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Psychophysical Differentiation of Pain by Threshold Methods

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Integrative Biological Psychiatry

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Abstract

Pain represents an unpleasant, distressing, and agonizing sensation. It cannot be described in terms of perception only, but refers to a complex experience with concomitant psychophysical components. Acute pain serves warning and protection functions, whereas chronic pain is also characterized by emotional reactions such as anxiety and depression. generalization, potentiation, and perpetuation. Thus, pain is always a complex phenomenon with at least three levels of reactions: the level of subjective and psychological experience, the level of behavioral responses, and the level of neurophysiological and biochemical findings. Because in clinical pain syndromes these levels are involved in different ways and with different interrelationships, it is important that pain measurement should refer to at least some components of these levels (Fig. 1; Birbaumer 1984; Handwerker 1984). For example, pain questionnaires refer solely to the subjective pain experience.

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Authors
  1. F. Strian
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Psychiatrie, Kraepelinstraße 10, W-8000, München 40, Germany

    Hinderk M. Emrich

  2. Psychiatrische Klinik der Technischen Universität, Ismaninger Straße 22, W-8000, München 80, Germany

    Michael Wiegand

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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Strian, F. (1992). Psychophysical Differentiation of Pain by Threshold Methods. In: Emrich, H.M., Wiegand, M. (eds) Integrative Biological Psychiatry. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77168-2_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77168-2_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-77170-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-77168-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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