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?
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The Culture of Pain
University of California Press (1993), 356 pgs.
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.
A recent book by a pain specialist. writes about Morris: “His lectures began to be included in academic medical courses and in pain society meetings, he ranked among the giants of the pain field as an invited lecturer. His book became required reading for anyone going into the pain field.”[1])
[1] Jane C. Ballantyne, John Loeser: The Man Who Reimagined Pain (Cham, Switzerland: Springer-Nature, 2023), 126.
“This illuminating work boldly ranges beyond conventional boundaries to provide a deeper understanding of our common afflictions, our humanity, and our ennobling struggle for transcendence.”
– 1992 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award, Judges Martha Nussbaum, Joyce Carol Oates, Ronald Steel
“Eloquent and fascinating … Morris does not dispel the mystery of pain. Instead he explores its full scope. HIs message for doctors is that they should stop denying the mystery, stop insisting that pain is a mere biological puzzle. … His message for patients in pain is that the mind has many roles to play.”
– Melvin Konner, New York Times Book Review
“Not only a rich tapestry of understanding, but also an elegantly written work, which is, perhaps paradoxically, a pleasure to read. … Any physician who treats people in pain ought to read this book, and I doubt that any will be able to approach pain in the same way afterward.”
– Howard Brody, M.D., Journal of the American Medical Association