Abstract
I aim to advance the conception of what pain scientist Price (2000) terms secondary pain affect, a dimension of pain thought to comprise “emotional feelings directed toward long-term implications.” I analyse some of the many feelings involved in an experience of pain and aim to demonstrate three things. First, I aim to demonstrate how Peter MS Hacker’s philosophical distinctions between different types of feeling help to differentiate the different types of feeling that conceivably comprise pain and, in particular, secondary pain affect. Pain researchers need something like Hacker’s sensible taxonomy or way of thinking about different types of feeling so they can ask meaningful questions and research their phenomena of interest rather than phenomena that may be closely related, but actually intrinsically different. Second, I aim to demonstrate how pain catastrophising can conceivably relate to secondary pain affect and how secondary pain affect need not solely comprise negative feelings. Finally, I aim to demonstrate how pain can contain moral dimensions by drawing on our memories, long-standing hopes and fears, loves, and, more broadly, what things mean to us. I conclude with some implications for redressing pain in clinical practice by attempting to counter pain catastrophising and to decrease negative secondary pain affect.
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Notes
- 1.
The symbol § is often used to refer to the numbered notes that comprise Wittgenstein’s (2001) Philosophical Investigations.
- 2.
Hacker is unclear on whether moods can have objects or only causes. See also de Sousa (2013), who distinguishes moods from emotions precisely by their lack of an object: “Objectless emotions share many properties with other emotions, especially in their physiological and motivational aspects, but they might more properly be classified as moods rather than full-fledged emotions. Moods typically facilitate certain ranges of object-directed emotions, but they form a class apart.”
- 3.
The value of all this can exceed its instrumental benefit for the patient in terms of improving their pain; namely, via decreasing pain catastrophising and negative secondary pain affect. It can also be valued inherently by all involved for what it means. In other words, we need not be consequentialists about the value of such redress.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Paul Sendziuk and Simon van Rysewyk for encouragement and advice, the Brocher Foundation for material and moral support, Andrew McGee for philosophical discussion, and Catherine for ongoing support. Work underpinning this chapter was presented in 2012 at the International Association for the Study of Pain’s 14th World Congress on Pain.
Funding Information
Drew Carter is supported by the “Health Care in the Round” Capacity Building Grant in Population Health, awarded by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (Grant ID 565501). Work underpinning this chapter was supported by the Brocher Foundation (www.brocher.ch).
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Carter, D. (2016). Conceptualising Secondary Pain Affect: The More Personal and Elaborate Feelings. In: van Rysewyk, S. (eds) Meanings of Pain. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49022-9_15
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