Abstract

Finding its originality in an anchorage that is both clinical and speculative, this article brings to the science of spiritual accompaniment not only the consideration of a double typology of spiritual wounds, but also and above all the way of accompanying them spiritually. Regarding the double typology of spiritual wounds, the author draws on his research developed in his work Soins palliatifs. Accompagner pour vivre, which presents a typology of so-called “fundamental” injuries. Armed with this foundation, the author takes on the work of a spiritual care intern who he has supervised himself. From the 20 verbatim produced by the latter, based on a qualitative methodology, he updates a second typology of injuries which he calls “transversal.” It is then, in the conjunction of these two typologies, that the author deals with the way of accompanying them and offers secular spiritual accompaniment going beyond what the anthropology of the theologian and philosopher Louis Roy suggests. This surpassing takes place thanks to the appropriation that Corine Pelluchon makes of the anthropology of Bernard de Clairvaux. The conceptual framework of the article invites us to revisit the notion of “existential suffering” in the light of spiritual wounds and therefore “spiritual suffering.”