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Meanings of Pain

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Editors:
  1. Simon van Rysewyk

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

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  • First book devoted to study of the meanings of pain
  • Explains why meaning is important in the way that pain is felt
  • Promotes integration of qualitative and quantitative research methods to study meanings of pain
  • Includes insights that can aid in the clinical management of patients with pain
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (23 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
    Download chapter 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
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Keywords

About this book

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.

Reviews

“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)

Editors and Affiliations

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

    Simon van Rysewyk

About the editor

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.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Meanings of Pain

  • Editors: Simon van Rysewyk

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49022-9

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life Sciences, Biomedical and Life Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing AG 2016

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-49021-2Published: 20 February 2017

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-84069-7Published: 13 July 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-49022-9Published: 07 February 2017

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: VIII, 401

  • Number of Illustrations: 11 b/w illustrations, 13 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Neurosciences, Pain Medicine, Phenomenology, Clinical Psychology

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