Liminality and chronic pain

Abstract

Chronic pain raises the question of a diagnosis that is always delayed and uncertain, subject to revision (or controversy) between different doctors; it is not only an organic condition, but, above all, a social one, since it resonates strongly throughout the network of each patient’s relationships with others. The individual, prey to chronic pain, suffers, but he/she is also in suffering; as is often said of a letter that has never reached its addressee, it is suspended, waiting, provisionally without destination. Immersed in the said liminal situation, he/she is no longer here or elsewhere, he is neither meat nor fish, he is neither from here nor elsewhere, rather he/she is marked by otherness, divided between references that no longer apply to him/her, in resonance with the patient’s sense of identity.