ABSTRACT
Inflicted pain is a common yet little acknowledged and poorly understood phenomenon. That assertion was the starting point for this study, and it has been well substantiated by its findings. Clinically inflicted pain is a problematic experience for those who must endure it as well as for those whose actions generate it. Scientific attempts to define and explain it notwithstanding, pain remains a subjective human experience that resists easy objectification and reduction into a readily measurable set of attributes. With that challenge in mind, the aims of the present study were to engage in phenomenological inquiry into the nature of the lived experience of inflicted pain, to make explicit the particular contextualized experiences of those who inflict pain and those who endure it, and to transform that which is individual and private into a written account with the power to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon of inflicted pain.
