Reviews for The Culture of Pain

The average rating for The Culture of Pain based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-10-06 00:00:00 Iran Gutierrez This is doubtlessly a thought-provoking book that asks many important questions on pain and explores myths about pain that endures untill today. However, I did not enjoy Morris's twirling writing style and strucutre. As for the content, initially I was not completely convinced when he argues that "pain comes into existence only at the moment when it makes its way into our consciousness. Without the mind's contribution, there is no pain" (160) after he using "twilight sleep" as an example. However, it was after some medidation time after finishing the whole book that I realised that my initial resistance towards his argument is exactly due to my entrenchment in the "orthodoxical" understanding of pain under the away of the 18th Century biomedical paradigm of organic orgin. What I really enjoyed about this book is his wide-ranging selection of paintings and literary texts for case studies. I would love to hear more about his analysis on the changing meaning of pain and beauty in modernism though.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-06-01 00:00:00 Terry Aubrey Great book which asks a lot of the same questions I'm still asking today as a mental health therapist who frequently deals with the experience of pain in multicultural settings. This book goes of course beyond what has commonly been referred to as "cultural competency," however, and expands into the fallacy that pain belongs exclusively to the realm of biomedical science. If anyone was ever to create an updated version of this book or pick-up the topic, I hope they move beyond some of the Eurocentrism.