The Crux of Chronic Pain

In this thesis I discuss a form of chronic pain that has no obvious physical cause. Chronic pain is diagnosed on basis of a group of physical and psychological symptoms. Although the pain has no apparent physical cause, when a patient claims he or she is in pain, it is believed that the patient is indeed in pain. Chronic pain is not imagined; it is real pain. In this thesis I argue that the philosophical method of phenomenology can play an important role in understanding chronic pain. Since chronic pain is neither a strictly psychological nor a strictly physical disorder, it doesn’t fit the biomedical model, which is usually used as a basis for medical practice. Instead of the biomedical model, in cases of chronic pain the biopsychosocial model is used. The biopsychosocial model, in contrast to the biomedical model, considers biological, psychological and environmental factors relevant to medical treatments. However, the biopsychosocial model misses a conceptual basis of how these factors come together. Phenomenology can fill in this gap. Phenomenology is a philosophical method that investigates the person as a body-subject; it does not separate body and mind. Phenomenology explores the structures of the conscious experience. It is therefore very suitable to investigate chronic pain; a disorder that we can only find in the experience of a person. In this thesis I discuss the medical perspective on chronic pain, the phenomenology of the ill body and the phenomenology of the body in pain. In the final chapter I connect the phenomenology of chronic pain with the phenomenological notion of repression.