This article discusses a unidirectional conception that, ever since logical positivism, has prevailed in medical psychiatric investigation. Though most patients and researchers insist on presenting and/or studying human pain and suffering through their most disturbing and unbearable characteristics, they are complex phenomenon that are not easily reduced to such a limited analysis. A journey through philosophy, phenomenology and psychoanalysis will allow us to propose probabilities, seldom explored by the medical sciences, with a view to understanding the complexity beyond symptoms and neurophysiology.
Pain; suffering; pleasure; medical anthropology