ABSTRACT
In this chapter I refl ect on the relationship between pain and otherness. Building upon an example drawn from a corpus of videotaped interactions between a local healer and one of her patients on the island of Yap, Federated States of Micronesia, 1 I ruminate upon what it might mean to feel another’s pain. In the case in question, the healer claims to discern the quality, intensity and trajectory of her patient’s pain by means of her clinically honed tactile engagements with her body. Her tactile-based empathic discernments, she claims, evidence pain in a way that her patient’s overt expressions often do not. 2 Phenomenological insights into the asymmetrical inversions inherent in intersubjective encounters, as well as ethnographic descriptions of local orientations to suffering, will provide the analytical lenses through which to address the problem of pain and otherness posed in the context of these concrete therapeutic interactions.
