ABSTRACT
It is now well established that psychological and psychiatric factors are of considerable importance in the evaluation of pain. The subject of pain used to be considered the province of the physiologist, physician and surgeon. In a prominent medical textbook written in 1968, pain was simply defined as ‘A sensory experience evoked by stimuli that injure’.1
This explanation of tissue damage that posits the generation of nervous impulses along recognized pain pathways is appropriate for most, although not all, pains arising from an acute injury. But if pain persists beyond the normal time of healing, which is normally less than 3 months but can be as long as 6 months, the correspondence between extent of injury and pain sensation is much less precise.
