Pain III

Immersion

It worth noting that prior to the onset of pain the individual is immersed or ‘involved’ in their tasks or projects. They experience the world as accessible. Things are ready-to-hand. The individual is capable of the full range of intentional acts that they would usually have, their mode being is that of the habit body. The relation between their body and the world is in congruence, that is to say there is no tension between themselves and the world, and they can experience and act in it without being aware of either. The body is what Husserl called a null or “zero point...the organ of all perceptions” (Welton,1999,p163-64) but not percieved itself. Also, because of this congruence between body and world the individual is not aware of their disability as situation to be experienced, their’disabledness’ as Susan Gabel calls it.

Pain

Michael Polanyi states that a person “lives from his [sic] body to the world.” (Leder,1990,p74)With the onset of pain, that is to say with the first spasm, it “...is the relation in all its dimensions that is disrupted” ( Leder,1990,p74). The book is no longer ready-to-hand, and one can no longer be immersed in the music. The world ‘announces’ itself. Momentairly, the individual becomes aware of the pain, or rather their body as being in pain the world qua collection of objects and of course, their disabledness. But this one spasm is no sufficient to sever the relationship between body and world. Another attempt will be made to regain that immersion. They will try to begin reading again or listening to the music again. If the pain has subsided this will be possible, if it persists it will not. This does not mean that the individual will stop trying, but that all attempts at regaining that immersion will be in vain as the pain begins to draw their attention more and more to their painful body and world, and the impossibility of acting in it. I am now going to outline the individual’s experience of body and world, which whilst are of course related to it each other, need to be articulated as if they were separate to avoid confusion.