The Phenomenology of Pain

Saulius Geniusas

• Editorial: Ohio University Press
• Año: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780821446942
• Categoría: Philosophy
• Categoría: Phenomenology in Philosophy

The Phenomenology of Pain is the first book-length investigation of its topic to appear in English. Groundbreaking, systematic, and illuminating, it opens a dialogue between phenomenology and such disciplines as cognitive science and cultural anthropology to argue that science alone cannot clarify the nature of pain experience without incorporating a phenomenological approach. Building on this premise, Saulius Geniusas develops a novel conception of pain grounded in phenomenological principles: pain is an aversive bodily feeling with a distinct experiential quality, which can only be given in original first-hand experience, either as a feeling-sensation or as an emotion.

Geniusas crystallizes the fundamental methodological principles that underlie phenomenological research. On the basis of those principles, he offers a phenomenological clarification of the fundamental structures of pain experience and contests the common conflation of phenomenology with introspectionism. Geniusas analyzes numerous pain dissociation syndromes, brings into focus the de-personalizing and re-personalizing nature of chronic pain experience, and demonstrates what role somatization and psychologization play in pain experience. In the process, he advances Husserlian phenomenology in a direction that is not explicitly worked out in Husserl's own writings.

CHAPTER 1

METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Let us begin with the analysis of the fundamental methodological principles that must underlie phenomenologically oriented pain research. In the introduction, I have identified this task as one of the three fundamental goals of this study as a whole. Here I want to contend that the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation constitute such fundamental methodological principles. These three principles are necessary: only insofar as one subscribes to them does one have the right to identify one’s investigation as phenomenological in the Husserlian sense of the term. Nonetheless, these principles are not sufficient; they need to be supplemented with other phenomenological methods. As far as the phenomenology of pain is concerned, these three methodological principles need to be supplemented with two further methodological procedures: what we will here identify as the method of factual variation and the genetic method of intentional implications.¹

I will take four steps in my analysis. In the first section, I will present the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation conceived of as the three principles that make up the methodological core of phenomenologically oriented pain research. In the second section, I will focus on three critiques that have been directed against phenomenology—the contentions that phenomenology is disguised psychologism, camouflaged introspectionism, and veiled solipsism. Responses to these three critiques will solidify the three methodological commitments mentioned above. In the third section, I will argue that the three fundamental phenomenological methods are necessary, yet not sufficient, and that the method of eidetic variation needs to be supplemented with the method of factual variation. We are in need of such a supplementation because in its absence, the method of eidetic variation is all too often understood as an excuse to engage in phenomenological reflections while dismissing (presumably, out of methodological considerations) all other scientific accomplishments that we come across in other fields of research. Phenomenology need not be the victim of its own purity: it must be open to the developments in other sciences—natural, social, and human—as well as to the advances in literature, poetry, cinema, and fine arts. Insofar as phenomenology is cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural, it merits being called dialogical. In the fourth section, I will qualify all the methods outlined above as the methodological commitments of static phenomenology, and I will further argue that they need to be supplemented with the methodological principles of genetic phenomenology. In such a way, we will obtain an answer to the first fundamental question of this study, which concerns the identification of the methodological principles of phenomenologically oriented pain research.

Phenomenology has been practiced in a large variety of ways, and, therefore, one cannot exclude the possibility that the phenomenology of pain might rely on some other methodological principles. While admitting such a possibility, I would like to stress two interrelated points. First, phenomenology is a method, and, therefore, anyone who wishes to argue that the static and the genetic methods are expendable must show what other phenomenological methods could replace them. Second, the methods presented here are not only fundamental to phenomenology, but also exceptionally fruitful for pain research, which is in need of a reliable methodology to clarify pain experience independently from pain biology and pain sociology, yet without denigrating it to the empirical level of personal accounts of the idiosyncratic nature of one’s own experience.

FUNDAMENTAL METHODOLOGICAL COMMITMENTS: EPOCHÉ, THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION, AND EIDETIC VARIATION

One commonly thinks of phenomenological analyses as reflections on experience, and things given in experience, from the first-person point of view. Such a general qualification all too easily leads to far-reaching ambiguities and confusions. These confusions are especially prevalent in such fields as pain research, where we come across investigations that are labeled as phenomenological simply because they provide a set of reflections on pain experience from the first-person point of view. One is thus left with the impression that any introspective, autobiographical, or even psychologistic set of reflections on pain experience can be characterized as phenomenological. Such a state of affairs has led to a misapprehension of the nature, goals, and function of phenomenology in pain research.

Clearly, not any kind of reflection on experience from the first-person point of view is phenomenological. At least from a Husserlian standpoint, one would say: it is the commitment to specific methodological principles that distinguishes phenomenologically oriented investigations from other studies of lived-experience. Such a standpoint suggests that an investigation can be labeled as phenomenological if, and only if, it subscribes to the fundamental principles of phenomenological methodology. What exactly are those principles?

It is not easy to answer this question. Ever since its emergence, the phenomenological method has been conceptualized in a number of ways, whose compatibility remains a contentious issue. On the one hand, there is the more apparent problem of methodological consistency that runs throughout the phenomenological movement. As Paul Ricoeur (1987, 9) has famously put it, the history of phenomenology is the history of Husserlian heresies. On the other hand, even if one limits oneself to classical phenomenology in general, and Husserlian phenomenology in particular, one nonetheless has to deal with questions concerning the compatibility of different methodological frameworks (say, those of static and genetic phenomenology), as well as of different accounts of the same methodological procedures (say, the account of the reduction as presented in Ideas I, First Philosophy II, and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology). In the present context, it is not my goal to enter into this conflict of interpretations. I believe it is possible to bypass these controversies if one supplements methodological considerations with two qualifications. First, one needs to focus on the identification of the fundamental methodological principles, that is, those principles that could be qualified as necessary, although not necessarily sufficient. I will contend that the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation are the fundamental principles of Husserlian phenomenology. I do not think that allegiance to these three phenomenological principles is sufficient to clarify what classical phenomenology (to say nothing of the phenomenological tradition as a whole) can contribute to pain research. It is therefore necessary to supplement these three methodological principles with further principles. Second, these three phenomenological principles, while necessary, can be conceptualized in more ways than one. The grandiose task of providing an exhaustive treatment of these principles is unattainable in the framework of a study that focuses on the phenomenology of pain. Here I strive to identify only the essential features of these methodological procedures, while at the same time conceding that they not only can be, but that they also have been, articulated in a number of complementary ways.

A few words on the fundamental goals of Husserlian phenomenology are appropriate here. Husserlian phenomenology is marked by the ambition to be a science of phenomena purified of all unwarranted assumptions, constructions, and interpretation. For this reason, it strives to be a descriptive science, which would present phenomena the way they appear, without distortions or misrepresentations. It is, however, not enough to describe phenomena in order to grasp them the way they appear, since descriptions all too often succumb to bias and manipulation. Precisely because it strives to describe phenomena exactly as they appear, without any contamination, the possibility of phenomenology hinges upon its capacity to design a suitable methodology that would ensure the reliability of phenomenological descriptions. The methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation are meant to demonstrate the possibility of phenomenology, conceived of as a method for studying pure phenomena in an unbiased way.

The Greek word epoché means “suspension, or bracketing.” To bracket, or suspend, means to put certain beliefs and commitments out of action and consideration. Husserl uses a number of expressions to characterize the epoché: abstention, dislocation, unplugging, exclusion, withholding, disregarding, abandoning, bracketing, putting out of action, or putting out of play. As all these descriptive approximations suggest, the epoché is a unique modification, which should not be confused with either doubt or negation.²

First and foremost, the phenomenological epoché is the abstention from all participation in the cognitions of the objective sciences—the putting out of play of any critical position-taking with regard to their truth or falsity. This is of great importance for the phenomenology of pain, since it suggests that phenomenological analysis is possible only if it places in brackets the accomplishments we come across in the science of pain. Pain phenomenology cannot rely either on pain biology or on pain sociology. However, such a suspension of scientific validity, radical as it is, does not exhaust the full meaning of the phenomenological epoché. This is because, “in concealment, the world’s validities are always founded on other validities, above the whole manifold but synthetically unified flow in which the world has and forever attains anew its content of meaning and its ontic validity” (Husserl 1970, 150). We can take this to mean that even if the researcher places all scientific validities in phenomenological brackets, that is, even if he refuses to accept these validities as validities, even under such circumstances, he cannot be assured that his research unfolds in an unbiased way, for even the natural and seemingly innocent assumption that the phenomena he addresses are natural phenomena (that is, parts of nature) already rests on unclarified presuppositions. This is of great importance for pain research, since it means that a phenomenologist should not conceive of pain as a natural occurrence, determined by some kind of natural causes, irrespective of whether or not these causes are known scientifically. Besides requiring that one bracket all scientific knowledge about pain, the method of the epoché also requires that one put out of action the fundamental presupposition that underlies the science of pain, namely, the assumption that pain is a natural or, more precisely, a neurophysiological phenomenon.

Taken by itself, it is unclear where the epoché leaves us. As far as the phenomenology of pain is concerned, it makes clear that a phenomenologist cannot accept either the scientific results that issue from or the fundamental assumptions that underlie the science of pain. These are negative determinations. The method of the epoché gains a positive sense when it is coupled with the phenomenological reduction.³

With reference to the phenomenological reduction, Husserl has remarked that “the understanding of all of phenomenology depends upon the understanding of this method” (1977, 144). This is hardly an overestimation, since the acquisition of phenomena in the phenomenological sense relies upon the performance of the phenomenological reduction. In the natural course of life, I stand on the ground of the world’s pregivenness: I accept the world’s being as a matter of course, without inquiring into those acts of consciousness, through which it obtains its meaning. My interests are exclusively absorbed in the objective world, and not in the flow of experience, through which it obtains the status of the objective world. We can conceive of the phenomenological reduction as a fundamental change of attitude that enables the phenomenologist to redirect his interests from objects in the world to his own experience. While in the natural attitude, I am naively absorbed in the performance of my experience and thus my interests are exclusively absorbed in the objects of my experience, in the phenomenological attitude, my new interests are redirected toward those very experiences through which the objects in the world and the world itself gain their meaning. It thereby becomes understandable why Husserl would contend that “subjectivity, and this universally and exclusively, is my theme” (1973a, 200). The crude mistake to avoid here is that of conceptualizing subjectivity as something mysteriously cut off from the world and different types of objectivity. Even though Husserl’s phenomenology is often subjected to such a critique, it is hard to come across any analyses of such subjectivity in his writings. Phenomenology is interested in subjectivity’s hidden constitutive accomplishments, through which objects in the world, and even the world itself, come to be what they are. The subjectivity thematized in phenomenology should be conceived of as a field of pure experience, or as a field of the world’s self-manifestation. By providing access to such a field, the phenomenological reduction opens the way to immanent knowledge.⁴

Besides providing access to the field of immanence, the phenomenological reduction also enables the phenomenologist to keep this field pure of all mundane contaminations. It is crucial to stress that the field of immanence that remains untouched by the epoché is not a region within the natural world, but a field of pure experience, within which nature and the world come to self-givenness. One can further qualify this region as fundamentally unnatural, comprising not things (natural or cultural), but merely pure phenomena. Phenomenology thematizes the field of pure experience as the region within which things come to their self-manifestation. In this way, phenomenology opens up a new science, “the science of pure subjectivity, in which thematic discourse concerns exclusively the lived experiences, the modes of consciousness and what is meant in their objectivity, but exclusively as meant” (Husserl 1977, 146).

What is the significance of the phenomenological reduction for such a field of research as the philosophy of pain? While through the method of the epoché one loses pain as a natural phenomenon, through the method of the phenomenological reduction one regains it as a pure experience. The fundamental goal of the phenomenology of pain is thereby delineated: its fundamental ambition is to give an account of pain as a pure experience, that is, as an experience purified of all naturalistic apprehensions. The goal is to consistently disconnect all the natural apperceptions, which codetermine our common understanding of pain, conceived of as a natural phenomenon.

Here we stumble across new difficulties. Should one not liken the field of pure experience to a ceaseless Heracleitean flux, to an incomprehensibly streaming life, in which being-thus indefinitely replaces being-so? If pure consciousness indeed is such a stream of experience, then how can one possibly obtain any knowledge of this field? The phenomenologically reduced field of experience appears to be inaccessible to intersubjectively verifiable knowledge. It thereby becomes clear that the possibility of phenomenology is not yet secured by means of the epoché and the reduction. The third methodological procedure, namely, the method of eidetic variation, is designed to provide a solution to this dilemma. Phenomenology does not strive to be a factual science of conscious experiences. Rather, it is meant to be an exploration of the essences of conscious life—a descriptive eidetics of reduced consciousness. Insofar as phenomenology is an eidetics of experience, the phenomenology of pain must be an eidetics of pain experience. It does not just strive to give an account of pain, conceived of as pure experience; its fundamental goal is to clarify the essence of such experience.

Still, before turning to eidetic variation, we are in need of a further clarification. Although so far, we have spoken of the reduction in a rather unqualified way, there are good reasons to distinguish between different kinds of reduction, and especially between phenomenological and transcendental reductions. From the time he discovered the reduction in 1905 until around 1916, Husserl himself did not discriminate between these forms of the reduction. Subsequently, it became clear that insofar as one speaks of the reduction in an unqualified way, it remains an ambiguous concept in that it is associated with two significantly different functions. First, it is associated with the method of bracketing the natural world and of transitioning from a naive naturalistic ontology, which is straightforwardly absorbed in beings, to the analysis of meanings. Second, it is also associated with the further transition from the field of meanings to the ultimate source of all meaning, which Husserl identified with transcendental (inter)subjectivity. From around 1916 onward, Husserl started distinguishing between these two functions of the reduction. The first function was identified as the phenomenological reduction, while the second one was identified as the transcendental reduction. The phenomenological reduction is the method that enables the phenomenologist to transition from the natural world, conceived of as the universe of real things as given in the natural attitude, to the world of pure phenomena. Yet a phenomenologist need not stop with this methodological procedure. One can further supplement the phenomenological reduction with the transcendental reduction by initiating a further transition from the field of phenomena to their ultimate condition, or presupposition, which Husserl associates with transcendental (inter)subjectivity (see Kockelmans 1994, 16–17).

As far as the phenomenology of pain is concerned, it is the phenomenological reduction, and not the transcendental reduction, that is indispensable. The three methods that are here identified as fundamental are those of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation. This does not mean that the method of the transcendental reduction is not important in phenomenology; it does mean, however, that one can carry out a phenomenologically oriented study wit...