The Phenomenology of Pain

by Saulius Geniusas

Overview

The Phenomenology of Pain is the first book-length investigation of its topic to appear in English. Groundbreaking, systematic, and illuminating, it opens a dialogue between phenomenology and such disciplines as cognitive science and cultural anthropology to argue that science alone cannot clarify the nature of pain experience without incorporating a phenomenological approach. Building on this premise, Saulius Geniusas develops a novel conception of pain grounded in phenomenological principles: pain is an aversive bodily feeling with a distinct experiential quality, which can only be given in original first-hand experience, either as a feeling-sensation or as an emotion.

Geniusas crystallizes the fundamental methodological principles that underlie phenomenological research. On the basis of those principles, he offers a phenomenological clarification of the fundamental structures of pain experience and contests the common conflation of phenomenology with introspectionism. Geniusas analyzes numerous pain dissociation syndromes, brings into focus the de-personalizing and re-personalizing nature of chronic pain experience, and demonstrates what role somatization and psychologization play in pain experience. In the process, he advances Husserlian phenomenology in a direction that is not explicitly worked out in Husserl’s own writings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821425121
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	10/25/2022
Series:	Series In Continental Thought
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Saulius Geniusas is associate professor of philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research primarily focuses on phenomenology and hermeneutics. He is the author of The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology, editor of numerous volumes, and author of close to fifty articles for various philosophy journals and anthologies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction i

Pain as Experience 1

The Phenomenological Approach 3

The Structure of the Following Investigation 7

1 Methodological Considerations 11

Fundamental Methodological Commitments: Epoché, the Phenomenological Reduction, and Eidetic Variation 12

Three Allegations: Psychologism, Introspectionism, and Solipsism 20

Revamping Eidetic Variation: From Pure to Dialogical Phenomenology 25

The Genetic Method in Phenomenology 31

2 Pain and Intentionality: A Stratified Conception of Pain Experience 41

Pain and Intentionality 42

Pain as a Feeling-Sensation 44

Pain as an Intentional Feeling 49

Apprehension-Content of Apprehension 52

Husserl's Analysis of Pain in the Logical Investigations 54

Pain as a Stratified Phenomenon 59

Sartre's Phenomenology of Pain in Being and Nothingness 62

3 The Phenomenology of Pain Dissociation Syndromes 68

Congenital Insensitivity to Pain 69

The Discovery of Pain 74

Lobotomy, Cingulotomy, and Morphine 80

Threat Hypersymbolia 83

Asymbolia for Pain 85

Pain Affect without Pain Sensation 93

4 Pain and Temporality 97

Objective Time and Subjective Temporality 98

The Different Senses of Presence: The Fundamental Levels of Time-Constitution 100

Implicit and Explicit Presence 105

The Field of Presence as the Horizon of Pain Experience 110

Memory and Pain 112

Anticipation and Pain 115

5 The Body in Pain: Leib and Körper 120

Pain's Indubitability and Bodily Localizability 121

The Phenomenological Account 126

The Lived-Body as the Subject of Pain 127

Pain as Empfindnis 130

Pain's Twofold Localizability 133

Pain and the Constitution of the Lived-Body 135

The Structure of Pain Experience 137

6 The Phenomenology of Embodied Personhood: Depersonalization and Repersonalization 142

The Phenomenology of Embodied Personhood 143

Chronic Pain as Depersonalization 148

Chronic Pain as Repersonalization 150

Implications for the Phenomenology of Medicine 154

Pain as an Expressible Phenomenon: The Basic Elements of a Phenomenology of Listening 157

7 Pain and the Life-World: Somatization and Psychologization 164

Somatization and Psychologization 166

Somatization, Psychologization, and Their Origins in Experience 168

The Phenomenology of Somatization and Psychologization 171

The Life-World as the Wherefrom, Wherein, and Whereto of Experience 172

Between Homeliness and Homelessness: Discordance in the Life-World 175

Masochism and Somatization 182

Conclusion 188

Notes 195

Bibliography 221

Index 231

Editorial Reviews

[A] radical and unitary attempt, newly thought through, at a methodical clarification of this crucial experience. The author’s expositions achieve a high scientific standard and display an admirable familiarity with the enormous literature on the topic, yet without ever losing sight of the phenomenon itself, and he makes himself intelligible to readers who are not specialists in phenomenology. This is certainly not a minor merit of the book…. Any future treatment of pain in a phenomenological or philosophical perspective will accordingly have to pay very serious attention to this book."—Agustín Serrano de Haro, Husserl Studies


“By making phenomenology dialogical, Geniusas opens up his study to findings from disciplines other than phenomenology. Philosophers, scientists, psychologists, sociologists, and really anyone interested in pain experience can both understand and critically engage with the book. Furthermore, … [Geniusas’s] explorations of the relation between listening and treatment of pain conditions, between the life-world and pain experiences, and between the lived body and the mind shed a new light on different aspects of medical treatments.”—Journal of Phenomenological Psychology


“Geniusas convincingly substantiates his claim that phenomenology is essential to reconciling various elements of the slippery concept of pain, while also elegantly teaching the basic principles of phenomenology. By focusing on Husserl rather than Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty, who are more commonly invoked in the contemporary phenomenology of health, illness, and medicine, Geniusas allows for a more analytical approach to his subject.”—Jenny Slatman, author of Our Strange Body: Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Medical Interventions


“Geniusas is the first to have developed a systematic phenomenology of pain, which has never existed before the publication of this book as far as its conceptual scale and empirical base are concerned….It is also its great merit that it outlines new prospects for a dialogue between phenomenology and the positivistic sciences of pain."—Vitaliy Lekhtsier, Horizon: Studies in Phenomenology

From the Publisher