Listening to Pain: Finding Words, Compassion, and Relief

by David Biro MD

Overview

“A journey through art and literature as well as medical experience, seeking ways of understanding, articulating, and relieving pain.”—Perri Klass, Washington Post

In this impassioned and hopeful book, David Biro reveals how to break through the silent wall of suffering—physical and psychological—that all too often accompanies pain and illness. Drawing together compelling stories from patients and insights from some of our greatest thinkers, writers, and artists, Listening to Pain eloquently demonstrates how lan- guage can alleviate the loneliness of pain, paving the way for empathy and effective treatment. Originally published in hardcover under the title The Language of Pain.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393340259
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/13/2011
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

One of New York magazine’s Top Doctors, David Biro, MD, practices in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center. He lives with his wife and twin boys in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

True genius. . . . Biro creates a larger portrait of pain, deftly addressing the physical as well as psychological aspects of the human experience of pain. . . . An important and unique contribution.

Preeti N. Malani

A literate and deeply felt work of medical philosophy that ponders the subtle mystery of how words give meaning to—and even relief from—corporeal and psychic anguish.

Andrew Solomon

[E]rudite and ambitious....Biro brings an extraordinary range of voices into this silence and moves through a huge variety of experience and narrative, without straying too far from the bedside.

Perri Klass - The Washington Post

The book highlights the need to understand how we communicate our pain to one another—especially in people suffering excruciating pain and unable to communicate their suffering to their doctors. The consequences can be disastrous.

Ronald Melzack

David Biro makes effective use of his ability to write as a physician, as a literary scholar, and as someone who has faced a life-threatening illness. The Language of Pain breaks new ground both as a study of metaphor and as a demonstration of the clinical relevance of literary texts. Clinicians who treat pain, people struggling to express their own pain, and scholars of literature and medicine will find much to appreciate in this book.

Arthur W. Frank

Biro’s meditation on pain beautifully distills metaphors of experience from literature, medicine, and real life. The author reveals how patients, struggling against isolation, reach out with words to touch their pain, and, in the process, touch others. Human connections transform pain for this doctor (and patient), who builds a welcoming bridge between clinical medicine and the humanities. Bravo!

Arthur Kleinman

[E]rudite and ambitious....Biro brings an extraordinary range of voices into this silence and moves through a huge variety of experience and narrative, without straying too far from the bedside.— Perri Klass

The Washington Post