ABSTRACT
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defined pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual and potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage or both” (IASP, 1986). The definition emphasized the subjective and psychological nature of pain, and appropriately avoided making the authenticity of pain contingent on an externally verifiable stimulus. Pain was understood to motivate those afflicted to seek relief from it.
