ABSTRACT
Pain, illness, and suffering are complex biopsychosocial phenomena. The way they are manifest in individuals is the result of an interplay between age, social, cultural, ethnic, psychological, physiological, and even genetic dispositions. These vary qualitatively for each person and are almost never fully quantiable. Therefore, while we can measure pain thresholds, we cannot measure pain, per se, or predict the limits of pain tolerance. Likewise, we can empathize with those who are in pain, but we can never wholly penetrate their experience. Pain is as Leriche said, “the resultant of a conict between a stimulus and the whole individual” (1). It is becoming evermore clear that each person’s pain-as an experience of their lived body and event of their consciousness-is unique (2,3). Therefore, regardless of its nature or magnitude, each person’s pain is both real and personal in its experience. To speak of “imaginary” pain is to run the risk of moral irresponsibility, even though we readily acknowledge that there can be overreactors and malingerers.
