Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T01:58:11.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sacred Pain and the Phenomenal Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Ariel Glucklich
Ariel Glucklich
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The preponderance of pain in human life ranks among the central problems for religious thought around the world. The problem of suffering, as it is often called, has been a compelling reason for abandoning faith. Given the depth of the dilemma that raw and inexplicable pain poses, it is surprising how pervasive voluntary pain has been among the religions of the world. Ascetics, mystics, and martyrs have sought and applied pain—in rites of passage (ordeals) and other forms of initiation—in the service of religious inquisitions (including trials by ordeal), execution of heretics and witches, and others. And of course, none of these has been limited by geographic location or historic time. What is the role of voluntary (“sacred”) pain in human religious life? Is there a single theory that can explain, for instance, the initiatory ordeals of new shamans and Sufi mystics?

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 91 , Issue 4 , October 1998 , pp. 389 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Eliade, Mircea, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958)Google Scholar; see also Sullivan, Lawrence E., Icanchu's Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions (New York: Macmillan, 1988)Google Scholar; and Lincoln, Bruce, Emerging from the Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Women's Initiation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

2 Malleus Maleficarum (trans. Montague Summers; New York: Benjamin Blom, 1970) 3. 19Google Scholar; Barstow, Anne Llewellyn, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (New York: Pandora, 1994) 143–45.Google Scholar

3 Of course, for Freud there is no such thing as the holy. Masochism is always a clinical condition, always connected with sexuality, and often, with sadism. See Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Hogarth, 1930)Google Scholar; and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (London: Hogarth, 1922)Google Scholar. See also Bonaparte, Marie, “Some Biopsychical Aspects of Sado-Masochism,” in Hanly, Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick, ed., Essential Papers on Masochism (New York: New York University Press, 1995) 432–52.Google Scholar

4 For a critique of psychoanalysis in comparative cultural studies, see Turner, Victor, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967) 35–38.Google Scholar

5 For neuropsychology consider the influential article by Mandell, Arnold, “Toward a Psychobiology of Transcendence: God in the Brain,” in Davidson, Julian M. and Richards, John, eds., The Psychobiology of Consciousness (New York: Plenum Books, 1980) 117–35Google Scholar. More recent research is included in Favazza, Armando, Bodies under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) 261–64Google Scholar. Prominent ethological theories are contained in the following works: Lorenz, Konrad, The Foundations of Ethology (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morris, Desmond, The Human Animal: A Personal View of the Human Species (New York: Crown, 1994)Google Scholar; Wilson, Edward O., On Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978) 30.Google ScholarPubMed

6 Scarry, Elaine, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar. A brief list of articles in religious journals influenced by her work includes: Flynn, Maureen, “The Spiritual Uses of Pain in Spanish Mysticism,” JAAR 64 (1996) 257–78Google Scholar; Tilley, Maureen A., “The Ascetic Body and the (Un)Making of the World of the Martyr,” JAAR 59 (1990) 467–79Google Scholar; Cooey, Paula M., “Experience, Body, and Authority,” HTR 82 (1989) 325–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Boudreau, Kristin, “Pain and the Unmaking of Self in Toni Morrison's Beloved” Contemporary Literature 36 (1995) 447–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Pamela A., “Chronic Pain and Creative Possibility: A Psychological Phenomenon Confronts Theologies of Suffering,” in Tilly, Maureen A. and Ross, Susan A., eds., Broken and Whole: Essays on Religion and the Body (Annual Publication of the College Theology Society 39; New York: University Press of America, 1993).Google Scholar

7 Scarry, Body in Pain, 162.

8 Flynn, “Spiritual Uses of Pain,” 274.

9 Lomax, Eric, The Railway Man: A True Story of War, Remembrance, and Forgiveness (New York: Ballantine, 1995) 141–43.Google Scholar

10 Woolf, Virginia, “On Being Ill,” in idem. The Moment and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1948) 11.Google Scholar

11 Melzack, Ronald, “The McGill Questionnaire: Major Properties and Scoring Methods,” Pain 1 (1975) 277–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Turk, Dennis C. and Melzack, Ronald, Handbook of Pain Assessment (New York: Guilford, 1992).Google Scholar

12 Scarry, Body in Pain, 15. For Scarry, the result of such metaphorical extensions of experience is the conflation of pain with power, a political observation.

13 Kumārasambhava 1.20.

14 This list represents an extremely brief selection, based mostly on dictionary sources. I have gone over the Cāraka Samhitā, an ancient medical text, and found dozens of additional terms that lack of space precludes listing here.

15 For pain terms in classical Greek, see Rey, Roslyne, The History of Pain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995) 12–14.Google Scholar

16 Akmajian, Adrian, Demers, Richard, and Harnish, Robert, eds., Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990) 41.Google Scholar

17 Ibid The foundational role of metaphorical semantics has been championed by Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Lakoff, George, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 This entire topic is discussed in philosophical circles as the question of other minds. Philosophers try to determine how one can know that others have similar mental states, or any at all. See for instance, Wisdom, John, Other Minds (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956). I will avoid this agenda in this article.Google Scholar

19 See, for instance, Koffka, Kurt, Principles of Gestalt Psychology (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1935) 55–67.Google Scholar

20 Kohler, Wolfgang, Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology (New York: Liveright, 1947) 225Google Scholar. According to several theorists, the appropriate term is “the unity of the senses.” For the precise epistemology see Harmann, George W., Gestalt Psychology: A Survey of Facts and Principles (New York: Ronald, 1935) 141–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A vivid description of synaesthesia and its role in learning and memory is contained in Luria, Aleksander R., The Mind of a Mnemonist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

21 Hofstadter, Douglas R., Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (New York: Basic Books, 1985) 179.Google Scholar

22 Quoted in Ibid, 180.

23 Ibid, 181.

24 Kohler, Gestalt Psychology, 248–49.

25 Langer, Susanne K., Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (New York: New American Library, 1961) 193.Google Scholar

26 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Notes from the Underground (New York: Signet Classic, 1980) 84.Google Scholar

27 Freud, quoted in Stanley J. Coen, “The Excitement of Sadomasochism,” in Hanly, Essential Papers on Masochism, 383–84.

28 Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground, 86.

29 The reader who wishes to experiment with these ideas, or observe his or her reaction to the appalling “torture of the rat” may look up Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden (New York: Citadel, 1948) 192–94.Google Scholar

30 Dass, Nirmal, trans., Songs of Kabir from the Adi Granth (New York: Suny Press, 1991) 148–49.Google Scholar

31 Meskey, Harold, “Pain Terms,” Pain 6 (1979) 249–52.Google Scholar

32 See the comments by R. Havard in the Appendix to Lewis, C. S., The Problem of Pain (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1950).Google Scholar

33 Wall, Patrick D. and Jones, Mervyn, Defeating Pain: The War Against the Silent Epidemic (New York: Plenum, 1991) 137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 For a convenient summary, see Melzack, Ronald, “Phantom-Limb and the Brain,” in Bromm, Burkhart and Desmedt, John E., eds., Pain and the Brain: From Nociception to Cognition (Advances in Pain Research and Therapy 22; New York: Raven, 1995).Google Scholar

35 René Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy 4. 196 in Veitch, John trans., The Meditations and Selections from the Principles (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1968) 200–201.Google Scholar

36 Ibid

37 The studies that document these figures appear in Ronald Melzack, “Phantom-Limb Pain and the Brain,” 79. See also Katz, Joel, “The Role of the Sympathetic Nervous System in Phantom Limb Pain,” Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 10:1 (1996) 1, 153–75.Google Scholar

38 Saadah, E. S. M. and Melzack, R., “Phantom Limb Experience in Congenital Limb-Deficient Adults,” Cortex 30 (1994) 479–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Grouios, George, “Phantom Limb Perceptuomotor ‘Memories’ in a Congenital Limb Child,” Medical Science Research 24 (1996) 503–504Google Scholar. For a peripheralist theory of phantom-limb pain (blood clots, gangrene, or stump problems), see Weiss, Samuel A. and Lindell, Brad, “Phantom Limb Pain and Etiology of Amputation in Unilateral Lower Extremities Amputees,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 11 (1996) 3–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Melzack's theory has appeared in several publications and studies. Among the clearest statements are: Melzack, , “Phantom-Limb and the Brain”; “Pain: Past, Present and Future,” Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 47 (1993) 615–29; and in the most accessible context idem, “Phantom Limbs,” in Scientific American 261 (April 1992) 120–26.Google Scholar

40 Melzack, “Phantom-Limb Pain,” 75–76.

41 Kohler, Wolfgang, The Task of Gestalt Psychology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969) 66.Google Scholar

42 Melzack, “Phantom-Limb Pain,” 79–80.

43 Ramachandran, V. S. et al., “Touching the Phantom Limb,” Nature 377 (6549) (1995) 489–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Muraoka, Maomora et al., “Psychosomatic Treatment of Phantom Limb Pain with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Case Report,” Pain 66 (1996) 385–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Ramachandran, “Touching the Phantom Limb,” 490.

45 Schultz, Geoffery and Melzack, Ronald, “Visual Hallucinations and Mental State: A Study of 14 Charles Bonnet Syndrome Hallucinators,” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 181 (1993) 639–43. Hallucinations are also known to be auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Hallucinations are complex psychological and physiological events. Sensory deprivation is only one cause, even among the deliberate methods of inducing such mental states. See Slade, Peter D. and Bentall, Richard P., Sensory Deception: A Scientific Analysis of Hallucinations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988) 15–16.Google Scholar

47 The variable affecting the contents of hallucinations range from psychological factors such as stress and pathology to intelligence and language skills, suggestibility and responsiveness to instructions, environmental stimulation, cultural values, and others (Ibid, 82–109).

48 The term “hallucination” is ontologically neutral and refers in this context merely to mental phenomena produced by the overfiring of neuronal output.

49 Ratnoff, Oscar D., “The Psychogenic Purpuras: A Review of Autoerythrocyte Sensitization, Autosensitization to DNA, ‘Hysterical’ and Factitial Bleeding, and the Religious Stigmata,” Seminars in Hematology 17 (July 1983) 192–213Google Scholar; on Hunt and Chapman see, Harrison, Ted, Stigmata: A Medieval Mystery in a Modern Age (New York: Penguin, 1994).Google Scholar

50 Vernon, Jack and McGill, Thomas, “Sensory Deprivation and Pain Thresholds,” Science 133 (1961) 330–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 On information theory and perceptual psychology see Haber, Ralph Norman, “Information Processing,” in Carterrette, Edward C. and Friedman, Morton P., eds., Handbook of Perception (11 vols.; New York: Academic Press, 1974) 1. 313–31Google Scholar. On the more specific feedback features of the system see Zubek, John P., “Sensory and Perceptual-Motor Effects,” in Zubek, John P., ed., Sensory Deprivation: Fifteen Years of Research (New York: Appleton-Century-Croft, 1969) 444–46Google Scholar. A similar and perhaps related phenomenon is called “hyperstimulation analgesia.” This may be due, however, to the release of natural opiates caused by sharp pain, rather than the disruption of the body/self template by constant dull pain. See Bushell, William C., “Psychophysiological and Comparative Analysis of Asceticism,” in Wimbush, Vincent L. and Valantis, Richard eds., Asceticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) 553–75.Google Scholar

52 I have argued elsewhere that this phenomenal simplicity defines the very nature of purity in Hinduism and conforms to the religous purpose of bathing in India. See Glucklich, Ariel, The Sense of Adharma (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) 66–88.Google Scholar

53 There are several ways of defining neurological and cognitive schemata. They share a recognition that coordinated and complex action requires that the organism operate on abstracted “models” or “frames” rather than direct physical reality. Schemata apply both to physical action (James Jerome Gibson, Ulric Neisser) and to cognitive operations and information processing (Jean Piaget, Marvin Lee Minsky). For a brief summary see Arbib, Michael A., “Schemas,” in Gregory, Richard L. ed., The Oxford Companion to the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) 695–97Google Scholar; see also Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things; James Jerome Gibson “The Theory of Affordances,” in Snow, Robert E. and Bransford, John, eds., Perceiving, Acting and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1977) 33–48Google Scholar; Neisser, Ulric, Cognition and Reality: Principles and Implications of Cognitive Psychology (San Francisco: Freeman, 1976)Google Scholar; Piaget, Jean, Biology and Knowledge: An Essay on the Relations between Organic Regulations and Cognitive Processes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Minsky, Marvin L., “A Framework for Representing Knowledge,” in Winston, Patrick H., ed., The Psychology of Computer Vision (New York: McGraw Hill, 1975) 211–77.Google Scholar

54 It is important to note that systematic, chronic pain does not erase learning; it does not “erase the world” in Scarry's words. What it unmakes is the sense of self, the phenomenal aspect of the body-self template (or schema). This results in the reinforcing of certain learned ideas, for instance inscribing the presence of Jesus, an “other” self, on the body of the self-tormenting mystic whose own sense of self weakens. Suso, Henry, The Exemplar with Two German Sermons (ed. and trans. Tobin, Frank; New York: Paulist Press, 1989) 70.Google Scholar

55 McNeill, John Thomas and Gamer, Helena M., eds., Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938) 223.Google Scholar

56 The Sea of Precious Virtues (Bahr al-Fava'id): A Medieval Islamic Mirror for Princes (trans. Mesami, Julie Scott; Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991) 13Google Scholar; It would be too easy to multiply the number of examples of pain described as sword, penance, bitter medicine, and so forth. The phenomenology of such pain experiences would have to be the subject of another article.

57 Schimmel, Annemarie, Pain and Grace: A Study of Two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth-Century Muslim India (Leiden: Brill, 1979) 197.Google Scholar

58 Bakan, David, Disease, Pain and Sacrifice: Toward a Psychology of Suffering (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).Google Scholar

59 Ibid, 59.