Mission Statement

My mission is to introduce a psychoanalytic approach to the bio-psycho-social model, the accepted model for chronic pain treatment. This model combines medical, psychological and environmental approaches and has been found to be most efficacious in improving the effects of chronic pain. However, I have found that psychoanalysis, which has typically not been a part of the bio-psycho-social model, is a necessary component of successful treatment. I also introduce a spiritual perspective to the bio-psycho-social model, a perspective that I believe offers those who have chronic pain a pathway from suffering and isolation to contentment and fulfillment.

Chronic pain has been called the epidemic of our time. Why is this? Why does chronic pain develop in so many people? Why do some people suffer an injury and get better, while others develop chronic pain?

Most commonly, pain occurs when the body’s alarm system alerts the brain to actual or potential tissue damage. However, eighty million people in this country alone have pain that has persisted for more than three months, or pain that remains past the healing process. This pain is called chronic pain.

Chronic pain is a disease that is defined by an altered nervous system. Stated simply, chronic pain consists of two things:

1. sensations of pain that occur outside the normal healing sequence and,
2. a neurophysiological change in the brain, nervous system and spinal cord such that the body sends and receives pain signals randomly, rather than because of an actual injury.

Chronic pain is a real event—it is a breakdown in the healthy functioning of the nervous system. Extensive research has shown specific issues that very often underlie this event. Dr. Joyce Engel has emphasized the impact of early childhood experiences in the development of chronic pain and many studies since then have shown that childhood trauma increases the risk of the occurrence of chronic pain syndromes.

In fact, research has revealed that 80% of people with chronic pain have suffered from some form of early childhood trauma. In many years of work with individuals suffering from chronic pain, I have consistently found this to be validated.

I believe that chronic pain is a message from the body that hidden trauma exists and needs to be uncovered in order to be healed.

My concern is to treat not just the symptoms of chronic pain but to allow the patient to regain physical and emotional functionality through addressing the roots of the disease. For that reason, my conviction is that chronic pain can be the beginning of healing.