Volume 11, Number 1 · July 11, 1968
Ouch!
By Charles Rycroft
Disease, Pain and Sacrifice
by David Bakan
Chicago, 134 pp., $5.95
Individuality in Pain and Suffering
by Asenath Petrie
Chicago, 153 pp., $5.00
Although both these books are about pain and suffering and are written by psychologists, they are as unlike as chalk and cheese. Dr. Bakan's is concerned with the philosophy of pain, and with its biological and existential meaning, while Dr. Petrie's is concerned with experimental data about pain, with techniques for measuring it and elucidating the ways in which different temperamental and diagnostic groups experience it. Dr. Bakan conceives ideas about pain; Dr. Petrie reports observations on it. Dr. Bakan assumes that his readers are persons of wide and high culture, equally at home in evolutionary theory, psychoanalysis, and theology; Dr. Petrie is writing primarily for research workers and describes in detail her experimental methods and the statistical analyses of her results.
Review, 2210 words
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