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Listening to Pain: Finding Words, Compassion, and Relief
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Review
Here's a pain medication you can't get at the pharmacy. Biro, an M.D. with a Ph.D. in literature from Oxford, asserts that language itself can alleviate pain--particularly its daunting power to isolate and silence. Illness and especially pain give rise to a wall that separates a person from the world, because pain literally leaves us speechless, Biro finds. What sufferers must do, he asserts, is find the words and images to describe what nobody else feels in exactly the same way. We need to think like Joyce and Tolstoy, Biro declares, and search for metaphors that are universal. His thoughtful, lyrical challenge is, in essence, a study guide to some of the last century's most powerful writers, their metaphors of pain and suffering parsed and pondered. Biro even turns to evocative artist Frida Kahlo to illustrate the look of pain (portraying herself as a wounded deer, for example). And here's why we should pay attention to Biro's difficult, complicated lesson: as long as the conversation lasts, we are not alone. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- Publishers Weekly
At the outset of what looked like a rewarding career as a dermatologist, Biro became incapacitated by a devastatingly painful illness. In a matter of months, he went from an articulate physician with a PhD in literature from Oxford to being muted by pain. It wasn't that he couldn't speak. He could utter words, but they fell flat when he strove to convey to his wife, family, and physicians the degree to which he was suffering. Trying to understand, they heard him, but his words floundered. In his second book since recovery, he regards pain as a landscape accessible to only one person at a time. Yet giving a voice to pain can be therapeutic. Rather than relying on medical experts, Biro turns to those he views as premier standard-bearers of expression and arbiters of personal feelings, the lions of literature, from Joyce to Didion, from Tolstoy to Plath. With their aid, he explains how those in pain may use metaphor to heal suffering and loneliness when merely descriptive language falls short. --Donna Chavez -- Booklist
This well-researched book will be helpful to medical professionals and psychologists as well as those who suffer from chronic or extreme pain, offering encouragement and inspiration for explaining their experiences to their doctors. -- Library Journal
[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
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, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- Publishers Weekly
At the outset of what looked like a rewarding career as a dermatologist, Biro became incapacitated by a devastatingly painful illness. In a matter of months, he went from an articulate physician with a PhD in literature from Oxford to being muted by pain. It wasn't that he couldn't speak. He could utter words, but they fell flat when he strove to convey to his wife, family, and physicians the degree to which he was suffering. Trying to understand, they heard him, but his words floundered. In his second book since recovery, he regards pain as a landscape accessible to only one person at a time. Yet giving a voice to pain can be therapeutic. Rather than relying on medical experts, Biro turns to those he views as premier standard-bearers of expression and arbiters of personal feelings, the lions of literature, from Joyce to Didion, from Tolstoy to Plath. With their aid, he explains how those in pain may use metaphor to heal suffering and loneliness when merely descriptive language falls short. --Donna Chavez -- Booklist
This well-researched book will be helpful to medical professionals and psychologists as well as those who suffer from chronic or extreme pain, offering encouragement and inspiration for explaining their experiences to their doctors. -- Library Journal
[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
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, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Product Description
Pain regularly accompanies illness, as David Biro knows only too well. Faced with a bone marrow transplant, the young doctor was determined to study his pain but found himself unable to articulate its depths, even to his doctors and wife. He has now discovered a way to break through the silent wall of suffering-physical and psychological-and wants to share it with others. In his new book, the critically acclaimed author expertly weaves together compelling stories and artwork from patients along with insights from great thinkers, writers and artists. In the tradition of Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor, Biro's groundbreaking book will transform the reader's understanding of and ability to communicate pain. Language can alleviate the loneliness of pain and improve the chances that other people-family, friends and doctors-empathise and respond most effectively.
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6 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A Unique Synthesis
5 Jan 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Simply stated, this is a remarkable book. Dr. Biro is able to merge his considerable expertise as a doctor of medicine and letters with his own personal experience with a life threatening illness. The result is much more than an exploration of the concept and reality of pain. It is an exploration of what it is to be a human being in the world: thinking, feeling, communicating, and living.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Anonymous
9 Feb 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book is fluid and lyrical with insightful cultural references throughout. It is as good as his first novel , 100 Days, and in spite of what is a difficult topic to communicate he manages beutifully. Highly reccomend it and not designated for just those that have dealt with illness or death.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Anonymous
17 May 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Biro reminds us that pain, like taxes and death, is just around the corner for all of us. Maybe the inevitable is uncomfortable - all the more reason to talk about it. It seems like common sense to explore a language for pain, so we won't feel as isolated when it hits, but apparently not. Biro's book is one of a kind on this subject. He offers us a new understanding of this primal state, along with the hope that by using metaphors to better describe pain, the sufferer can find some way to keep connected to the world. It'd be nice to know the medical community might perk up its ears and listen differently to their patients in pain. It'd be nice to know this groundbreaking work might get some attention. For that unlucky day, when I'm in pain.....
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