There's a huge amount of interesting work in this area. Others have mentioned meditation. There are various efforts at mindfulness, acceptance, and so on. The

There's a huge amount of interesting work in this area. Others have mentioned meditation. There are various efforts at mindfulness, acceptance, and so on. The results seem generally positive, but there's a long way to go yet. Those interested may want to have a trawl through the literature, which is of varying quality [1]. It is possible to have pain without tissue "damage"; to have damage without pain; to have pain without suffering [see footnote]. Some work is aimed at manipulating this symbolism within the brain. Most people are probably familiar with mirror-box therapy [2], which is one among several efforts at translating the neuroscience of pain (a-)symbolia into useful clinical practice. Other efforts I find interesting include Graded Motor Imagery [3] and Recognise [4] from the Neuro Orthopaedic Institute. These are both rehabilitative programmes based on the finding that people with chronic musculoskeletal pain often have altered processing of their "body map". A large and fascinating area of research and clinical work. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=(acceptance+OR+mindfulness)+AND+(pain) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=(acceptance+OR+mind... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box [3] http://www.gradedmotorimagery.com/ http://www.gradedmotorimagery.com/ [4] http://www.noigroup.com/recognise http://www.noigroup.com/recognise [Footnote] Pain without tissue "damage". We can throw any number of tests at people with certain conditions (chronic low back pain is a classic example) and fail to determine anything "wrong" or "damaged". In fact, this may make things worse by uncovering benign issues and treating them, thereby both failing to address the problem, and potentially introducing further iatrogenic side-effects. Now, the fact that we cannot find any "damage" (or tissue change) doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. So this may be a "measurement problem": our investigations are simply not yet sophisticated enough. However it underlines the complex nature of pain (Ronald Melzack's "neuromatrix" theory of pain is probably the most useful we currently have). Damage without pain. Other than in rare disorders where pain is totally absent, everyone can experience damage without pain. Surfers report shark attacks as feeling like a "bump" when they've lost an entire limb. Stabbing or shooting victims can be unaware of what has happened until they see blood. A more easily-imagined example: you twist your ankle while crossing railroad tracks just as a train is hurtling toward you. You get up and run. Only minutes later, when the adrenaline has subsided, do you start to feel ascending pain. Pain without suffering. This is the most important distinction, and something that meditation, mindfulness etc probably address. You can have pain, but do you have to suffer? Certainly suffering can increase if your mood is low, whether through depression, circumstance, or whatever. Different people with "the same" (subjective) injury or tissue damage can report wildly different levels of pain i.e. their suffering is different. When the mechanisms of pain production cannot easily be addressed, psychological interventions to address the suffering become increasingly important. (That's not to say the nociception and pain should be ignored -- they should be addressed too). There are various examples of pain without suffering. Everyone has picked a scab or squeezed a zit or poked a mouth ulcer, knowing it will "hurt" but without that necessarily being bad. There are plenty of other examples, some quite titillating, of folks who seek out pain but certainly aren't suffering. So yes. A large and complex area. (Edit: words.)