The Culture Of Pain

Download The Culture Of Pain full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Culture Of Pain ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

The Culture of Pain

Author : David B. Morris
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520913820
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (138 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Culture of Pain by : David B. Morris

Download or read book The Culture of Pain written by David B. Morris and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1991-09-09 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about the meanings we make out of pain. The greatest surprise I encountered in discussing this topic over the past ten years was the consistency with which I was asked a single unvarying question: Are you writing about physical pain or mental pain? The overwhelming consistency of this response convinces me that modern culture rests upon and underlying belief so strong that it grips us with the force of a founding myth. Call it the Myth of Two Pains. We live in an era when many people believe--as a basic, unexamined foundation of thought--that pain comes divided into separate types: physical and mental. These two types of pain, so the myth goes, are as different as land and sea. You feel physical pain if your arm breaks, and you feel mental pain if your heart breaks. Between these two different events we seem to imagine a gulf so wide and deep that it might as well be filled by a sea that is impossible to navigate.

African Americans and the Culture of Pain

Author : Debra Walker King
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813926902
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (269 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis African Americans and the Culture of Pain by : Debra Walker King

Download or read book African Americans and the Culture of Pain written by Debra Walker King and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling new study, Debra Walker King considers fragments of experience recorded in oral histories and newspapers as well as those produced in twentieth-century novels, films, and television that reveal how the black body in pain functions as a rhetorical device and as political strategy. King's primary hypothesis is that, in the United States, black experience of the body in pain is as much a construction of social, ethical, and economic politics as it is a physiological phenomenon. As an essential element defining black experience in America, pain plays many roles. It is used to promote racial stereotypes, increase the sale of movies and other pop culture products, and encourage advocacy for various social causes. Pain is employed as a tool of resistance against racism, but it also functions as a sign of racism's insidious ability to exert power over and maintain control of those it claims--regardless of race. With these dichotomous uses of pain in mind, King considers and questions the effects of the manipulation of an unspoken but long-standing belief that pain, suffering, and the hope for freedom and communal subsistence will merge to uplift those who are oppressed, especially during periods of social and political upheaval. This belief has become a ritualized philosophy fueling the multiple constructions of black bodies in pain, a belief that has even come to function as an identity and community stabilizer. In her attempt to interpret the constant manipulation and abuse of this philosophy, King explores the redemptive and visionary power of pain as perceived historically in black culture, the aesthetic value of black pain as presented in a variety of cultural artifacts, and the socioeconomic politics of suffering surrounding the experiences and representations of blacks in the United States. The book introduces the term Blackpain, defining it as a tool of national mythmaking and as a source of cultural and symbolic capital that normalizes individual suffering until the individual--the real person--disappears. Ultimately, the book investigates America's love-hate relationship with black bodies in pain.

Pain and Its Transformations

Author : Sarah Coakley
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674024564
Total Pages : 462 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (245 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Pain and Its Transformations by : Sarah Coakley

Download or read book Pain and Its Transformations written by Sarah Coakley and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pain is immediate and searing but remains a deep mystery for sufferers, their physicians, and researchers. As neuroscientific research shows, even the immediate sensation of pain is shaped by psychological state and interpretation. At the same time, many individuals and cultures find meaning, particularly religious meaning, even in chronic and inexplicable pain. This ambitious interdisciplinary book includes not only essays but also discussions among a wide range of specialists. Neuroscientists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, musicologists, and scholars of religion examine the ways that meditation, music, prayer, and ritual can mediate pain, offer a narrative that transcends the sufferer, and give public dignity to private agony. They discuss topics as disparate as the molecular basis of pain, the controversial status of gate control theory, the possible links between the relaxation response and meditative practices in Christianity and Buddhism, and the mediation of pain and intense emotion in music, dance, and ritual. The authors conclude by pondering the place of pain in understanding--or the human failure to understand--good and evil in history.

Hurts So Good

Author : Leigh Cowart
Publisher : Public Affairs
ISBN 13 : 9781541798038
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (98 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Hurts So Good by : Leigh Cowart

Download or read book Hurts So Good written by Leigh Cowart and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of why people all over the world love to engage in pain on purpose--from dominatrices, religious ascetics, and ultramarathoners to ballerinas, icy ocean bathers, and sideshow performers Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers. At its core, masochism is about feeling bad, then better--a phenomenon that is long overdue for a heartfelt and hilarious investigation. And Leigh Cowart would know: they are not just a researcher and science writer--they're an inveterate, high-sensation seeking masochist. And they have a few questions: Why do people engage in masochism? What are the benefits and the costs? And what does masochism have to say about the human experience? By participating in many of these activities themselves, and through conversations with psychologists, fellow scientists, and people who seek pain for pleasure, Cowart unveils how our minds and bodies find meaning and relief in pain--a quirk in our programming that drives discipline and innovation even as it threatens to swallow us whole.

Culture, Brain, and Analgesia

Author : Mario Incayawar
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199768870
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Culture, Brain, and Analgesia by : Mario Incayawar

Download or read book Culture, Brain, and Analgesia written by Mario Incayawar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-10 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this state-of-theart volume, culture is placed in the forefront of studying pain in an integrative manner. The authors put forth that a patient's culture should be studied with the purpose of unveiling its effects upon biological systems and the pain neuromatrix.

Pain

Author : Marni Jackson
Publisher : Vintage Canada
ISBN 13 : 9780679311904
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (119 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Pain by : Marni Jackson

Download or read book Pain written by Marni Jackson and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compulsively readable explorer’s journal of the hidden territory of pain, as profound and insightful as the work of Oliver Sacks and Sherwin Nuland. A bee sting on the lips was the tiny lance that set Marni Jackson off on a four-year exploration of the many ways in which we suffer. Exiled for an afternoon in the country called pain, she realized that no one had the words to describe her condition although it was as familiar as a headache. A fusion of emotion, nerve and memory, pain inspired only questions. “Why do we still distinguish between mental pain and physical pain,” she asks, “when pain is always an emotional experience? Why is pain so poorly understood, especially in a century of self-scrutiny? Hasn’t anyone noticed the embarrassing fact that science is about to clone a human being but still can’t cure the pain of a bad back?” North Americans spend $24 billion a year on pain relief while chronic pain is on the rise. If pain is the reason why most people visit the doctor, why are most doctors so bad at addressing the problem of suffering? Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign dives back into the history of pain and forward into the possibilities of pain genetics, bringing us stories of both people in pain and the pain pioneers: eccentrics and artists, wrestlers and writers, ministers and mothers, psychologists and philosophers, nurses and doctors. Marni Jackson has created a definitive, heartfelt, funny and beguiling portrait of a condition we can’t live with -- and can’t live without.

Pain

Author : J. Moscoso
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137284234
Total Pages : 479 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (372 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Pain by : J. Moscoso

Download or read book Pain written by J. Moscoso and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Halfway between history and philosophy, this book deals with the historical forms that have permitted the understanding of human suffering from the Renaissance to the present. Representation, sympathy, imitation, coherence and narrativity are but a few of the rhetorical recourses that men and women have employed in order to feel our pain.

Inside Chronic Pain

Author : Lous Heshusius
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801457548
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Inside Chronic Pain by : Lous Heshusius

Download or read book Inside Chronic Pain written by Lous Heshusius and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With Lous Heshusius as a guide, pain patients can learn much about the perils of a modern health-care odyssey. Health professionals can learn how an articulate middle-class female white patient thinks (with all that thinking entails) when her world is irreversibly altered by pain. She does not promise happy endings. Chronic pain is like that. From the rare intersection in this text between patient narrative and physician response, however, readers may construct a dialogue on pain in our time that cannot fail to bring plentiful opportunities for personal insight and professional enlightenment."—from the Foreword by David B. Morris Chronic pain, which affects 70 million people in the United States alone—more than diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined—is a major public health issue that remains poorly understood both within the health care system and by those closest to the people it afflicts. This book examines the experience of pain in ways that could significantly improve how patients and practitioners deal with pain. It is the first volume of a new collection of titles within the acclaimed Culture and Politics of Health Care Work series called How Patients Think, intended to give voice to the concerns of patients about their own medical care and the formulation of health policy. Since surviving a near-fatal car accident, Lous Heshusius has suffered from chronic pain for more than a decade, forcing her to give up her career as a professor of education. Inside Chronic Pain, based in part on the pain journal Heshusius keeps, is a stunning memoir of a life lived in constant pain as well as an insightful and often critical account of the inadequacies of the health care system—from physicians to hospitals and health insurance companies—to understand chronic pain and treat those who suffer from it. Through her own frequently frustrating experiences, she shows how health care providers often ignore, deny, or incorrectly treat chronic pain at immense cost to both the patient and the health care system. She also offers cogent suggestions on improving the quality and outcome of chronic pain care and management, using her encounters with exceptional medical professionals as models. Inside Chronic Pain deals with pain's dramatic and destructive effects on one's sense of self and identity. It chronicles the chaos that takes place, the paralyzing effect of severe pain, the changes in personality that ensue, and the corrosive effects of severe pain on the ability to attend to day-to-day tasks. It describes how one's social life falls apart and isolation takes over. It also relates moments of happiness and beauty and describes how rooting the self in the present is crucial in managing pain. A unique feature of Inside Chronic Pain is the clinical commentary by Dr. Scott M. Fishman, president of the American Pain Foundation. Fishman has long tried to improve the lives of patients like Heshusius. His medical perspective on her very human narrative will help physicians and other clinicians better understand and treat patients with chronic pain.

Book of Love and Pain, The

Author : Juan-David Nasio
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 0791485900
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (914 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Book of Love and Pain, The by : Juan-David Nasio

Download or read book Book of Love and Pain, The written by Juan-David Nasio and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses the limits in treating pain psychoanalytically, and offers a phenomenological description of psychic pain, particularly the pain of a lost loved one.

Pain and Prejudice

Author : Gabrielle Jackson
Publisher : Greystone Books Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1771647175
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (716 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Pain and Prejudice by : Gabrielle Jackson

Download or read book Pain and Prejudice written by Gabrielle Jackson and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] powerful account of the sexism cooked into medical care ... will motivate readers to advocate for themselves.”—Publishers Weekly STARRED Review A groundbreaking and feminist work of investigative reporting: Explains why women experience healthcare differently than men Shares the author’s journey of fighting for an endometriosis diagnosis In Pain and Prejudice, acclaimed investigative reporter Gabrielle Jackson takes readers behind the scenes of doctor’s offices, pharmaceutical companies, and research labs to show that—at nearly every level of healthcare—men’s health claims are treated as default, whereas women’s are often viewed as a-typical, exaggerated, and even completely fabricated. The impacts of this bias? Women are losing time, money, and their lives trying to navigate a healthcare system designed for men. Almost all medical research today is performed on men or male mice, making most treatments tailored to male bodies only. Even conditions that are overwhelmingly more common in women, such as chronic pain, are researched on mostly male bodies. Doctors and researchers who do specialize in women’s healthcare are penalized financially, as procedures performed on men pay higher. Meanwhile, women are reporting feeling ignored and dismissed at their doctor’s offices on a regular basis. Jackson interweaves these and more stunning revelations in the book with her own story of suffering from endometriosis, a condition that affects up to 20% of American women but is poorly understood and frequently misdiagnosed. She also includes an up-to-the-minute epilogue on the ways that Covid-19 are impacting women in different and sometimes more long-lasting ways than men. A rich combination of journalism and personal narrative, Pain and Prejudice reveals a dangerously flawed system and offers solutions for a safer, more equitable future.

Popular Trauma Culture

Author : Anne Rothe
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 0813552206
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (135 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Popular Trauma Culture by : Anne Rothe

Download or read book Popular Trauma Culture written by Anne Rothe and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Popular Trauma Culture, Anne Rothe argues that American Holocaust discourse has a particular plot structure—characterized by a melodramatic conflict between good and evil and embodied in the core characters of victim/survivor and perpetrator—and that it provides the paradigm for representing personal experiences of pain and suffering in the mass media. The book begins with an analysis of Holocaust clichés, including its political appropriation, the notion of vicarious victimhood, the so-called victim talk rhetoric, and the infusion of the composite survivor figure with Social Darwinism. Readers then explore the embodiment of popular trauma culture in two core mass media genres: daytime TV talk shows and misery memoirs. Rothe conveys how victimhood and suffering are cast as trauma kitsch on talk shows like Oprah and as trauma camp on modern-day freak shows like Springer. The discussion also encompasses the first scholarly analysis of misery memoirs, the popular literary genre that has been widely critiqued in journalism as pornographic depictions of extreme violence. Currently considered the largest growth sector in book publishing worldwide, many of these works are also fabricated. And since forgeries reflect the cultural entities that are most revered, the book concludes with an examination of fake misery memoirs.

Pain

Author : Keith Wailoo
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421413663
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Pain by : Keith Wailoo

Download or read book Pain written by Keith Wailoo and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pain touches sensitive nerves in American liberalism, conservatism, and political life. In this history of American political culture, Keith Wailoo examines how pain has defined the line between liberals and conservatives from just after World War II to the present. From disabling pain to end-of-life pain to fetal pain, the battle over whose pain is real and who deserves relief has created stark ideological divisions at the bedside, in politics, and in the courts. Beginning with the return of soldiers after World War II and fierce medical and political disagreements about whether pain constitutes a true disability, Wailoo explores the 1960s rise of an expansive liberal pain standard along with the emerging conviction that subjective pain was real, disabling, and compensable. These concepts were attacked during the Reagan era, when a conservative backlash led to diminished disability aid and an expanding role of courts as arbiters in the politicized struggle to define pain. New fronts in pain politics opened nationwide as advocates for death with dignity insisted that end-of-life pain warranted full relief, while the religious right mobilized around fetal pain. The book ends with the 2003 OxyContin arrest of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, a cautionary tale about deregulation and the widening gaps between the overmedicated and the undertreated.

A History of Pain

Author : Michael Berry
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231141637
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A History of Pain by : Michael Berry

Download or read book A History of Pain written by Michael Berry and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work probes the restaging, representation, and reimagining of historical violence and atrocity in contemporary Chinese fiction, film, and popular culture. It examines five historical moments including the Musha Incident (1930) and the February 28 Incident (1947).

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

Author : Elaine Scarry
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0195036018
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by : Elaine Scarry

Download or read book The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World written by Elaine Scarry and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1985-09-26 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture

Author : Maria Pia Di Bella
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136213023
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (362 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture by : Maria Pia Di Bella

Download or read book Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture written by Maria Pia Di Bella and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The presentation of bodies in pain has been a major concern in Western art since the time of the Greeks. The Christian tradition is closely entwined with such themes, from the central images of the Passion to the representations of bloody martyrdoms. The remnants of this tradition are evident in contemporary images from Abu Ghraib. In the last forty years, the body in pain has also emerged as a recurring theme in performance art. Recently, authors such as Elaine Scarry, Susan Sontag, and Giorgio Agamben have written about these themes. The scholars in this volume add to the discussion, analyzing representations of pain in art and the media. Their essays are firmly anchored on consideration of the images, not on whatever actual pain the subjects suffered. At issue is representation, before and often apart from events in the world. Part One concerns practices in which the appearance of pain is understood as expressive. Topics discussed include the strange dynamics of faked pain and real pain, contemporary performance art, international photojournalism, surrealism, and Renaissance and Baroque art. Part Two concerns representations that cannot be readily assigned to that genealogy: the Chinese form of execution known as lingchi (popularly the "death of a thousand cuts"), whippings in the Belgian Congo, American lynching photographs, Boer War concentration camp photographs, and recent American capital punishment. These examples do not comprise a single alternate genealogy, but are united by the absence of an intention to represent pain. The book concludes with a roundtable discussion, where the authors discuss the ethical implications of viewing such images.

Regarding the Pain of Others

Author : Susan Sontag
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466853573
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Regarding the Pain of Others by : Susan Sontag

Download or read book Regarding the Pain of Others written by Susan Sontag and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, clear-eyed consideration of the visual representation of violence in our culture--its ubiquity, meanings, and effects. Considered one of the greatest critics of her generation, Susan Sontag followed up her monumental On Photography with an extended study of human violence, reflecting on a question first posed by Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas: How in your opinion are we to prevent war? "For a long time some people believed that if the horror could be made vivid enough, most people would finally take in the outrageousness, the insanity of war." One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world. But are viewers inured—or incited—to violence by the depiction of cruelty? Is the viewer’s perception of reality eroded by the daily barrage of such images? What does it mean to care about the sufferings of others far away? First published more than twenty years after her now classic book On Photography, which changed how we understand the very condition of being modern, Regarding the Pain of Others challenges our thinking not only about the uses and means of images, but about how war itself is waged (and understood) in our time, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.

The Story of Pain

Author : Joanna Bourke
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199689423
Total Pages : 411 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Story of Pain by : Joanna Bourke

Download or read book The Story of Pain written by Joanna Bourke and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone knows what is feels like to be in pain. Scraped knees, toothaches, migraines, giving birth, cancer, heart attacks, and heartaches: pain permeates our entire lives. We also witness other people - loved ones - suffering, and we 'feel with' them. It is easy to assume this is the end of the story: 'pain-is-pain-is-pain', and that is all there is to say. But it is not. In fact, the way in which people respond to what they describe as 'painful' has changed considerably over time. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, people believed that pain served a specific (and positive) function - it was a message from God or Nature; it would perfect the spirit. 'Suffer in this life and you wouldn't suffer in the next one'. Submission to pain was required. Nothing could be more removed from twentieth and twenty-first century understandings, where pain is regarded as an unremitting evil to be 'fought'. Focusing on the English-speaking world, this book tells the story of pain since the eighteenth century, addressing fundamental questions about the experience and nature of suffering over the last three centuries. How have those in pain interpreted their suffering - and how have these interpretations changed over time? How have people learnt to conduct themselves when suffering? How do friends and family react? And what about medical professionals: should they immerse themselves in the suffering person or is the best response a kind of professional detachment? As Joanna Bourke shows in this fascinating investigation, people have come up with many different answers to these questions over time. And a history of pain can tell us a great deal about how we might respond to our own suffering in the present - and, just as importantly, to the suffering of those around us.