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The Culture of Pain
 
 
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The Culture of Pain [Paperback]

David B. Morris (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
Price: CDN$ 33.75 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
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From Kirkus Reviews

Drawing on history, art, literature, psychology, and medicine, Morris (Alexander Pope: The Genius of Sense, 1984) offers an extended commentary, profusely documented and illustrated, on the nature, function, and various meanings of pain in Western culture. Considering pain as both a ``biological fact'' and ``an experience in search of an interpretation,'' Morris interprets the psychic, spiritual, and physical experiences of pain and the symbolic, metaphoric, and symptomatic expressions of it from Plato to Joyce Carol Oates, Freud to Norman Cousins, Job to de Sade. The invention of ether in 1846 altered the meaning of pain but did not eradicate it, and to medical science most pain remains a mystery: chronic pain, hysteria, numbness (which is more dangerous than pain), redemptive or religious pain, visionary or revolutionary pain, edifying pain, tragic pain (``we no longer recognize'' it), and comic pain (the best discussion in the book, though its relation to pain is tenuous). Morris surveys the creative uses of pain by artists, the instructive uses of pain by satirists, the erotic uses of pain by sadomasochists, the political uses of pain as torture, and the aesthetic uses of pain in the sentimental, melancholy, and sublime styles of Romantic writers who associated beauty with loss, suffering, and death. He concludes with a lyrical celebration of ``The Future of Pain'': ``We must begin to proliferate its meanings.'' Such a statement reflects the major problems of the book: the exhortative tone, the use of the implicative ``we'' in place of sound argument, and the very proliferation of meanings so that pain becomes an abstraction, resembling pleasure, detached from the causes--anguish, deprivation, discomfort--however spiritual or mental in origin, that healthy people instinctively avoid and that most philosophers, long before Bentham, believed to be a threat to organized society and civilization. Without ideology, it is still an interesting but poorly organized book and no substitute for Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain (1986). (Thirty b&w illustrations.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Book Description

Up-to-date medical knowledge is combined with the definition of pain in Western literature and culture. "The experience of pain as shaped by individual minds and specific cultures, from tortured victims of the Inquisition to the Nazi death camps, the phantom limb pain of amputees and the suffering of victims of arthritis, disability, cancer and AIDS."--Publishers Weekly. Illustrated.
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THIS IS A book about the meanings we make out of pain. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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5.0 out of 5 stars A splendidly rich set of reflections on living with pai, Jun 17 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: The Culture of Pain (Paperback)
This is an extraordinary book, serious and varied and passionate; I recommend it to anyone who has encountered pain, and would be happy if all doctors had to read it in medical school. It argues that modern society no longer has any effective ways of coping with suffering - especially chronic pain -, of finding meaning in it, and explores some of the ways people in the past learned to live with - and learn from - pain, pain understood not as an enemy attack on human lives which ought to be pain-free, but as a part of life which must be lived with and which can be meaningful in itself, not just a deprivation of meaning.
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Amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A splendidly rich set of reflections on living with pai, Jun 17 1998
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Culture of Pain (Paperback)
This is an extraordinary book, serious and varied and passionate; I recommend it to anyone who has encountered pain, and would be happy if all doctors had to read it in medical school. It argues that modern society no longer has any effective ways of coping with suffering - especially chronic pain -, of finding meaning in it, and explores some of the ways people in the past learned to live with - and learn from - pain, pain understood not as an enemy attack on human lives which ought to be pain-free, but as a part of life which must be lived with and which can be meaningful in itself, not just a deprivation of meaning.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars pain, Dec 19 2008
By Kevin Collins "http://liquidcycles.com" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Culture of Pain (Paperback)
how does one rate a book about pain?

it was painful to read! it's even painful to write this review.. i've been putting it off for weeks. pain can be fluid and contagious like this

the book is very thorough, and covers pain from a large variety of viewpoints: historical, medical, biological, literary, social, sexual, aesthetic, etc

i found it fascinating - full of interesting information, stories and cultural references. the connection between humor and pain was especially interesting (and enlightening), and i will not forget the description of pre-anesthetic surgery as long as i live

it is heavy on literary references. david morris is clearly excited by literature, but some are extraneous or repetitive. it's a minor criticism

having spelunked into the abyss and back - it was a powerful reading experience, but not one i'm in a hurry to repeat

i would bet the author experienced sheer agony researching and writing this book :)
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