PSYCHOANALYTICAL UNDERSTANDING OF PAIN - HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT, CURRENT STATE AND EMPIRICAL RESULTS

In the last decade the boom in behavioural therapy studies of pain has relegated psychoanalytical publications on this topic quantitatively to the background. The present paper reviews the historical developmen t and current state of the psychoanalytical understanding of pain. The results of those studies are summarized, which provide empirical supp ort for the components of psychoanalytic pain theory. From these resul ts a pathogenetic model for the psychogenic pain syndrome is developed .