essay on pain and suffering

Download. We might not be able to see, or feel it at first, but it slowly impacts us and how we live our daily lives. The provided definitions will be useful to the identification of pain and suffering, to the discussion of how to relieve them, and to a better understanding of how they are expressed and experienced. Grahek N. Feeling Pain and Being in Pain. Get inspiration for your writing task, explore essay structures, Svenaeus F. The Phenomenology of Suffering in Medicine and Bioethics. Article In this manner, the goals of medicine ought to be reformulated. Basic Books: US; 1991. Where does suffering come from? Instead of running away from these obstacles, allow yourself to learn how to strive to get out of the painful situation. Crculo de Lectores: Barcelona; 2016. For Svenaeus, suffering alienates us from our own body, from our engagements in the world with others, and from our life values [24]. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13010-017-0049-5, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13010-017-0049-5. Much more malleable and uncertain are our stories about the future: The future is unknown territory that slowly becomes present and then past, surprising us again and again. Madrid: Taurus; 2011. p. 1345. Nancy conceptualizes his experience not merely by telling his story, but by understanding it theoretically through the use of the concept of the intrus (intruder) and the idea of intrusion to understand the experience of receiving a new organ, its rejection by his immune system, of being treated medically (measured, tested, monitored), and finally the cancer and the subsequent treatments. Your US state privacy rights, In the context of such medicine, suffering and pain were dissociated from the context of a theodicy [13] and to be treated scientifically. Giordano J. Maldynia: Chronic Pain as Illness, and the Need for Complementarity in Pain Care. New York: Pantheon Books; 1976. click here. Beauchamp TL, Childress JF. So this definition is unable to properly identify what is common to all experiences of suffering. 81 Suffering Essay Topic Ideas & Examples - IvyPanda Both pain and suffering are considered to have physical and psychological dimensions, and in this sense, it is true that Cassell avoids the classical association between pain and body, suffering and mind.Footnote 5 His definition of pain is in line with the definition offered at the beginning of this article: Pain is a phenomenon which includes both nociception the mechanism involved in receiving painful stimuli and the subsequent attachment of meaning to such sensation. Pain is often described as what we feel when we get hurt, physically or emotionally. Pain And Suffering Argumentative Essays Samples For Students Conceptualizing suffering as an experience emphasizes the fact that it is something a person experiences (both what Dilthey calls a lived experience (Erlebnis), an immediate, unreflected experience and an ordinary, articulated experience (Lebenserfahrung) [46, 47]. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. Cambridge, Massachussetts, London: Harvard University Press; 1995. 2011;35(2):11333. 2015;3(12):1421. Johnson M. Mind Incarnate: from Dewey to Damasio. Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine Part of According to Rey. No one is really immune to pain. Argumentative Essay On Suffering And Pain - 978 Words | Cram At the same time, not all aspects of suffering can be objectified. However, the narrative explanations of the continuity of the self and life can be criticized, too. 2010;13:131159. The Location of Pain in Childbirth: Natural Childbirth and the Transformation of Obstetrics. More questionable is the damage inflicted in order to prevent a more or less probable future disease, and an entirely different discussion concerns the damage inflicted in order to improve the knowledge of the discipline. 1998; Descartes R. Discours de la mthode [The Discourse on the Method]. Grahek [52] distinguishes between pain asymbolia and other circumstances in which the painful stimulus seems to be felt without the subsequent unpleasant emotion, like for example lobotomized, cingulotomized and morphinized patients. Even when suffering is not caused by biological or observable circumstances (like the pain associated with tissue damage), it is an embodied experience which we cannot but feel in the rhythm of our hearts, the clenching of our stomachs, the sweat on our hands, our (in)ability to sleep, or the position of our shoulders, just to provide a few examples. However, for Descartes, it was clear that our states of mind (esprits in the original French) depend on the disposition of the organs of our body [12]. The first level of suffering is part of our human condition, and we can't. Los sentidos del sufrimiento [The Senses of Suffering]. Therefore, the controversy arising is the right to die at one's own choice. 2023 BioMed Central Ltd unless otherwise stated. These developments gave rise to the modern problematic approach to dealing with pain and suffering. The phenomenological conceptualization of suffering and pain offers an attractive alternative to dualistic theories and the mechanical understanding of the body.Footnote 6 Contrary to the scientific approach, in which the body is seen from a third-person perspective, phenomenological proposals assume the perspective of the experience lived by a subject [32, 33]. Phenomenology has contributed to embodying the mind and minding the body by emphasizing the crucial role of the body in our experience, as can be seen in the explanation of the placebo effect, according to which the body is able to respond meaningfully to a demanding situation (even if we are not conscious of it). For instance, we cannot manage social problems that cause social suffering, like poverty, with medical resources. Indeed, such a definition is a non-existent ideal which incorporates the idea that persons are transparent for themselves (they know themselves completely), coherent, able to design a kind of unique personal past and future story, and well balanced. Sample Pain Essay | WOWESSAYS Albrecht Wellmer [30] mentions two crucial contributions that contradict Cassells definition. A good phenomenological approach is not merely a subjective narrative of a personal experience, but is able to capture crucial elements of such an experience which are useful as meaningful resources for other persons trying to understand similar experiences. Herein Damasio sees Descartes mistake: in the idea that the mind can exist or even operate independently of the body [1]. Although pain and suffering are unpleasant, they are not per se either destructive or constructive forces which tear down or build up the self. Thus, the narrative explanation of the wholeness of the person does not support Cassells definition of person. To get a custom and plagiarism-free essay and figure out a title and outline for your paper. Infact, pain helps us to get through life. Classical evidence-based medicine understands pain from a naturalistic point of view, and persons as beings are divided into two different entities: the body and the mind. He, among them, is given the most important job of receiving all the memories of the world. Spiegelman demonstrates that all suffering does is cause pain, it does not create noble people. What is pain and suffering? It meant that most of their property was destroyed and only a wall that had the image of the cat survived. The alienation of the world can also be categorized as unhomelike in a way similar to Arendts concept: Unhomelike being in the world means that we exist in an uncomfortable way, in a strange, uneasy environment where we cannot rest or find our place [42]. send you account related emails. Medical Nemesis. Abstracting the pathological fact from the body and the body from the person facilitated a number of impressive results, treatments and medical progress. Simply put, it is no longer acceptable to consider pain only in physical and suffering only in psychological terms. This ties back to the previous statement of medicine having its limits: There are types and dimensions of suffering whose management does not concern medicine (or at least, not exclusively). Not really being here would make me suffer [43]. Pain and suffering are also noted when the house where they live catches fire. Topics: Behavior. In other words, it not only treats pain inadequately (understanding and treating it only in relation to its measurable, observable and generalizable signs, in the context of a disease) but it also produces suffering, which persists undiagnosed and unrelieved, as is the case in the terminal phase of a chronic disease, which is progressively lengthened due to the availability of new treatments. Many examples can be noted through Romeo and Juliet's relationship and experiences in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. With notions like embodiment and living body the English translation of the German term Leib, in opposition to the Krper or physical body [11] phenomenologists have contributed to embodying the mind by emphasizing the crucial role of the body in human experience and by assuming that we experience the world through our living bodies [32]. Inasmuch as they are able to incorporate the first-person perspective, the lived experience, they possess a high potential for studying suffering and pain from a perspective which is not purely scientific or medical in nature. Medicine became a science at the end of the eighteenth century with the emergence of clinical, evidence-based medicine. Cassell defines pain not only as a sensation, but also as an experience embedded in beliefs about causes and diseases and their consequences, and suffering as the state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of person. A scientific paradigm is defined as a constellation of facts and theories (assuming that the theories are not exactly developed in order to explain previously given facts, but that facts emerge together with the theories explaining them). Daedalus. However, some phenomenological definitions of suffering (for example, "suffering as an alienation of the self", "suffering as unhomelike being in the world") may suggest essential and universal characteristics of suffering, thus excluding from it other unpleasant or anguishing experiences that the affected themselves indeed consider suffering. Philos Psychiatry Psychol. 1220 Words. The Hippocratic moral maxim of primum non nocere has frequently been interpreted in this sense: To inflict pain (iatrogenic pain) can be considered non nocere, that is, not harmful, if it is done for the ultimate goal of curing the patient. I use the term disease in the sense of the medically diagnosed pathology, leaving the term illness for the subjective experience of the disease by the ill person [27]. 2015;3(12):412. In order to reframe the mind/body problem, we need to think in terms of embodying the mind and minding the body.Footnote 2. In short, it is not true that the body does not matter to Descartes, who was a rationalist but not an idealist, in the sense that he was not willing to risk his corporeal existence in order to defend his ideas (he preferred to accept rules and laws of his time that were incompatible with his own ideas in order to avoid imprisonment and other legal consequences, even though he supported the autonomy of reason). It might be easy to answer these questions, but if you think about it, it is hard to explain "suffering" without the word "pain," and vise versa. Descartes himself is engaged in the enterprise of knowing the world in order to turn humans into matres et possesseurs de la nature (masters and possessors of nature) [12], proposing a scientific method and using it to improve living conditions. Suffering also changes people and it is not always for the better. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press; 1998. Theory Psychol. writing task easier. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. By clicking Send, you agree to our Defining suffering as a threat against the intactness of a person entails an assumption of what an intact person is. Even if the problem of consciousness how consciousness arises from matter or, more cautiously, how it is related to matter [9] is far from a definitive solution, there is a generalized agreement in literature (particularly in sociology and the philosophy of medicine) regarding the need to question the traditional Cartesian distinction between the body and mind [1,2,3]. The attitude of trying to view the ills in the abstract in order to know the scientific truth of the pathological fact, and the empirical methodology, combined with the idea that healing is the ultimate goal of medicine, were precisely the focus of the criticism leveled against medicine, the new demands of patient and professional organizations, as well as the discipline of bioethics beginning in the 1960s. Mente y cerebro. Cassells normative definition of person includes a number of dimensions like their perceived future, personality and character, body, past experiences and memories, cultural background, behavior, relations with others, a political dimension and a secret life [3]. The Importance Of Suffering - 1040 Words | Cram The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. UK: Polity Press; 2005. Yes, it does have meaning. Svenaeus [24] recognizes this difficulty inherent to Cassells proposal, the problem of thinking of the person as a kind of whole (or how it is possible to formulate a kind of integrity among all these dimensions), and offers an alternative: understanding life as a narrative and stressing the experiential dimension, the holding together of states of consciousness making up the self. Freudian psychoanalysis challenges the idea of an autonomous subject: Human beings do not always know exactly and completely what they want, what they do or why they do it, since they are influenced by psychological, social and power-relations forces. Moreover, such inner stories are always pluralistic: They interpret our past experiences in the light of present interests or experiences. Just like pain, suffering can also be inevitable for a number of people, especially those with a chemical imbalance in their brains. Found a great essay sample but want a unique one? He puts together different definitions of suffering provided by other authors in an attempt to encapsulate the whole of suffering. However, uniting these different approaches to suffering does not guarantee a good definition of suffering, Instead, it guarantees a good overview of the studies or conceptualizations of suffering. Cassell proposes that medicine should be more sensitive to the person and the meanings he or she attributes to his or her pain/illness, and that it should specifically treat suffering, thus involving particular subjective resources like feelings, intuition, and even the input of their senses in order to deal with the suffering of patients. The other conditions may include cases of indifference to the painful stimuli, but in order to be indifferent to pain, one needs to be able to feel it. So pain does not necessarily entail suffering, and suffering (a threat against the intactness of a person) can be caused by other experiences. Everyone has a different perception of pain and what it means to one's state of health. Essay on Pain Sort By: Page 1 of 50 - About 500 essays Pain : Pain And Pain in the face of pain .Though pain remains a universal experience, physicians face many challenges in treating pain. Whenever we hear the word suffering, a kind of negative feeling arises in our mind. These feelings shouldnt be ignored. Order custom paper and save your time for priority classes! The naturalistic approach of classical evidence-based medicine incorporates a particular view of human beings based on the Cartesian mind/body dichotomy, in which the body is understood as a mechanism that works according to universalizeable, manipulable processes. Madrid: Akal; 2009. Even if this perspective has led to great success in the relief of pain, certain problems have remained partially or entirely unresolved and/or unexplained, for instance the placebo effect, chronic pain and non-somatic pain. The Cartesian perspective drove the development of clinical medicine as an empirical science based on evidence. Pain and Suffering View Writing Issues Filter Results Romeo and Juliet Emotional pain and suffering is unavoidable, especially when connected to love. American Sociological Review. To put it in other words, the alienation of the self described by Nancy can capture one essential dimension of one kind of suffering, but it does not define all kinds of suffering. The Paradox of Modern Suffering. They wished to find a sign, the meaning of which would be as certain as that provided by the lesion found at dissection. Google Scholar. However, it is important to include in our definition the possibility that suffering can affect us at an existential dimension, meaning that it can have an impact on crucial matters regarding ones personal life, matters that affect our existence in the world, like the desire to continue living, the decision of whether or not to have children, or even how to live life choices that have to be seen in the context of our attachment to the world. This intact person would have developed a kind of equilibrium, or coherence and integrity, among all these dimensions. Definitions are not inconsequential, since the way in which we define concepts has epistemological, ontological and practical dimensions. The Quran states that "True, there is Pain and suffering at the terminal end of an illness, but we believe there is reward from God for those who patiently persevere in suffering" (39:10 and 31:17, par. Just like our obstacles in real life; You just have to keep going, and remind yourself that theres an end to every problem, you just have to look for it, or solve it. This criticism came to be known as the humanistic turn and it emerged from different fronts: the hospice movement [18], womens rights movements which advocated a more active role of women in childbirth [19], Christian humanistic criticism against medicalization [20], bioethics and its criticism of medical paternalism [21], postmodern criticism of medicine [22], the medical humanism exemplified by Cassells work [3], and phenomenological as well as narrative approaches to the practices of medicine and the experiences of the patients, not to mention the contributions of the history, philosophy and sociology of medicine, which placed an emphasis on its fallibility and limitations, its historical and sociological dimensions, and, last but not least, its ontological assumptions. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you. 1974;2(1):8598. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study. Samplius is for students who want to get an idea for their own paper. What is pain and suffering? Suffering can be experienced in different ways, not necessarily as a threat against ones integrity, as I will show later.
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