Chronic pain as a posture towards the world

Abstract

This article discusses what chronic pain is "about", what the intentional object is of pain, and what is the intentional relation like? My approach is based on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, with an aim is to understand a two-way relationship: how the sufferers bestow meaning on chronic pain, and how pain, on the other hand, signifies peoples' life. In contrast to biomedical and cognitive-behavioral theories, chronic pain is not only meaningful, but as an intentional emotion as well; it does not simply "happen" in the nervous system. I analyzed meanings assigned to pain through the narratives of three patients with chronic pain. Pain is described as creating a discontinuity in the patient's Lebenswelt at the narrative level. When attempting to find meaning to their pain, patients point both to everyday life and biomedical referents. The structure of bestowing meaning is, metaphorically, like a necklace with everyday world and biomedical interpretations strung like beads, one after the other. The intentional object of pain, on the contrary, is constituted of the patients' world in its wholeness. My results don't confirm Drew Leder's idea of disrupted intentionality, but underline directness as the basic relation of human experience also in case of pain and disease. Pain in itself is an e-movere, an intense passionate movement, an intentional relation with and a bodily posture taken towards the world.