Analyzes the basic concepts involved in bodily sensations and how these feelings are communicated.

Description

In this work Dr. Szasz dispels popular and scientific confusion about what pain and pleasure actually are. Demonstrating the doubtful value of such distinctions as “real” and Imagined” pain, or “physical” and “intellectual” pleasure, he analyses the basic concepts—psychological, philosophical, and sociological—involved in bodily feelings and discusses how these feelings are communicated. Some of the subjects discussed in Pain and Pleasure include: self-mutilation, sexual satisfaction, “hysterical anesthesia,” false pregnancy, laughter, homosexuality, and dream analysis.

Table of Contents

PART I. The Mind-Body Problem in the Light of the Philosophy of Science
1. Pain, Pleasure, and the Mind-Body Problem
2. Russell’s Analysis of the Problem: The Nature of Physics and of Psychology
3. Substance and Pattern: Further Reflections on the Relationship Between Brain and Mind
4. Analysis of Concepts and Clarification of Terms

PART II. The Psychology of Pain
5. A Psychoanalytic Theory of Pain
6. The Symbolic Meanings of Pain

PART III. The Psychology of Bodily Feelings
7. Phenomena Characterized by Increased or Decreased Interest in the Body on the Part of the Ego
8. Bodily Feelings in Schizophrenia
9. Phantom Body Parts and Phantom Pain
10. Excerpts from the Literature

PART IV. The Psychology of Pleasure
11. A Psychoanalytic Theory of Pleasure
12. The Communication and Validation of Pleasure

PART V. Retrospects and Conclusions
13. The Formal Characteristics of Pain and Pleasure
14. The Complementary Nature of the Psychological and Medical Approaches to Pain, Pleasure, and Bodily Feelings
15. Sociological Considerations

Publications on Pain by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D.

Bibliography

Index of Authors

Index of Subjects

About the Author

Thomas Szasz was professor emeritus of psychiatry at the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. His books include Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry, The Manufacture of Madness, Ceremonial Chemistry, The Myth of Psychotherapy, and Pharmacracy, all published by Syracuse University Press.

5.25 x 8, 348 pages

December 1988