ABSTRACT
As in many books on pain, the contents list of this volume and the range of disciplines of contributors bear witness to the need for a comprehensive approach to the management of chronic pain. The psychological causes and consequences of chronic pain—the latter probably being more im-portant than the former—occur in practice cheek by jowl with both physical and psychological treatments. Among the physical treatments, and especially so with the common diagnoses of musculoskeletal disorders, general and specific exercises take pride of place for moral and (dare we say it?) politically correct reasons. Which is not to say that exercise is unimportant but only that it should not become a shibboleth.
