Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion

Living Edition
| Editors: David A. Leeming

Sacred Pain

  • Benson A. Mulemi
Living reference work entry
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_9217-1
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Pain is an unpleasant and undesirable sensory experience resulting from illness or tissue injury. This refers to the sensation associated with actual or potential tissue damage described in terms of such damage (IASP Subcommittee on Classification 1986, p. 217). The word pain has etymological link to the Middle English and Old French term peine, Latin poena, and Ancient Greek poine, which denote punishment or penalty (Swenson 2005, p. 53). However, pain serves as a cue for behavioral and biological responses that enhance survival opportunity in the face of physiological threats. In this sense, pain hurts and chastises an organism and triggers impulsive, emotional, behavioral, and physical aversive reactions for avoidance or mitigation of perceived potential or actual injury. The responses to pain among people and other organisms may involve information processing for appropriate responses to both “deserved and undeserved” tissue injury. Pain is both a biological and physiological...

Keywords

Religious Perspective Faith Healing Identity Affirmation Sensory Discomfort Ritual Observance 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Social Sciences; Anthropology UnitThe Catholic University of Eastern AfricaNairobiKenya