The Subjective Aspects of Pain and its Objectivity in Research

Abstract

Based on a research and clinical work conducted in a pain treatment centre in France, the author shows that the conceptual dichotomies of psyche-soma that dominate the current discussion of the phenomenon of pain cannot ultimately account for its clinical realities. Although pain manifests in the body, it cannot be reduced to organic causes. The psycho- analytic approach to the body on the other hand allows us to make sense of the reality of pain, of the objectivity and cer- tainty that mark its experience for the suffering subject and, in parallel, of the cases where no organic substrate has been identified. The body is not only organic. It is then up to the clinician, whether a physicalist or a psychoanalyst, to know how to work with this sign - one that does not call for interpretation -- regardless of its presumed aetiology.