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Medical Humanities Blog

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 06:42 AM PDT

David Biro, who is doing some excellent work on pain from a humanities perspective, has a new article out in Culture, Medicine, & Psychiatry (vol. 34, no. 4) entitled Is There Such a Thing as Psychological Pain? and Why It Matters. Here is the Abstract:

Medicine regards pain as a signal of physical injury to the body despite evidence contradicting the linkage and despite the exclusion of vast numbers of sufferers who experience psychological pain.

By broadening our concept of pain and making it more inclusive, we would not only better accommodate the basic science of pain but also would recognize what is already appreciated by the layperson—that pain from diverse sources, physical and psychological, share an underlying felt structure.

This is an excellent article, and well-worth reading, which puts a number of good challenges to dominant conceptualizations of pain in both medical and lay culture in the U.S. However, I generally remain concerned with efforts that proceed by accepting any dichotomy at all between psychological and so-called somatic pain, because there is excellent reason to believe the distinction between these two is ridiculous. Biro, I think, is well aware of the incoherence of the distinction, but I admit to anxiety about even referring to categories of pain in context of "physical" or "somatic" and "mental" or "psychological" pain. Using such categories, even to challenge them, risks conceding too much of importance, in my view. Howard Fields, who is both a clinician and one of the leading neuroscientists in the world on the subject of pain, said it best in a seminal 2007 essay: "All pain is mental."

One additional point is that there is a very real phenomenological difference to be drawn between different kinds of pain. Pain and suffering are phenomenologically distinct; it is possible to suffer without pain, and it is also possible, albeit perhaps less likely, to experience pain without suffering. So the idea Biro presents above, that psychological and physical pain are "flip sides of the same coin," as he puts it, does not commit him to the dubious position that the lived experiences of pain are invariant. Rather, the point is that the very real and significant phenomenological differences -- the many meanings of pain -- do not license a metaphysical distinction between mental and physical pain. If I am correct in attributing this position to him (which I flesh out at some length in my own work), he is exactly right.

Thoughts?

Call for Papers: Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium Ninth Annual Meeting

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 06:33 AM PDT

Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium
Ninth Annual Meeting
April 15 * 16, 2011

CALL FOR PROPOSALS Deadline: January 31, 2011

The Ninth Annual Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium meeting will be held at Temple University School of Medicine, 3500 N. Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19130, on Friday evening April 15 through Saturday afternoon, April 16, 2011.

To explore this year's theme, *The Story of Health and Illness in Urban America, *we are seeking abstracts of papers as well as proposals for panels, workshops, readings and performances that examine topics relevant to medicine and health care, preferably in the context of an urban environment.

The approach should represent the orientation of at least one of the medical humanities (e.g. history, literature, art, bioethics, philosophy, religious studies, disabilities studies, sociology, psychology, gender studies, and anthropology). Proposals should be of interest to a general audience (e.g. healthcare providers, humanities scholars, laypersons, students), and serve as a departure point for lively discussion.

All presenters must be registered conference participants. We particularly welcome submissions from students at all levels and from all relevant disciplines. The consortium focuses on collegial discussion and the sharing of ideas, so paper presentations should be brief--no more than 15 minutes--to allow for adequate discussion. Panels, workshops, readings and performances will be allotted more time, as the planning committee deems equitable, based on their content and number of participants.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:

* The challenges unique to the provision of healthcare in increasingly multi-cultural settings

* The implications of healthcare reform on access to care

* Representations of health and illness in literature, art, photography, film, music, dance or mass media

* Evolving relationships between members of the health care team

* Shifting paradigms in the provision of primary care

* "Disability" and disabilities studies in historical context

* Gender issues in medicine and health care

* Patterns of illness and disease unique to urban settings

* Evolving perceptions of aging and "the good death"

* The "new" economics of health care

We welcome interdisciplinary work as well as that of single disciplines.

Please send abstracts and proposals (one page) electronically *as an attachment in Word, or as a PDF file by January 31, 2011 *to the review committee at: cubh@temple.edu, with the subject line 'PMHC 2011 Proposal'.

Additional information regarding the meeting will be forthcoming, and registration will open in mid-January. For general inquiries about submissions or the meeting itself, or to be added to our mailing list, please contact the planning committee at cubh@temple.edu.

Regards,
Ian G. Sheffer
Chair, Planning Committee

*The Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium (PAMHC) is a diverse group of health practitioners, humanists, scholars, scientists, writers, and students who gather annually to discuss research and teaching in the medical humanities.*

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(h/t Lit&Med_ASBH)