Meanings of Pain

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. A Call for Study on the Meanings of Pain

   • Simon van Rysewyk

   Pages 1-22

3. Pain and the Dangers of Objectivity

   • Stuart W. G. Derbyshire

   Pages 23-36

4. Neural Plasticity and the Malleability of Pain

   • Grant Gillett

   Pages 37-53

5. The Emotional Perception of Phantom Limb Pain

   • Magali Fernández-Salazar

   Pages 55-69

6. Is Pain Unreal?

   • Simon van Rysewyk

   Pages 71-86

7. The Contribution of New Technological Breakthroughs to the Neuroscientific Research of Pain Communication

   • Aurore Meugnot, Philip L. Jackson

   Pages 87-106

8. A Scientific and Philosophical Analysis of Meanings of Pain in Studies of Pain and Suffering

   • Bustan Smadar

   Pages 107-128

9. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Non-Malignant Chronic Low Back Pain

   • Sherrill Snelgrove

   Pages 129-146

10. Phenomenology of Chronic Pain: De-Personalization and Re-Personalization

    • Saulius Geniusas

    Pages 147-164

11. Pain Experience and Structures of Attention: A Phenomenological Approach

    • Agustín Serrano de Haro

    Pages 165-180

12. Should Investigators Introspect on Their Own Pain Experiences as Study Co-Participants?

    • Simon van Rysewyk, Carl L. von Baeyer

    Pages 181-194

13. The Moral Experience of the Person with Chronic Pain

    • Ian Edwards

    Pages 195-210

14. Chronic Pain and Meaning in Life: Challenge and Change

    • Jessie Dezutter, Laura Dewitte, Siebrecht Vanhooren

    Pages 211-226

15. The Lived Experience of Pain-Related Fear in People with Chronic Low Back Pain

    • Samantha Bunzli, Anne Smith, Rob Schütze, Peter O’Sullivan

    Pages 227-250

16. Conceptualising Secondary Pain Affect: The More Personal and Elaborate Feelings

    • Drew Carter

    Pages 251-265

17. Mental Imagery in Chronic Pain: An Access to Meaning Beyond Words

    • Chantal Berna

    Pages 267-280

18. The Challenge of Validating the Experience of Chronic Pain: The Importance of Intersubjectivity and Reframing

    • John Quintner, Milton Cohen

    Pages 281-293

19. Meanings of Chronic Pain in Patient Interactions with Health Services

    • Karin Säll Hansson, Carina Elmqvist, Gunilla Lindqvist, Kent Stening

    Pages 295-307

20. Making Sense: Regaining Self-Coherence

    • Bronwyn Lennox Thompson

    Pages 309-324

Although pain is widely recognized by clinicians and researchers as an experience, pain is always felt in a patient-specific way rather than experienced for what it objectively is, making perceived meaning important in the study of pain. The book contributors explain why meaning is important in the way that pain is felt and promote the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods to study meanings of pain. For the first time in a book, the study of the meanings of pain is given the attention it deserves.


All pain research and medicine inevitably have to negotiate how pain is perceived, how meanings of pain can be described within the fabric of a person’s life and neurophysiology, what factors mediate them, how they interact and change over time, and how the relationship between patient, researcher, and clinician might be understood in terms of meaning.


Though meanings of pain are not intensively studied in contemporary painresearch or thoroughly described as part of clinical assessment, no pain researcher or clinician can avoid asking questions about how pain is perceived or the types of data and scientific methods relevant in discovering the answers.

• Pain
• Meaning
• Experience
• Phenomenology
• Neuroscience

“Meanings of Pain offers an intriguing investigation into the implications of the psychological, sociological, and personal lived meanings of pain for the overall management of patients struggling with this chronic condition. … it may prove invaluable to the physician struggling to understand the intricacies of the patient pain experience, facilitating improved comprehensive pain therapy.” (Emily E. Smith-Straesser and Amanda M. Kleiman, Anestesia & Analgesia, Vol. 125 (5), November, 2017)

• School of Humanities, Department of Philosophy and Gender Studies, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia

  Simon van Rysewyk

Simon van Rysewyk is a University Associate in the Department of Philosophy, School of Humanities, University of Tasmania. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tasmania in 2013, and from 2013 to 2014 he was a Taiwan National Science Council Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Brain and Consciousness Research Center and Graduate Institute of Medical Humanities, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan. His interests are pain, phenomenology, experiential research methods, and medical ethics.
He is coeditor of the 2015 Springer title "Machine Medical Ethics," Vol. 74 in the series "Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering," ISBN 978-3-319-08108-3.

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