Phenomenology
Are pain and suffering just body vs mind?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
After dropping mind/body dualism, pain cannot stay ‘only physical’ and suffering ‘only psychological’; both are whole-person experiences shaped by attitude and culture.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Pain and suffering are whole-person experiences.
Once mind/body dualism is dropped, pain cannot stay 'only physical' and suffering 'only psychological'; chronic pain in particular is better understood through the lived person in pain than a Cartesian tissue-damage model.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
The method is used to argue that pain and suffering are whole-person experiences that a Cartesian, part-by-part medical model cannot grasp. Both papers set Husserlian intentionality or the collapse of mind/body dualism against the biomedical picture of pain as nociception plus a psychological component, and conclude that care should work with the lived experience of the person in pain.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Inspect source passages
Are pain and suffering just body vs mind?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Old split to drop?
Simply put, it is no longer acceptable to consider pain only in physical and suffering only in psychological terms. The Cartesian distinction between res c
Cartesian engine?
res cogitans and res extensa is the driving force behind the whole structure of thinking in and the organization of medical sciences and psychology. Once w
Key findings
Suffering is an unpleasant or anguishing experience that can hit psychophysical and existential levels. Pain is also unpleasant and likewise affects the whole person. Attitude, choice, and social patterns matter, so the humanities belong in the account. Dualism’s collapse implies a paradigm shift in medicine.
Methodology
The authors start from the mind/body problem and the humanistic turn (Cassell, hospice, phenomenology). They criticise medicine’s Cartesian organisation, then propose a formal, non-essential, non-naturalistic conceptualisation of suffering and pain.
Limitations
This is conceptual, not a new pain trial. It does not operationalise a clinical scale. Cassell is a source, not re-measured.
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Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.