This book sets out to restore the concept of healing to its place within and beyond pain medicine, in chapters authored by keynote speakers to the British Pain Society's Philosophy and Ethics Special Interest Group. Exploring psychological, spiritual and creative approaches, contributors reflect on therapeutic avenues ranging from the deliberate use of the placebo response and the importance of a caring relationship between patient and practitioner, to the use of knitting as a therapeutic tool. Barriers to the flow of healing such as practitioners' careless use of language and cultural attitudes are identified and contrasted with the need to understand the first-person perspectives of people who are suffering. This book will provide hope and inspiration both to people who have become disillusioned with conventional medical approaches to the relief of their pain, and to health professionals sadly aware of the frequent inadequacy of their efforts to help them.

As our understanding of the mechanisms of the brain and nervous system that underlie the conscious experience of pain has increased over the past 60 years, so too has the field of pain management. What began as almost exclusively the domain of anaesthetists has become multidisciplinary, and now comprises many other specialisms including neurology, psychology, nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. This spate of activity has been paralleled by a similar growth in research: in neurophysiology, psychology and pharmacology as well as clinical medicine. Simultaneously, the pharmaceutical industry has spent billions of pounds and dollars in the search for better drugs for relieving pain. This ground-breaking book is compiled by former contributors to The Special Interest Group for Philosophy and Ethics of the British Pain Society. The issues discussed include satisfactory relief of chronic pain, the inadequacy of scientific biomedicine in offering answers, and ethical problems arising in pain medicine. 'Suffering cannot be found in a laboratory test or imaging study; it is only observable by communicating with the sufferer. The eleven chapters in this book approach this conundrum from vastly different perspectives, some highly personal and others broadly social. Issues such as the interface between the physician and the pharmaceutical industry are also presented. Each chapter describes a facet of the problems of suffering and some of the available paths to recovery.' John D Loeser in the Foreword