Pain is a Subjective Experience

Source

Seeing patients with chronic pain in my clinic, doing research on work-related injuries in factories, and teaching neuroanatomy has lead me to ask (almost everyone):

What is pain?
How can we define it?
Can pain be described so that others can understand what the pain really feels like?
Can the complexity of this very personal experience be explained anatomically?

After quite a few dumb stares from people who either thought the answers were impossible or obvious, I was pleased to find there were thousands of professionals asking the same questions, and some devoting their lives to finding answers.

The International Association for the Study of Pain gives this definition

PAIN is "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, as described in terms of such damage".

[Karl Note: This is an inadequate definition. It omits the single largest source of the sensation of pain -- which is fully described in my pages. The single largest source of the sensation of pain is mental, not physical. Until doctors and others understand this fact they will continue to deal with pain by using toxic pain-killers that harm the body while deadening the senses to the condition which continues.

Pain is a subjective experience, as he says, but that statement hides the large fact that it is an experience of MEMORY, to use a crude term for it. This concept is developed on the home page for this section, HERE.]

This definition makes a lot of sense, but it implies that if we are not aware of it we cannot suffer the effects of pain. The concept of unconcious pain is currently a matter of debate among experts in this field.

INFORMATION ON PAIN

I was asked to summarize our current understanding of the anatomy of pain for the Ontario Inter-Urban Pain Conference on November 29, 1996. This paper is updated from time to time as new information becomes available. Read it for the latest details.

For those who are interested, here is some information on back pain.

The following are excellent sources of more information.

The International Association for the Study of Pain (I.A.S.P.) has a wealth of information on the internet for professionals.
The Canadian Pain Society will be of special interest to Canadians involved in the management of people in pain.
The North American Chronic Pain Association of Canada, NACPAC, has a directory of pain clinics and pain specialists online that will be useful to many people.
Information on pain in the workplace is available on this website for those with a special interest in chronic work-related musculoskeletal pain.

About the Author

Created by: ranney@healthy.uwaterloo.ca 1997/02/11
Revised by: ranney@healthy.uwaterloo.ca 2001/11/19

Biography

Who is Don Ranney? A citizen of the world, a renaissance man, born to wander, who finally found a home at U/Waterloo. The early years were at Toronto, picking up degrees in anthropology and medicine. Then, with my goal to spend a lifetime in India doing reconstructive surgery in leprosy, Great Britain was the logical choice for training. There I obtained not just a Fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons, but also a wife and family.

India was a great surprise to me in many ways. One was an unexpected appointment as Chief Surgeon, a chance to do much research and the responsibility for training 5 surgeons. The final surprise was that after 4 years in South India, my services where no longer required. What had been intended as a lifetime of humanitarian service became the forerunner of an academic career that would lead to a teaching position at the University of Waterloo, the production of many scientific publications, and the establishment of a School of Anatomy at U/W. Unfortunately the stress of missionary life in India contributed to the break-up of my marriage. But years later, a second marriage brought happiness, with it success, and a life that continues to be very exciting.

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