Mefisto

Rivista di medicina, filosofia, storia

Vol. 2, 1, 2018
(già Medicina&Storia)

Direttore / Editor
Alessandro Pagnini

Comitato Scientifico / Editorial Board

Alessandro Arcangeli, Giulio Barsanti, Domenico Bertoloni Meli,
Giovanni Boniolo, Roberto Brigati, Raffaella Campaner, Stefano Canali,
Andrea Carlino, Franco Carnevale, Emanuele Coco, Barbara Continenza,
Chiara Crisciani, Arnold I. Davidson, Liborio Di Battista, William Eamon,
Bernardino Fantini, Vinzia Fiorino, David Gentilcore, Pierdaniele Giaretta,
John Henderson, Stephen Jacyna, Antonello La Vergata, Rosapia Lauro-Grotto,
Sabina Leonelli, Luciano Mecacci, Maria Teresa Monti, Germana Pareti,
Katherine Park, Alessandro Pastore, Telmo Pievani, Giovanni Pizza,
Claudio Pogliano, Fabrizio Rufo, Giuseppe Testa, Alain Touwaide, Paolo Vineis

Direttrice di redazione / Managing Editor

Marica Setaro

Redazione / Executive Board

Pier Davide Accendere, Marco Annoni, Elisa Arnaudo, Marta Bertolaso,
Alessandro Blasimme, Federico Boem, Matteo Borri, Giovanni Campolo,
Mattia Della Rocca, Esther Diana, Carlo Gabbani, Matteo Galletti,
Francesco Luzzini, Stefano Miniati, Yamina Oudai Celso, Paolo Savoia,
Debora Tringali, Simone Virgilii, Fabio Zampieri

Contatti / Contact us
redazionemefisto@gmail.com

Realizzazione editoriale / Copy Editing and Layout

battitoriliberi, Pisa

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 Mefisto
Vol. 2, 1, 2018

Edizioni ETS

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 Indice/Table of Contents

Saggi/Essays
Elisa Arnaudo, A history of psychogenic pain and its relevance
for chronic pain medical understanding 9
Elisabetta Basso, Quale storia per la psichiatria fenomenologica? 31

Focus
“La bioetica tra attualità e futuro”
Marco Annoni, Silvia Zullo, Introduzione 53
Maurizio Balistreri, La ricerca sugli embrioni umani alla luce
dei nuovi scenari riproduttivi: considerazioni sull’individualità
dell’embrione e sui limiti alla sperimentazione 57
Matteo Galletti, Spinte gentili e consenso informato. Qual è
il “bene” del paziente? 71
Chiara Mannelli, Allocazione di risorse sanitarie scarse. Scelte etiche 87

Recensioni/Reviews
– Renée Raphael, Reading Galileo. Scribal Technologies and the Two
New Sciences, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2017,
265 pp. (Gregorio Baldin) 101
– Paolo Savoia, Cosmesi e chirurgia. Bellezza, dolore e medicina
nell’Italia moderna, Editrice Bibliografica, Milano 2017,
232 pp. (Monica Calabritto) 108

Autori di questo numero/Contributors to this issue 115

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Saggi/Essays

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 Saggi/Essays

A history of psychogenic pain and its relevance

for chronic pain medical understanding
Elisa Arnaudo*

Abstract: Chronic pain has been institutionally recognised as a disease in its own
right even if a full acknowledgment of its pathological nature is still lacking.
Even if it is well known that chronic pain is characterised by physiological,
psychological and socio-cultural factors, the lack of a direct relationship be-
tween the pain and any organic damage often leads to psychogenic interpreta-
tions of the condition. These are grounded on the concept of psychogenic
pain, i.e. pain of psychological origin. In this work, I present a historical over-
view of the concept of psychogenic pain in the psychiatric debate from the sec-
ond half of the 20th century to date, in order to show that this entity does not
identify a specific clinical entity but it is an umbrella term used to account for
poorly medically understood conditions; a reflection on the potential harm of
the use of this classification in chronic pain is also presented.

Keywords: psychogenic pain, hysteria; chronic pain; DSM

1. Introduction

Chronic pain has been defined as the pain that lasts longer than an
acute injury or disease. Unlike acute pain, whose function is to warn the
organism of the presence of damage, chronic pain has no adaptive pur-
pose and persists without a clear link to tissue damage. This condition is
extremely difficult to approach mainly because it leads to a vicious circle
of physiological, psychological and environmental issues.
The lack of proper understanding of the complex interplay of factors
in chronic pain often leads physicians to doubt the organic source of the
pain, suggesting that it may be of psychological origin. In the experience
of several chronic-pain patients, the allegation they are affected by a
form of psychogenic pain is frequent; patients affected by elusive condi-

* Independent researcher, elisa.arnaudo@gmail.com

Mefisto
Vol. 2, 1, 2018, pp. 9-30
ISSN (print) 2532-8255 - ETS

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