ABSTRACT

This chapter aims at providing an overview of the contribution that narration and narrative medical ethics may offer to pain medicine in the attempt to approach the experience of pain with resources and modalities that may allow forms of communication around this experience and, hence, providing better care. Setting off from initial considerations on narration and communication in the experience of illness, narrative medical ethics is analyzed; a phenomenology of the experience is charted, considering its impact on the three different dimensions of embodiment, temporality, and subjectivity; and the voices and narratives of some patients who describe their pain in gurative language are reported. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the possible meaning of metaphors and images in the experience of painas-illness. Communication plays an essential role in pain medicine, as it helps to develop more signicant care relationships. Through them, the pain patient feels listened to, looked after, and cared for in the complexity of his or her own experience.