ABSTRACT
Due to the fact that the phenomenon of pain dees clear classication in either of the Cartesian categories of res cogitans or res extensa, within medicine we have come to recognize pain as both a physiological event of the nervous system as well as a psychological phenomenon of consciousness (1,2). As such, while the objective properties of the sensation of pain may be quantiable, the qualitative dimensions of the experience of pain are individually variable and, in many ways, are unique to the person who suffers-reective of the ongoing interaction of hereditary, behavioral, and environmental interactions throughout the life span that are both predispositional to and affected by pain (and its broadly biopsychosocial manifestations). The event of pain is inextricable from the event of (self-) consciousness (2,3). As a conscious, self-referential sensory process, it manifests subjectivity and transparency (only) to self.
