pain
what is pain?
dictionary definition: An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder.
another more elaborate one: 1 a : a state of physical, emotional, or mental lack of well-being or physical, emotional, or mental uneasiness that ranges from mild discomfort or dull distress to acute often unbearable agony, may be generalized or localized, and is the consequence of being injured or hurt physically or mentally or of some derangement of or lack of equilibrium in the physical or mental functions (as through disease), and that usually produces a reaction of wanting to avoid, escape, or destroy the causative factor and its effects b : a basic bodily sensation that is induced by a noxious stimulus, is received by naked nerve endings, is characterized by physical discomfort (as pricking, throbbing, or aching), and typically leads to evasive action
by implication it is obvious that this refers to the pain in the recipient
but
what of the pain felt vicariously that often rivals or exceeds the original pain in intensity and tribulation?...the sensitive and ultra-sensitive are afflicted with sufferings associated with this vicarious absorption of pain...in a sense this maybe an emotional disorder of the first definition or the mental hurt of the second definition...
a manifestation of this transference of pain is to be found in some creative artists, writers and social workers...they instinctively and naturally feel the pain of others and depict it on their canvas or writing...perhaps not always...
back to some questions
why is that some people feel other folks pain as if it is their own ...or worse...and...why do some people are so desensitized that they do not feel any pain?
...the pain of hunger...for instance...is a pain one cannot forget easily...if one has suffered the pangs of hunger for any extended period of time...yet...most of us...decent middle class folks i feel do not really share this pain with the real sufferers...i can volunteer a personal answer...my own memory of real forceful hunger is so distant as to be academic... when i see a bloated-belly hungry child a la Oxfam my reaction is more of disgust than a sharing of the pangs of hunger in that child...
similarly...the pain of love lost is such a distant repressed memory for me that when a dear one suffers through lost love I feel I am reduced to offering blank platitudes...
this is so dichotomous that sometimes i feel like kicking myself...
yes, i do feel the pain of that karachi doctor( dr. shazia khalid)...as if she was blood...strange, dichotomous and yet so human!...let's get back to impersonal...
what causes this transference of pain? why is this transference selective? why does the recipient sometimes suffers more?
...there is one aspect of this that i approve of...however it is transferred...this transference keeps the memory of the pain alive...and oddly...it results in alleviation of that pain sometimes...
dictionary definition: An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder.
another more elaborate one: 1 a : a state of physical, emotional, or mental lack of well-being or physical, emotional, or mental uneasiness that ranges from mild discomfort or dull distress to acute often unbearable agony, may be generalized or localized, and is the consequence of being injured or hurt physically or mentally or of some derangement of or lack of equilibrium in the physical or mental functions (as through disease), and that usually produces a reaction of wanting to avoid, escape, or destroy the causative factor and its effects b : a basic bodily sensation that is induced by a noxious stimulus, is received by naked nerve endings, is characterized by physical discomfort (as pricking, throbbing, or aching), and typically leads to evasive action
by implication it is obvious that this refers to the pain in the recipient
but
what of the pain felt vicariously that often rivals or exceeds the original pain in intensity and tribulation?...the sensitive and ultra-sensitive are afflicted with sufferings associated with this vicarious absorption of pain...in a sense this maybe an emotional disorder of the first definition or the mental hurt of the second definition...
a manifestation of this transference of pain is to be found in some creative artists, writers and social workers...they instinctively and naturally feel the pain of others and depict it on their canvas or writing...perhaps not always...
back to some questions
why is that some people feel other folks pain as if it is their own ...or worse...and...why do some people are so desensitized that they do not feel any pain?
...the pain of hunger...for instance...is a pain one cannot forget easily...if one has suffered the pangs of hunger for any extended period of time...yet...most of us...decent middle class folks i feel do not really share this pain with the real sufferers...i can volunteer a personal answer...my own memory of real forceful hunger is so distant as to be academic... when i see a bloated-belly hungry child a la Oxfam my reaction is more of disgust than a sharing of the pangs of hunger in that child...
similarly...the pain of love lost is such a distant repressed memory for me that when a dear one suffers through lost love I feel I am reduced to offering blank platitudes...
this is so dichotomous that sometimes i feel like kicking myself...
yes, i do feel the pain of that karachi doctor( dr. shazia khalid)...as if she was blood...strange, dichotomous and yet so human!...let's get back to impersonal...
what causes this transference of pain? why is this transference selective? why does the recipient sometimes suffers more?
...there is one aspect of this that i approve of...however it is transferred...this transference keeps the memory of the pain alive...and oddly...it results in alleviation of that pain sometimes...
posted by temporal at 9/28/2005
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