Reply: Todd Hargrove’s post “Is Pain a Sensation or a Perception?”

Todd argues for these claims:

1. The debate is not substantive or of practical import. It does not involve disagreements about pain physiology, what causes pain, or how pain should be treated. Instead, the debate is semantic.
2. The debate is easily resolved by simply looking at textbooks that describe how the terms sensation and perception are conventionally defined and used.
3. These textbooks make clear that it is completely appropriate to refer to pain as a perception, and it doesn’t make much sense to say that pain is a sensation but not a perception.
4. In any event, it doesn’t matter that much how we use these words in practice, because they are inherently fuzzy and often used interchangeably.

I think Todd’s post is a decent contribution to the question, and will make a positive difference to some patients and HCPs.

Below, some thoughts from me; Todd, if you read this, your response is very welcome.

Todd: “…the terms sensation and perception are inherently nebulous and there’s no bright line between them. Why not? Because they encompass a vast number of different physiological processes happening at every level of the nervous system…”

Me: The terms ‘sensation’ and ‘perception’ are ordinary language terms, and do not capture neurophysiological or genetic differences, but differences in the kinds of behavioural and perceptual capacities human beings are interested in. We are social by nature. Human languages include psychological terms because of our need to describe, explain, predict, and otherwise understand the behaviour of other human (and non-human) animals, and because of the need to provide such information to other humans.

Of course, psychological terms can be defined or characterised scientifically, but the original ‘home’ of our psychological vocabulary is the ordinary language we use every day.

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Todd highlighted the indeterminacy of our psychological terms, such as ‘sensation’ and ‘perception’; e.g., ‘…there’s no bright line between them’; ‘…are inherently fuzzy, and are often used interchangeably’.

Me: I think the possibility of disagreement or uncertainty about pain in others reflects this indeterminacy. In our ordinary pain language, that indeterminacy is not due to neurophysiological or genetic factors, but to social patterns of behaviour: our concept of pain is flexible because pain behaviour, and our complex reactions to it, is diverse and unpredictable. Care-giving in pain settings can involve a threat to the caregiver, and is conditional on the authenticity of manifest pain behaviour. As observers of pain behaviour, we are sensitive to signs of exaggeration, suppression, or malingering, in behavioural displays of pain. Accordingly, our concept of pain does not always connect behaviour, situation, and personal experience, in a rigid way.

What could follow if we always connected behaviour, situation, and personal experience, in a rigid – necessary – way? To propose a simple, but rather extreme, illustration: suppose a group of people defined pain in terms of a particular neurophysiological biomarker, and used a sophisticated scanner to test for this marker. In their practice, the scanner’s verdict, and not the individual’s utterances or behaviour, is treated as definitive.

Would we want to call this practice a concept of pain? Would this practice be desirable or even possible for us? Would we, for example, accept that an apparent malingerer was in pain, if the scanner said so? Or, that a friend wasn’t, despite her facial grimaces? Would the absence of an abnormal scanner finding be held against a person applying for health benefits?

The new practice with its unanimity and clarity would be a far cry from our current, indeterminant, one. Although some people might engage in this practice, the fact that they do so perhaps makes them a different type of people from us?

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Is pain a “thing”?

Neuropsychologist Paul Broks on Wittgenstein

On the Exploring Pain: Research and Meaning group on Facebook, Phil Greenfield asks:

“Seeing pain as a ‘thing’ is somewhat inevitable. Pain is so immediate and unpleasant that sufferers naturally want rid of ‘it’. This has spawned a whole raft of of therapeutic models turning out technicians who would claim to be able to remove that ‘thing’ for you.

The experience of pain also has a noun assigned to it (pain) making it even more likely to be seen as a ‘thing’.

The big issue is, how can we uproot that rather persistent problem, and reframe our view of pain as being more akin to love, or grief, or anger, insofar as it has certain sensations associated with it, but that those sensations are not by any means the whole story”.

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My response to Phil’s question was (edited):

As I argued in the group here and here, the word ‘pain’, like ‘nausea’, or ‘itch’, is a name of a sensation, but not in the way in which ‘table’ or ‘chair’ are names of furniture. We can point at a table and say that ‘table’ is the name of this (pointing gesture) piece of furniture, but I don’t think we can point at a sensation and say that ‘pain’ is the name of this (pointing gesture) sensation.

I think to say that ‘pain’ is the name of a sensation is to say that there are typical behavioural manifestations of pain, which support statements like ‘Bob is in pain’, and that people who self-report pain are not describing a hidden (Cartesian) object ‘in the mind’, but are signalling to others what is going on with them.

Still, we find it natural to think that pain behaviour is the external sign of a mental object private to the sufferer, which in principle is hidden from observers. In the context of pain underestimation, Kenneth Prkachin writes:

“Evaluating others’ pain is a classic case of decision-making in uncertainty. The difficulty of the task is complicated by the fact that the clinician must try to “look inside” another person. In an ideal world, the clinician would be able to use some kind of “mental dipstick” to slide inside the patient’s consciousness, capture her or his current state, and, on the basis of this reading, recommend further action.

What are the potential sources of underestimation?

A first answer to this question harkens back to the dipstick problem. Because observers do not have direct access to sufferers’ internal experiences, their judgements are reliant on sources of evidence in the sufferer’s behaviour or context. In the setting of most empirical studies, access to that evidence is limited.”

We tend to think that the sole purpose of language is to represent reality; but pain behaviour, including linguistic self-report, does not function to accurately represent a private pain ‘object’. It sounds odd to say, but pain behaviour is not caused by the pain sensation!

Pain behaviour promotes the survival of our species, and is linked with caregiving and care-solicitation; resource allocation and conservation; charity and responsibility toward other members of our big family.

Meanings of cancer-related pain – Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, April 2021, Topical Session

Presented and recorded at the Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, April 2021 virtual event

Topical Session
3C: Meanings of Cancer-Related Pain
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
11:15 AM – 12:30 PM

Session Description: Cognitive factors are important determinants of cancer-related pain experience. Simon van Rysewyk describes how cancer-related is particularly sensitive to cognitive factors and describes some common cognitions that people with cancer-related pain have and how they influence patient outcomes. Xiangfeng Xu (Renee) presents on the cultural and social factors that influence cancer pain management of Chinese migrants and what culturally congruent strategies may be implemented to improve their pain outcomes. Melanie Lovell compares levels of suffering in people with cancer-related pain versus non-cancer chronic pain, highlighting differential meanings of existential or spiritual distress and mood dysfunction. Lovell outlines management approaches to cancer pain and suffering that are not responsive to analgesia, such as meaning- or peace-centred therapies.

Session Objectives:
At the end of the session, attendees will know:
– Common meanings of cancer-related pain and what meanings influence specific patient outcomes
– Common meanings of suffering in cancer-related pain and the relationship between these meanings and non-cancer chronic pain experience and mood dysfunction
– Effective approaches to diagnosis and management of cancer-related pain symptoms, including interventions based on meaning
– Impact of culture on Chinese migrants’ perspectives and responses to cancer pain and recommendations for clinical practice

Presenter Duties
Chair: Dr Simon van Rysewyk, University of Tasmania
Organiser/Presenter 1: Dr Simon van Rysewyk, University of Tasmania
Presenter 2: Dr Renee Xu, University of Sydney
Presenter 3: Associate Professor Melanie Lovell, University of Sydney

What the face reveals: the experience of pain

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Presented at: De/Constructing the Body: Ancient and Modern Dynamics, Workshop 3:Trans-Formation, April 9, 2021.

Abstract here.

Slide transcript

Slide 2
Human beings are describable in two distinct, but complementary ways: in terms of the way the world is, through scientific descriptions of the causal mechanisms and laws that explain physical things, or, in terms of the way the world seems, through descriptions of personal experiences and meanings.

As a person, I can recognise within myself a perspective or point of view on the world and identify it as belonging to me. Every person has such a unique perspective; this is partly what it means to be a person rather than a physical thing. In contrast, a scientific description of the world does not presuppose any personal point of view. Physical or biological science does not use words like “I”, “here”, or “now”.

Slide 3
The features of personal experience—thought, feeling, speech and action—are amenable to standard scientific explanation as specific changes in the body.

A philosophical assumption held by some neurophysiologists is that a person is identical with his or her body. Person and body are one and the same thing. This assumption is behind the slogan in pain science, “pain is in the brain”.

In terms of personal experience, however, the identity between person and body escapes understanding. For example, when I feel a pain, there is no information or evidence, or nothing that I could discover about my body subsequent to the experience of pain, that could demonstrate it to be false. When I feel a pain, I simply I am in pain.

Slide 4
In person-to-person interactions, we commonly respond to each other as though we are not identical with the human body, but in a compelling sense operating “through” the body, which seems to be a vehicle of thought, emotion, pain or suffering.

We feel that each person we encounter in the world is a unique perspective that is not the body, but the “self”, which is lodged in the face.

Slide 5
Pain is not an action, but a personal experience. Yet, pain reveals itself in those gestures, or expressions, which cannot fail to reveal the person in pain.

People in pain communicate their experience through a range of actions, ranging from self-report, to nonverbal actions, which include paralinguistic vocalisations, bodily activity and facial expressions.

Verbal self-report is mostly voluntary, and relies on reflection and deliberation, whereas nonverbal expression is involuntary and reflexive.

Slide 6
But the involuntary transformations revealed in the face are more meaningful than in other body-parts. This is because body-parts do not have the individuating meaning of the face: the meaning of revealing me, here, now. When I observe another’s pain facial expression, I am not perceiving a physical part of him, as I am when I notice his injured arm or leg. I am meeting him, a real person, who reveals himself in the face.

A person may be perceived by his arm, but not in his arm.

Involuntary facial changes show the person with pain “as he really is”, because he does not fully control them.

We express preference for non-verbal behaviour over verbal behaviour when judging or interpreting the credibility of pain displays.

Slide 7
Pain expressed through the face acquires, for us, an individuality, a personality, that readies us for the human encounter.

Not understanding a face means not seeing where it fits into our gallery of portraits, and therefore not knowing how to properly relate to the person whom it prefigures. One study showed that physicians tended to attribute lower levels of pain to physically attractive patients than physically unattractive patients. Another study found that physically attractive and male patients were perceived as experiencing less pain and disability than physically unattractive and female patients. Finally, in another study, observers judging patient facial pain expressions on video perceived older and less physically attractive patients to be of lower overall functioning.

I can decide to enter into another’s pain expression; or I can decide to remain outside it, as it were, and to see it as a thing apart; perhaps more darkly, as something foreign, or subordinate to my will. How we judge a face may affect the outcomes the patient can achieve.

Slide 8
Pain imposes a significant vulnerability on persons: the vulnerability of a free person who is overwhelmed in his or her body by the presence of pain. This can make the person with pain feel answerable for what he or she experiences. Men who adopt a stoical attitude to their pain are less likely to express pain in the presence of others.

The expression on a face is an offering in the world of mutual responsibilities: it projects into our interpersonal relations a particular person’s “being there”. As soon as I notice pain in another person’s face, my responsibilities are engaged. Facial expressions of pain call on you to respond to me.

The face has this meaning for us because it is the boundary at which the other appears, offering “this person” as one in need of help.

Slide 9
However, expressing pain does not always lead to compassionate reactions, and people are careful about when and with whom they express pain.

Voluntary control of pain through facial actions is normally judged to be an insincere expression of pain, and open to doubt. The controlled pain face is perceived as a mask, which conceals the person lying “behind” it. The expressions on the human face are not always transparent effects of the personal experiences that elicit them, as perhaps they are in non-human mammals. Human beings can deceive through their faces, and children and adults can use the face to fake, and amplify, or suppress, pain.

The capacity to modulate pain expressed through the face has led to difficulty in interpreting the meaning of facially expressed pain. The fidelity with which facial signs mean “pain” is limited to a narrow range of involuntary facial expressions of pain. It is often uncertain whether the presence or absence of information means “pain” or, if they are exaggerated or suppressed consistent with perceived situational demands.

Slide 10
If there is a configuration of facial actions that signals pain, then assessing its presence is amenable to pattern recognition technologies. Substantial progress has been made toward the development of IT-based analysis of pain facial expression.

These systems raise ethical questions about control of patient information.
As these IT systems are used in health care settings, informed consent will need to be obtained for collecting and storing patients’ images, but also for the specific purposes for which those images might be analyzed by these systems.

IT systems can store data as a complete facial image or as a facial template. Facial templates are considered biometric data and thus personally identifiable information. The notion that a photo can reveal private health information is relatively new, and privacy regulations and practices are still catching up. Clinicians should advise patients that there may be limited protections for storing and sharing data when using an facial recognition tool.

Including People with Lived Experience of Pain in the Research Process: Do It Early and Often

Kayt Sukel / RELIEF (December 13, 2020)

“More and more, we see the value of taking a more patient-centered approach, at every step of the research process,” said Captain Robyn Bent, director of the ongoing Patient-Focused Drug Development (PFDD) initiative, which was established at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2012. “In the early stages, that patient input can help researchers understand the impact of the disease and existing treatments, helping us better understand what we need to measure to see if something has worked or not. Once we get to clinical trials, patients can help us understand what aspects of those trials need to be better tailored to fit the needs of the people who will end up participating in those trials. And once a treatment is available, patients can help us understand how to best communicate information to both patients and doctors to facilitate shared decision-making.”

Kayt Sukel. Including People with Lived Experience of Pain in the Research Process: Do It Early and Often.

Read the article in RELIEF here.

Spiritual Well-Being in People Living with Persistent Non-Cancer and Cancer-Related Pain

Another excellent paper in the Pain Medicine special issue I guest edited with Melanie Galbraith, John Quintner and Milton Cohen –

Spiritual Well-Being in People Living with Persistent Non-Cancer and Cancer-Related Pain
Melanie Lovell, Mandy Corbett, Skye Dong, Philip Siddall

Existential and spiritual factors are known to play an important role in how people cope with disability and life-threatening illnesses such as …

Source: Spiritual Well-Being in People Living with Persistent Non-Cancer and Cancer-Related Pain

“Me seeing you seeing my pain”

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Sculpture by Fabio Viale

Meanings of Pain (Springer International Publishing, 2016) was created to advance understanding of pain experience as a bearer of meaning. Progress in modern biomedicine is necessary to explain pain and to aid in its treatment; yet, preference for biomedical explanation of pain in the field has meant that research and clinical attention to the experience of pain and to common factors of pain, such as meaning, as both a clinical topic and a research method, mostly remains a blind spot in knowledge.

Meaningful changes that we notice in others are often subtle and small changes in facial expression, and are similar to features of clinicians that patients find meaningful, such as aspects of clinician demeanour (enthusiasm, positive personality, attentiveness), which are often embodied in subtle facial expressions, gestures, or particular tones of voice (e.g., Gracely et al. 1985). Pain is a personal experience, not an action; yet it displays itself in those actions in which a human person in pain is revealed to observation (Craig et al. 2010). Body-parts are subject to involuntary changes during pain, such as reflexive withdrawal, but in the social transaction of pain, the involuntary changes revealed in the face are more meaningful than in other body-parts (Prkachin et al. 1983; Craig, 2009). This is because body-parts do not have the individuating meaning of the face: the meaning of revealing me, here, now. The expression on a human person’s face is largely determined by involuntary facial actions; yet, it is the living picture of the person that “peers” from it, and hence a concentrated symbol of the “self”. In facial expressions of pain, the face is not a mere bodily part, but the whole person: the self is spread across its surface, and there displayed.

Intentional control of pain through facial actions is normally judged by observers to be an insincere expression of pain, and open to doubt (Hill & Craig, 2002). The controlled pain face is perceived as a mask, which conceals the person lying “behind” it. The expressions on the human face are not always transparent effects of the personal experiences that elicit them, as perhaps they are in nonhuman mammals. Human beings can deceive through their faces, and children and adults can use the face to fake, as well as exaggerate, or suppress, pain (Williams, 2002). It is possible that deception is possible because we do not distinguish a human person from his or her face. Protective acts such as withdrawal reflexes, guarded postures, and disabled behaviour, can communicate pain to sensitive observers (Sullivan, 2008). But when I observe another’s pain face, I am not meeting a physical part of him, as I am when I notice his injured arm or leg. I am meeting him, a real person, who reveals himself in the face as one like me. There are deceiving faces, but not deceiving arms or legs.

Facial expressions of pain call on you to respond to me. As soon as I notice pain in another person, my responsibilities are engaged. I am held to account for it. The face has this meaning for us because it is the boundary at which the other in pain appears, offering “this person” as one in need of help. This feature is perhaps at the heart of what it means to treat pain. Care of persons in pain would be impossible without the assumption that we can commit ourselves through promises, take responsibility now for some event in the future or the past, and enter into obligations that we hold as not transferable to other persons—all of which are perceived in the face.

We may separate pain from its social meaning, and assign to it an impersonal, “bodily” meaning. However, an observation of pain which, whether or not intentionally, focuses exclusively upon the body-parts of another, but which neglects the preliminary changes in the face, as well as in the voice, hands and posture, perhaps is unethical. The failure to recognise the personal existence of the other in pain is therefore an affront, both to him and to oneself. In separating pain from its social meaning, we remove it from the interpersonal world of social relations, which compels us to recognise human beings as persons and sometimes to compromise or risk ourselves for them.

The most meaningful feature in displays of pain is the eyes, followed by brows, eyelids, mouth, head, forehead, and then other body-parts (Prkachin et al. 1983). Although glances are normally voluntary, they participate in the pattern of involuntary social communication where one person in painful distress is “revealed” in his body to the one who observes him. To turn my eyes to you is a voluntary act; but what I receive from you is not anything I voluntarily do. The eye enables the human person in pain to be displayed to another in his body, and in the act of display to call on the observer to intervene on their behalf. The complex transaction of pain involves the voluntary and the involuntary to co-mingle on the surface of the human body. The joining of minds that begins when an expression of pain is answered with a reciprocated response is partly fulfilled in “me seeing you seeing my pain”, which is not the reciprocity of normal cooperation, but of meaning. I believe many patients with pain desire to experience first-hand this more concentrated form of social recognition.

References

Craig KD. A social communications model of pain. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne 2009; 50:22-32.

Craig KD et al. Perceiving pain in others: automatic and controlled mechanisms. J Pain 2010; 11(2):101-8.

Gracely RH et al. Clinicians’ Expectations Influence Placebo Analgesia. Lancet 1985; 1(8419):43.

Hill ML, Craig KD. Detecting deception in pain expressions: The structure of genuine and deceptive facial displays. Pain 2002; 98:135-144.

Prkachin KM et al. Judging nonverbal expressions of pain. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement. 1983; 15(4):409.

Sullivan MJL. Toward a biopsychomotor conceptualization of pain. Clin J Pain 2008; 24:281-290.

van Rysewyk S (ed). Meanings of Pain. Springer International Publishing: Switzerland, 2016.

Williams AC. Facial expression of pain: An evolutionary account. Behav Brain Scien 2002; 25:439-488.

Call for Abstracts: Meanings of Pain, Volume III

Sculpture by Fabio Viale

Volume III Topic: Meanings of pain in vulnerable or special patient groups

Series Editor: Dr Simon van Rysewyk
Publisher: Springer

The Meanings of Pain book series describes how the meaning of pain changes pain experience – and people – over time.

Pain in the moment is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant. If pain persists over time, more complex meanings about the long-term consequences, or burden of pain, can develop. These meanings can include existential meanings such as despair or loneliness that focus on the person with pain, rather than pain itself.

Meanings of Pain offers a vocabulary of language about pain and meaning. An objective of the series is to stimulate self-reflection on how to use information about meaning in clinical and non-clinical pain settings. The book series is intended for people with pain, family members or caregivers of people with pain, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers.

Although chronic pain can affect anyone, there are some groups of people for whom particular clinical support and understanding is urgently needed. This applies to “vulnerable” or “special” groups of people and to the question of what pain means to them.

Volume III focuses on describing the meanings of pain in groups of “vulnerable” or “special” people, such as:

• Infants or children
• Women
• Older adults
• People with a physical or intellectual disability
• People with a brain injury
• People diagnosed with a disease
• Veterans
• Athletes
• Workers
• Addicts
• People with mental illness or mental disorders
• Homeless people
• People in rural or remote communities
• People in multicultural communities
• Indigenous peoples

Invited chapter types
The editor Dr Simon van Rysewyk invites contributions for Volume III on the meanings of pain in vulnerable or special patient groups. The following manuscript types will be considered:

• Original Research (e.g., original clinical, translational, or theoretical research)
• Reviews (e.g., Systematic Reviews, Meta-analytic reviews, Cochrane type reviews, Pragmatic Reviews)

Authors interested in submitting a chapter for publication in Volume III are invited to submit a 350-word Abstract, which includes the name and contact information of the corresponding author, to:

Dr Simon van Rysewyk
simon.vanrysewyk@utas.edu.au

Abstract Deadline: closed

“It is my opinion that this … work will stand as the definitive reference work in this field. I believe it will enrich the professional and personal lives of health care providers, researchers and people who have persistent pain and their family members. The combination of framework chapters with chapters devoted to analysing the lived experience of pain conditions gives the requisite breadth and depth to the subject.” – Dr Marc A. Russo, MBBS DA(UK) FANZCA FFPMANZCA, Newcastle, Australia, from the Foreword in Volume II

“Meanings of Cancer-Related Pain”

Sculpture by Fabio Viale

Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting 2020
Hobart Tasmania

Topical Session
Tuesday, April 7, 2020, 3.30-5.00pm

Session Description: Cognitive factors are important determinants of cancer-related pain experience. Simon van Rysewyk describes some common meanings and beliefs that people have about cancer, illness, and pain, and the consequences these meanings have in relation to common help-seeking behaviours or coping strategies people choose to adopt. Suffering is a cognitive and emotional response to recurrent perceived losses experienced in some people with cancer. Megan Best presents on the challenges in assessing people with cancer-related suffering and the relationship of suffering to cancer-related pain. Melanie Lovell compares levels of suffering in people with cancer-related pain versus non-cancer chronic pain, highlighting differential meanings of existential or spiritual distress and mood dysfunction. Best and Lovell outline management approaches to cancer pain and suffering that are not responsive to analgesia, such as meaning- or peace-centred therapies.

Session Objectives
At the end of the session, attendees will know:
– Common meanings of cancer-related pain and how people apply these meanings to cope with their pain
– Common meanings of suffering in cancer-related pain and the relationship between these meanings and non-cancer chronic pain experience and mood dysfunction
– Effective approaches to diagnosis and management of cancer-related pain symptoms, including interventions based on meaning

Presenter Duties
Chair: Professor Jane Phillips, University of Technology, Sydney
Organiser/Presenter 1: Dr Simon van Rysewyk, University of Tasmania
Presenter 2: Dr Megan Best, University of Sydney
Presenter 3: Associate Professor Melanie Lovell, University of Sydney

Humans beings are persons and organisms

Sculpture by Fabio Viale

As organisms, human beings interact with the world and each other through causal mechanisms that control us and every other physical thing. As persons, we act in the world through our thoughts, emotions, attitudes, or desires.

Accordingly, human beings are describable in two distinct, but complementary ways: in terms of the way the world is, through scientific descriptions of the causal mechanisms and laws that explain physical things, or, in terms of the way the world seems, through descriptions of personal experiences and meanings.

One or the other way of describing human beings comes into focus depending on the questions we ask about ourselves or the world. The features of personal experience—thought, feeling, speech and action—are amenable to standard scientific explanation as specific changes in the body. Traditionally, scientific research has had much to say about the physical nature of pain, but much less about the personal experience or meaning of pain. Indeed, the meaning of pain remains a blind spot in knowledge.

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A description of a human being as a person means that there is a way of understanding of human beings in which personal experience and meaning, rather than physical causation alone, is needed to answer the question, “What is happening?”

Human persons can distinguish between how things are in the world and how things seem to me. I can recognise within myself a perspective or point of view on the world and identify it as belonging to me. Every person has such a unique perspective; this is partly what it means to be a person rather than a physical thing. In contrast, a scientific description of the world does not presuppose any personal point of view. Physical science does not use words like “I”, “here,” or “now”. Does this mean that “persons” are unobservable to standard quantitative science?

Possibly. Imagine a complete explanation of pain according to the final neurophysiology of pain—whatever it turns out to be. Such an explanation of pain would, to put it very crudely, accurately map specific neurophysiological changes in physical parts in the living human organism and all their true causal interactions across time. However invaluable such an explanation would be to pain medicine, it could not describe the way pain seems to the person who experiences it, for which of the physical objects described in this explanation is me with pain, here, now? Immediate pain always seems a certain way to persons, and this “seeming” determines the experience of the person with pain. In describing personal pain, human beings use language with other meanings than the language used in neurophysiology. The final neurophysiological explanation of pain therefore could explain only one dimension of pain in human beings—the physical dimension—in language that could not capture the personal experience, burden, or meaning of pain.

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A philosophical assumption of neurophysiology is that a person is identical with his or her body. Person and body are one and the same thing. In terms of personal experience, however, the identity between person and body escapes personal understanding. For example, when I feel a pain, there is no information or evidence, or nothing that I could discover about my body subsequent to the experience of pain, that could demonstrate it to be false. When I feel a pain, I simply know that I am in pain.

In person to person interactions, we commonly respond to each other as though we are not identical with the human body, but in a compelling sense operating “through” the body, which seems to be a vehicle of thought, emotion, pain or suffering. We feel that each person we encounter in the world is a unique perspective that is not the body, but the “self”, which peers out through the face. The human face is the social instrument of persons. In seeking to understand you, or adjust how the world or your experience seems to you, I interact with you through your embodied perspective.

In pain experience, it is my loss of personal control over my body, and its dominion over me, that create the compelling sense, for me and for others, of an “incarnate” person. Pain imposes a significant vulnerability on persons: the vulnerability of a free person who is overwhelmed in his or her body by the presence of pain. This can make the person, and the person’s significant others, feel answerable for what he or she experiences.

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“Pain Takes Over Everything”: The Experience of Pain and Strategies for Management

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Sculpture by Fabio Viale

Marie Crowe, Deb Gillon, Cate McCall, and Jennifer Jordan

Abstract This chapter explores the personal experience of pain from its biological underpinnings to strategies people identified for managing this experience. The somatic experience of chronic pain describes the biological processes involved in pain and how this can become a chronic experience with psychological and social implications. The personal experience of pain is explored through a systematic review of research of qualitative experiences. We found that the experience of pain was similar despite its etiological underpinnings—whatever the biological cause there were similarities in the personal experience. Participants in the studies identified five themes that described these personal experiences: (1) body as obstacle; (2) disrupted sense of self; (3) invisible but real; (4) unpredictability; and (5) keeping going.

This section of the chapter is followed by the findings of a systematic review of how older people learn to manage their pain experiences:

– “adjusting to the inevitable”
– “doing it my way without medication”
– “the importance of support in managing the struggle”

The chapter concludes by discussing some of the strategies that can be used to manage the self in pain: support for self-management, medication, exercise and psychological interventions (mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy).

Clinical Implications: Many people manage their chronic pain by actively balancing the competing forces of hope and despair. There are similarities in this experience of chronic pain across a range of conditions which has implications for the development of pain management strategies and interventions that address the pain experience and not just the biological condition. Learning to manage the self in pain involves acceptance of pain as on-going and a part of who they are; keeping connected with others; keeping occupied through meaningful activities; getting meaningful support; and developing new meaning in life. Clinical interventions need to a focus on the person’s sense of self, strategies for maintaining hope, strategies that provide relief for the distress associated with pain; and providing people with a sense of control over their experiences both with the pain itself and in their encounters with the medical profession and the use of medication.

Meanings of Pain, Volume II, on Springer.

External Links
Painaustralia
Pain Health
Chronic Pain Australia

Pain Fact Sheets
The Nature and Science of Pain (Painaustralia)
Prevalence and the Human and Social Cost of Pain (Painaustralia)
Clinical Assessment of Pain (Painaustralia)
Multidisciplinary Pain Management  (Painaustralia)
Chronic Pain – A Major Issue in Rural Australia (National Rural Health Alliance)
Chronic Physical Illness, Anxiety and Depression (Beyond Blue)
Neuropathic (Nerve) Pain (Painaustralia)
Self-Managing Chronic Pain (Painaustralia)
The Pain Toolkit Australia (www.paintoolkit.org)
Chronic Pain Management Strategies (NSW ACI)
Communicating and building a pain treatment team (NSW ACI)
Pain and Physical Activity (NSW ACI)

Brisbane Pain Research Symposium 2019

This free whole-day symposium at UQ is open to all members of the community with an interest in advancing pain research and treatments.

About this Event

Hosted by the IMB Centre for Pain Research, we invite you to a whole-day multidisciplinary pain research symposium on Friday 29 November 2019 at the Queensland Bioscience Precinct Auditorium.

Building on the outstanding success of last year’s symposium which attracted over 250 registrants from right across the community, this upcoming student-led event brings together pain research groups from different disciplines across Brisbane and provides a platform for researchers at all career stages to showcase their work alongside leading national and international speakers in the field.

Our aim is to stimulate scientific discussion, collaboration and ongoing engagement to advance pain research and treatments with all sectors of the community, i.e. basic & clinical pain researchers, people living with pain-related conditions, medical practitioners & allied health professionals, academics and hospital administrators, industry representatives, government health agencies & regulatory bodies, people caring for those living with pain-related conditions and community support groups.

Instructions for submitting an abstract for a poster presentation or short talk are further below (FAQs). Postgraduate research candidates (Hons, Masters, PhD), early career researchers (ECRs) and clinicians are particularly encouraged to submit an abstract for the symposium.

Generous prizes for the Best Posters and Best Punchy Poster Talks will be available!

Abstract submissions are also welcome from hospital administrators, industry representatives, government health agencies & regulatory bodies, and community support groups.

Learn more about this event here.

Reasons for Investigator-Participation and Introspection in Pain Research

Reason 1: Historical Cases of Investigator-Participation in Pain Research

In the early twentieth century, scientists commonly viewed self-experimentation an essential part of medical research. Self-exposure to untested interventions was believed the most ethical way to assess human responses to those interventions, and to catalyse further research (Dresser 2013). Some of this research helped to found new scientific fields. Respiratory physiology was one such field, formed in the 1920s through self-experiments conducted by scientist John Haldane and colleagues. In 1984, physician Barry Marshall ingested Helicobacter pylori, which helped to establish the link between H. pylori and gastric pathology, and in 1992, self-experiments conducted by Mike Stroud and Ranulph Fiennes in Antarctica advanced understanding of nutrition in extreme conditions.

Self-experiments to study pain experience have been published by Sir Head (1920), Woollard and Carmichael (1933), Landau and Bishop (1953), Price (1972), Price et al. (1977), and Staud et al. (2001, 2008), to name only a few significant investigator-participants who studied pain. William Landau and George H. Bishop conducted standard psychophysical research on themselves to study the qualitative differences between “first pain” and “second pain” (i.e. “double pain”; later termed epicritic and protopathic pain) (Landau and Bishop 1953). Initially, Landau and Bishop identified through introspection the differential experiential qualities between first and second pain, followed by scientifically informed speculation about the mechanistic difference between the two types of pain. They discovered that first pain was sharp or stinging, well localized, and brief, whereas second pain was dull, aching, throbbing, or burning, and poorly localized, and longer lasting. The qualities of second pain were felt when skin C-nociceptors were stimulated.

These findings were subsequently confirmed by Price (1972) based on researcher and naïve participant introspective reports. Temporal differences between first and second pain were introspected on and mechanistically explained in terms of central temporal summation in studies by Price et al. (1977), and Staud et al. (2001, 2008), using investigator- and naïve-participants.

Conducting self-experiments to study referred pain, collaborators Herbert Woollard and Edward Carmichael observed that 300 g of weight placed on the right testicle produced slight discomfort in the right groin, while 650 g on the right testicle caused severe pain on the right side of the body. They confirmed that injury to the testicles caused pain to be referred throughout the body. For instance, as the weight on the testicle increased to over 900 g, they reported pain “of a sickening character” not only in the groin but also spreading across the back (Woollard and Carmichael 1933).

Self-experimentation on pain has on occasion led to surprising results. The psychologist B. Berthold Wolff self-experimented in his pain psychophysics laboratory, varying thermal pain which was produced at that time by briefly shining a strong light on a spot on the forearm blackened with candle black for a calibrated time and intensity of exposure (Hardy et al. 1940). On one occasion, Wolff pushed the button to deliver the noxious stimulus, but then something unexpected happened: he screamed with pain, which was brief but intense and filled his whole body. He described it as the most intense whole-body pain he had ever experienced. Wolff later discovered that the light stimulus had been knocked off its correct aim, and had missed his forearm altogether and instead diffused onto the opposite wall where it created a very strong flash of light throughout the normally dark room. Wolff speculated that, as he was expecting to feel pain, the unexpected flash of strong light had the same effect, producing an experience of pain.

It is unclear if investigators today independently conduct self-experiments or co-participate in their own pain studies. The convenience of recruiting participants from university classes and the internet may have made self-experimentation or co-participation of pain seem somewhat redundant to researchers. The Declaration of Helsinki advises on conducting ethical research using patients and healthy volunteers, although it is unclear if this is reason enough for challenging independent self-experimentation or investigator co-participation. In self-experiments, the researcher is both investigator and single participant, so the requirement for informed consent could be waived. Still, there is clear historical precedent for scientific investigators successfully observing and analyzing their own experiences of pain. The results of such published self-experiments have been integrated into the body of knowledge of pain, and replicated in numerous studies using naïve participant introspective reports and standard scientific methods.

References

Dresser R (2013) Personal knowledge and study participation. J Med Ethics. doi:10.1136/medethics-2013-101390.

Hardy JD, Wolff HG, Goodell H (1940) Studies on pain: a new method for measuring pain threshold: observations on spatial summation of pain. J Clin Investig 19(4):649–657.

Head H (1920) Studies in neurology. Oxford University Press, London.

Landau W, Bishop GH (1953) Pain from dermal, periosteal, and fascial endings and from inflammation: electrophysiological study employing differential nerve blocks. AMA Arch Neurol Psychiatry 69(4):490–504.

Price DD (1972) Characteristics of second pain and flexion reflexes indicative of prolonged central summation. Exp Neurol 37(2):371–387.

Price DD, Hu JW, Dubner R, Gracely RH (1977) Peripheral suppression of first pain and central summation of second pain evoked by noxious heat pulses. Pain 3(1):57–68.

Staud R, Vierck CJ, Cannon RL, Mauderli AP, Price DD (2001) Abnormal sensitization and temporal summation of second pain (wind-up) in patients with fibromyalgia syndrome. Pain 91 (1):165–175.

Staud R, Craggs JG, Perlstein WM, Robinson ME, Price DD (2008) Brain activity associated with slow temporal summation of C-fiber evoked pain in fibromyalgia patients and healthy controls. Eur J Pain 12(8):1078–1089.

Woollard HH, Carmichael EA (1933) The testis and referred pain. Brain 56(3):293–303.

Meanings of Pain, Volume I (2016, Springer)

van Rysewyk S (2016). Meanings of Pain. Springer International Publishing AG: Switzerland.

• 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

About Meanings of Pain, Volume I

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. This fact makes 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 pain research 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 of Meanings of Pain

“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)

Pain Science and Sensibility Episode 29: Discussion of the book “Meanings of Pain”

Meanings of Pain – Book Review by Josie Billington (University of Liverpool), Andrew Jones, and James Ledson (The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust)

Meanings of Pain – Book Review by Christin Bird

The Science and Philosophy of the Meaning of Pain – Review of Chapter 7, “A Scientific and Philosophical Analysis of Meanings of Pain in Studies of Pain and Suffering” in Meanings of Pain by Smadar Bustan – by Tim Cocks

Meanings of Pain – Book Review by Asaf Weisman

N=1 as a reference for general concepts of experiencing pain by Morten Høgh

New Developments

Springer is considering publishing Meanings of Pain in a multiple volume series. Watch this space for an update on this development.