III.

Psychology of Pain

When messages from pain-generating nerve endings finally reach higher centers in the brain, they are processed much like other forms of perception—that is, the sensory information is integrated with memories, expectations, emotions, and thoughts in order to form a complete perceptual experience. While it seems convenient to think of pain as a simple message that sounds an alarm in the brain, contemporary understanding stresses that pain is much more complicated. The emotional aspects of an injury may be more significant than the extent of the physical damage in determining the perceived intensity of pain.

Each person perceives pain a little differently, and as a result, each person also responds to painful stimulation differently. Pain research specialists have observed a wide variety of subtle variations in pain response. For instance, children are quicker to cry after a relatively minor injury than are adults. Learned cultural behaviors often dominate the way individuals express pain. Older children and young adults are often taught that crying, sometimes viewed as a sign of weakness, is inappropriate behavior, while younger children have no such understanding. Some people are more willing to express pain than others, but this does not mean they hurt more.

Broad cultural differences in pain responsiveness have also been documented. In some aboriginal societies, extreme tissue injury is often incurred willingly by people undergoing important rituals, and typically, pain is not expressed. Aboriginal men in Australia, for instance, traditionally celebrated passage into manhood with a ritual that involved circumcision, extensive scarring of the chest, and extraction of the two upper front teeth. The initiate was expected to show no reaction to the injury. It may be that the person undergoing the rite managed to suppress expressions of suffering, but it may also be that the individual was able to perceive less pain by making use of natural pain control mechanisms.