschatological narratives can be reframed: not as inevitable doom, but as a call to conscience or a turning point. Still, the danger of eschatology is its all-or-nothing character. It can breed fanaticism (if one is convinced the End is nigh, any extreme act might be justified) or hopelessness (if the End is unavoidable, why care for anything?). A healthy cultural unconscious would, ideally, moderate between these extremes – acknowledging possible “endings” (personal death, fall of regimes, end of unsustainable practices) but integrating them into a larger continuity or metamorphosis. For instance, many religious traditions have concepts of an ending that is also a beginning (rebirth, renewal of the world). Secular thought might find analogous concepts (e.g. seeing the potential end of current economic systems not as total collapse but as transformation into something new). The politics of storytelling, to borrow another blog title, becomes crucial: whose narrative will guide society through crises? Will it be one of doom that fosters moral injury and nihilism, or one of shared struggle that can inspire and console?

Uncanny Futures and a “Health to Come”

Our era faces an uncanny predicament: technologies like artificial intelligence and the specter of climate change confront us with a possible “end of the human” not in theological terms but in practical ones. The uncanny feeling arises when we see human-like AIs or when we watch the climate become increasingly erratic; it’s as if the world we knew is revealing an alien underside. This can erode our sense of what it means to be human. If the cultural unconscious is pervaded by anxiety that we are obsolete or doomed, meaning-making can devolve into either techno-utopian fantasy (flee to Mars, upload our minds) or fatalistic apathy. To stay sane, individuals and cultures need a sense of future that isn’t purely horrific. Psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva spoke of the importance of an “imaginary father” – a guiding fiction that helps an infant transition into the symbolic world. By analogy, perhaps societies need an imaginary future to transition through great upheavals. This imaginary future doesn’t have to be a literal prophecy; it can be an ethos of hope or resilience.

Derrida’s notion of the “to-come” (as in justice-to-come, democracy-to-come) is useful: it implies that the ultimate fulfillment of something (justice, democracy, health) is always in the future, always something we strive for but never fully attain. This prevents closure (no complacency that we’ve achieved paradise) but keeps direction (we strive continually). We might think of “health” in this way. Perhaps there is no permanent state of cultural or psychic health – no utopian ending where everything is resolved. Instead, health is a process, an asymptote. It is always somewhat “to come,” always needing renewal as conditions change. The phrase “health to come” suggests that even as we pursue a healthier cultural unconscious – one that fosters meaningful suffering and alleviates needless pain – we must accept that it’s an ongoing project.

Is a sense of an ending in the context of health possible then? It might be possible in a modest, local way: for example, a war-torn society could reach a peace (an ending to violence) that allows collective healing to begin. An individual could reach the end of a personal journey of forgiveness or acceptance, thus closing a chapter of suffering with meaning (like someone forgiving their abuser and thus ending the cycle of trauma within themselves). These are relative endings that restore or bolster health. But the absolute ending – the final endpoint of history or of one’s psyche – is not something that human beings can really flourish under, if taken as imminent or fixed. If one believes they have already attained absolute truth or purity, that ironically is a sign of psychological peril (delusion or fanaticism). Likewise, if one believes in an absolute catastrophic ending with certainty, one may unconsciously hasten it (the death drive).

Thus, a healthy stance might be a balancing act: to treat every endpoint we imagine as a provisional metaphor rather than a literal finality. We need narratives that can conclude chapters without insisting the whole book is done. In therapy, a patient might reach the “ending” of a certain neurotic symptom’s hold on them – but their life goes on, with new challenges. Culturally, we might aim to “end” practices like carbon emissions or systemic injustices – but not see it as the end of struggle, just the transition to new kinds of effort. If we seek a final End (whether annihilation or utopia), we circle back into the problems we’ve outlined: moral masochism (suffering for a fantasized utopia), moral injury (disillusionment when paradise fails or horror succeeds), or apocalyptic panic.

Perhaps the ethics of care, as one of the blog titles invokes, is key here. The ethics of care emphasizes ongoing responsibility, empathy, and relational maintenance rather than grand outcomes. It is inherently averse to “end justify the means” logic. Incorporating that mindset, one might value the process of creating meaning with others over any definitive conclusion. That means resisting both the allure of catastrophic full stops and the fantasy of storybook happily-ever-afters. It means finding meaning in care itself – in the everyday actions that alleviate suffering with compassion and understanding. This perspective can help anchor the cultural unconscious in something steady: not a static Symbolic order that denies change, but a resilient Symbolic that can bend and adapt because it’s grounded in basic human values of connection.

Conclusion

The human psyche can endure great suffering – but only, it seems, if that suffering inhabits a world of meaning. When the cultural unconscious is relatively stable and supportive, even pain and loss can be woven into narratives that sustain the self (as in religious faith, patriotic sacrifice, or personal growth stories). Under stable conditions, the unconscious can work silently to translate our hurts into symbolic forms – into dreams, art, rituals, or lessons – that keep us intact. But when the cultural frameworks themselves are in flux or collapse, meaning-making falters. We then see phenomena like moral masochism (the self turning pain into a perverse substitute for lost meaning), or moral injury (the self crushed by betrayal and unable to find meaning), or eschatological mania (the culture lurching toward extreme “end” narratives to escape chaos). We have journeyed from medieval streets filled with self-scourging zealots, to the death-stained camps of the Shoah, to the anxious protests of our contemporary streets. Across these scenes, one thing is clear: the health of a society’s unconscious – its shared Symbolic/Imaginary tapestry – is not an abstract matter. It manifests in how people treat their own and others’ suffering.

A healthy cultural unconscious would neither glorify needless suffering nor deny the reality of suffering; it would provide symbols and stories that help people process guilt, grief, and anger without resorting to self-destruction or scapegoating. Is our cultural unconscious today “healthy enough”? The prevalence of collective anxiety, polarization, and apocalyptic discourse might say otherwise. We find ourselves in a time when many old certainties have ended (or should end), but the new story is yet unfinished. In this in-between, as Rebecca Solnit notes, we are indeed in a “battle of imagination” (‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate | Climate crisis | The Guardian). It is in our collective interest to cultivate narratives that acknowledge crises without giving in to nihilism. As psychoanalysis teaches, what is unconscious is not truly gone; it returns in symptoms and symbols. If we ignore the unconscious cultural wounds – the moral injuries of war, the racial traumas, the existential dreads – they will surface in distorted ways (hate movements, conspiracies, self-harm epidemics). Conversely, if we can consciously reflect and create new shared meanings, we may find paths through the most dire predictions.

In the end (so to speak), perhaps “the sense of an ending” we need is metaphorical: a sense that our worst cycles of suffering can end, that unjust systems can be changed – without insisting on an absolute finale. Health, for both individuals and cultures, is not a one-time achievement but a continuous process of integration, reflection, and adjustment. It is, in that sense, always to come. Each generation, each person, re-encounters the task of making meaning, and must weave their strand into the larger fabric. The unconscious will always play a huge role in this, guided (one hopes) by a Symbolic order rich enough to hold life’s hardships. When that fabric is torn, our first duty is to mend it – with honest words, with care, with imagination. For it is in that repaired tapestry of meaning that suffering can find its place and purpose, and not break us entirely.

Sources:

Lacan’s theory of the Symbolic order as the network of language, laws, and culture that pre-exists and shapes the individual ( Jacques Lacan (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ) ( Jacques Lacan (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ).
Freud’s description of moral masochism as an unconscious need for punishment: “the suffering itself is what matters… The true masochist always turns his cheek whenever he has a chance of receiving a blow” (Moral Masochism | Encyclopedia.com), driven by guilt beyond awareness (Moral Masochism | Encyclopedia.com).
Historical account of medieval flagellants: bands of penitents who whipped themselves bloody, believing their sacrifice would atone for humanity’s sins and avert divine wrath (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine). Their movement spread like “an epidemic of remorse” in times of crisis (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine) and took on apocalyptic and violent dimensions (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine) (Plague as Punishment - Tablet Magazine).
Holy anorexia in the case of St. Catherine of Siena: her extreme fasting (living on virtually only the Eucharist) and framing of starvation as an expression of love for Christ (‘Holy Anorexia’: The Fascinating Connection between Religious Women and Fasting). This was part of a wider phenomenon of anorexia mirabilis among medieval women seeking spiritual purity (‘Holy Anorexia’: The Fascinating Connection between Religious Women and Fasting).
Definition of moral injury as a wound to conscience caused by betrayal of one’s moral values, leading to guilt, shame, and a sense of broken trust in self and society (Moral injury - Wikipedia) (Moral injury - Wikipedia). Often studied in military contexts, it highlights psychological anguish when soldiers violate deeply held norms.
Example of compounded moral injury: Black soldiers in Vietnam faced not only combat trauma but “acute pervasive systemic racism” daily, contributing to higher PTSD – a factor only later understood through the lens of moral injury (An Exploration of Implicit Racial Bias as a Source of Diagnostic Error - PubMed) (An Exploration of Implicit Racial Bias as a Source of Diagnostic Error - PubMed).
Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day: Dr. Tamkin advises the suffering protagonist Wilhelm not to “marry suffering”, implying Wilhelm’s unhealthy attachment to his own miseries (Seize the Day Chapter VI Summary & Analysis | SparkNotes) – an example of suffering that lacks productive meaning or growth.
Adorno’s post-Holocaust dictum: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric… it has become impossible to write poetry today.” This oft-cited line conveys the rupture in cultural meaning after the Holocaust ( Poetry After Auschwitz – What Adorno Didn’t Say | Persistent Enlightenment) – traditional meaning-making processes felt inadequate or obscene in the face of such atrocity.
Rebecca Solnit on climate crisis narratives: “Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis… We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing… possibilities for change.” (‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate | Climate crisis | The Guardian). This underscores the power of narrative in shaping our response to existential threats like climate change – too much apocalypse can breed despair, while new stories could motivate action (‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate | Climate crisis | The Guardian).