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Although pain is one of the most fundamental and unique experiences we undergo in everyday life, it also constitutes one of the most enigmatic and frustrating subjects for many scientists. This book provides a detailed analysis of why this issue is grounded in the nature of pain itself. It also offers a philosophically driven solution of how we may still approach pain in a theoretically compelling and practically useful manner. Two main theses are defended: (i) Pain seems inscrutable because there exists no property that is commonly shared by all types of pain and that is at the same time particular to pain, setting it apart from other bodily sensations. This applies irrespective of whether we consider the psychological dimensions, neural networks, causal relations or biological functions of pain. Consequently, it is impossible to refer to ideal far-reaching and ideal distinct generalizations on the matter of pain. (ii) Despite this challenge, by focusing on the resemblance relations that hold across pains, we can generate scientific progress in explaining, predicting and treating pain. In doing so, the book aims to provide a clear conceptual basis for interdisciplinary communication and a useful heuristic for future research.

This book focuses on the reciprocal interactions between pain, emotion and cognition. International experts report on their findings, clinical experience and the most recent literature on the complex relations between these three domains. Clinical, psychological, behavioral and neuroimaging approaches converge towards aiding patients suffering from pain, cognitive impairment or emotional distress. Beyond the pathophysiological aspects of pain, difficulties encountered with patients are analyzed and strategies are proposed to optimize treatment, doctor-patient relationships, and patient well-being. This work will appeal to a broad readership, from clinical medical practitioners to psychologists, nurses and pain specialists.

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This volume of new essays explores the relationship between the thought of Wittgenstein and the key figures of phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. It is the first book to provide an overview of how Wittgenstein’s philosophy in its different phases, including his own so-called phenomenological phase, relates to the variety of phenomenological approaches developed in continental Europe. In so doing, the volume seeks to throw light on both sides of the comparison, and to clarify more broadly the relations between analytic and phenomenological philosophy. However, rather than treating the interpretation of either phenomenological philosophy or Wittgenstein as an already settled issue, several chapters in the volume examine and question received views regarding them, and develop alternatives to such views. Wittgenstein and Phenomenology will be of interest to scholars working in philosophical methodology and metaphilosophy, the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics.

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.

Leading philosophers and scientists examine the puzzles of pain and consider how the study of pain might help us to have a better understanding of the larger issues of consciousness and psychological research.

This guide to harnessing the power of the brain to resolve chronic pain includes a variety of simple attention exercises and a 65-minute guided audio program For four decades, Dr. Les Fehmi has been a leader in brainwave biofeedback (also called neurofeedback), training individuals how to balance and regulate their brainwave patterns to improve mental, emotional, and physical health. Dissolving Pain is based on the premise that although pain is perceived to exist in a particular part of the body, pain in fact resides in the brain. Drawing on existing scientific research and on decades of clinical experience, Dr. Fehmi offers brain-training exercises that quiet the pain signal in the brain. The exercises involve altering the way we pay attention to pain, cultivating what Fehmi calls Open-Focus Attention: a relaxed form of awareness that changes the neural blood flow and increases alpha brainwave activity (associated with reduced stress and beneficial hormonal changes). These exercises are effective in the treatment of many forms of pain including back, shoulder, neck, and joint pain; headaches; muscle pain and tension; and pain from traumatic injury. Included with the book is a link to a 65-minute downloadable audio program in which Dr. Fehmi guides listeners through the fundamental Dissolving Pain exercises. To learn more, visit openfocus.com.

Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain: A Clinical Guide demonstrates that the concept of the unconscious is profoundly relevant for understanding the mind, psychic pain, and traumatic human suffering. Editors Paula L. Ellman and Nancy R. Goodman established this book to discover how symbolization takes place through the "finding of unconscious fantasy" in ways that mend the historic split between trauma and fantasy. Cases present the dramatic encounters between patient and therapist when confronting discovery of the unconscious in the presence of trauma and body pain, along with narrative. Unconscious fantasy has a central role in both clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis. This volume is a guide to the workings of the dyad and the therapeutic action of "finding" unconscious meanings. Staying close to the clinical engagement of analyst and patient shows the transformative nature of the "finding" process as the dyad works with all aspects of the unconscious mind. Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain: A Clinical Guide uses the immediacy of clinical material to show how trauma becomes known in the "here and now" of enactment processes and accompanies the more symbolized narratives of transference and countertransference. This book features contributions from a rich variety of theoretical traditions illustrating working models including Klein, Arlow, and Bion and from leaders in the fields of narrative, trauma, and psychosomatics. Whether working with narrative, trauma or body pain, unconscious fantasy may seem out of reach. Attending to the analyst/ patient process of finding the derivatives of unconscious fantasy offers a potent roadmap for the way psychoanalytic engagement uncovers deep layers of the mind. In focusing on the places of trauma and psychosomatic concreteness, along with narrative, Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain: A Clinical Guide shows the vitality of "finding" unconscious fantasy and its effect in initiating a symbolizing process. Chapters in this book bring to life the sufferings and capacities of individual patients with actual verbatim process material demonstrating how therapists and patients discover and uncover the derivatives of unconscious fantasy. Finding the unconscious meanings in states of trauma, body expressions, and transference/countertransference enactments becomes part of the therapeutic dialogue between therapists and patients unraveling symptoms and allowing transformations. Learning how therapeutic work progresses to uncover unconscious fantasy will benefit all therapists and students of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy interested to know more about the psychoanalytic dialogue.

Even as life expectancies increase, increasing numbers of people are living with chronic illness and pain than ever before. Long-term self-management of chronic conditions involves negotiating the intersections of personal life choices, community and workplace structures, and family roles. Medical Humanism, Chronic Illness, and the Body in Pain: An Ecology of Wholeness proposes an ecological model of wholeness, which envisions wholeness in the dialogic engagement of the philosophical orientations of the biomedical and traditional medical systems. Vinita Agarwal proposes an integrative premise of being whole through revising the fundamental definitions of humanism, rethinking the self/body/environment, and thereby recognizing alternative ways of organizing knowledge and human experience as this model pushes the intersections of patient-centered care and sustainable health ethics. It is in the spaces of such intersections, Agarwal argues, that we accomplish healing as an integrative relationship of the individual with the multiple cultural logics underlying chronic conditions and the competing medical worldviews of our contemporary landscape. Scholars of communication, health, and medical humanities, along with practitioners working with patients who have chronic conditions, will find this book particularly useful.