Pain is the somatic symptom par excellence, legitimizing more than any other the sick role and illness behavior. The functions and implications of pain are clearest in situations of acute illness or injury or in chronic, organically based conditions in which actual or threatened tissue damage is signaled by its report. Much greater complexity is found in a variety of clinical presentations (conversion hysteria, hypochondriasis, chronic pain syndromes, Briquet’s syndrome, Munchausen’s syndrome) in which pain may form part or all of the clinical picture. In such conditions the relationship of the patient’s report of pain to other phenomena (tissue damage, physiopathology, perceptual and cognitive styles, personality type, individual and family psychodynamics, anxiety, depression, behavioral patterns, social and economic factors, cultural influences) is important in elucidating pathogenetic mechanisms of which several may be operating in any one case. Awareness of the existence and interaction of these mechanisms facilitates the development and integration of treatment approaches.

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© 1984 S. Karger AG, Basel
1984
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