Shirley Hawkins

Clinical Psychology of Pain Shirley Hawkins

Pain represents an ever-changing, demanding and stimulating challenge. The clinical and scientific community has by now acquired the notion that the presence of pain can be traced back to a complex experience in which components of different orders are intertwined, which belong to both corporeal and psychic and relational reality. It is not possible to cure, and above all take care of people with chronic pain, without solid and continuous medical-psychological training; as in other complex and delicate areas of life it is necessary to have an attitude of unrelenting curiosity, supported by the awareness of our limits and the fragility of our convictions and knowledge as operators in contact with the pain of the other. When dealing with the human being, certainties and dogmas must be re-dimensioned, to observe, listen and learn the multiform and ever new language of the body.