Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction I. Encountering pain

Introduction II. What is pain? A neurobiological perspective

Part I. Hearing

1. How to listen for the talk of pain

2. Three testimonies from those living with pain

3. Approaches to images : an art therapist’s perspective on photographic images of pain used to communicate the experience of pain in medical consultations

4. Pleurisy I–V

6. Living with trigeminal neuralgia : interview from pain under the microscope

7. Karuna (करुणा in devanagari)

Part II. Seeing

8. The photograph as a mediating space in clinical and creative encounters

9. How images change non-verbal interaction in chronic pain consultations

10. Picturing pain

11. Making charcoal for drawing

12. The art of pain and intersubjectivity in Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits

13. The thing about pain : the remaking of illness narratives on social media

14. Exhibiting pain : the role of online exhibitions in sharing creative expressions of chronic physical pain

Part III. Speaking

15. ‘Me’ and ‘my pain’ : neuralgia and a history of the language of suffering

16. Language and images in pain consultations

17. The tree, spring and well

18. Challenges in managing pain in India

19. Disabled lives with an undercurrent of pain : a Hindu perspective and first-person testimony

20. Acute pain is sexy and chronic pain is not : language, communication and transformation

21. Intellectual empathy as conflict resolution in the interdisciplinary team

Part IV. The future

22. Visual images : implications for clinical practice

23. What is the pain experience and how can we control it? Perspectives from neuroscience

24. Reflecting on ‘Encountering Pain’

Afterword. Communicating chronic pain