Perspectives on Pain: Introduction

Abstract

This issue of 19 has been guest edited by Louise Hide, Joanna Bourke, and Carmen Mangion. Collectively, we comprise the Birkbeck Pain Project, a three-year Wellcome Trust funded project that is led by Joanna Bourke. We are particularly interested in understanding how the meaning of pain - for sufferers, physicians, and other witnesses - changed over time. In this issue, articles by social and cultural historians, as well as literary scholars, examine and analyse the implications of shifting discourses in personal narratives as well as in religious communities, and in philosophical, medical, and psychiatric texts. By analysing language within current theories of the time, we can deepen our understanding of the complex interaction between the body, mind, and culture to gain insights into the ever-changing subjective experience of pain.