ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at physical pain for few reasons. The first was highlighted by Freud in the “Project for a scientific psychology.” People with third-degree burns have suffered severe damage to their skin; if more than a seventh of the skin’s surface has been destroyed, there is a high risk of death; if this persists for three weeks to a month, the failure of the immunological system may lead to septicaemia. Burns offer the equivalent to an experimental situation in which certain functions of the skin are suspended or damaged, so that it is possible to observe the corresponding repercussions on certain psychical functions. This prohibition was difficult to obey, since the dramatic tensions that affected the patients and threatened to endanger the success of their treatment always arose in the course of the physical care, because of an inappropriate psychological relation between the doctor or nurse and the patient.
