Dissolving Unfounded Claims: A Critical Review of Dissolving Pain Dissolving Pain: Simple Brain-training Exercises for Overcoming Chronic Pain

摘要

In Dissolving Pain: Simple Brain-training Exercises for Overcoming Chronic Pain, Les Fehmi (with assistance from journalist Jim Robbins) offers a self-help guide that is heavy on anecdote and light on science. In presenting a case for guided imagery and neurofeed-back as critical therapeutic pathways to permanent pain alleviation, Fehmi centers on "rigid attention" as the root of all evil (and in this case, pain). Chronic pain, it is argued, is maintained and exacerbated by the individual's tendency to narrow the focus of attention onto the presence of pain, thereby inordinately increasing the salience of pain in his or her overall field of focus. Fehmi's prescription for pain relief is to abandon the habits of rigidly and narrowly attending to any particular stimulus in our field of focus, and move toward his trade-marked Open Focus style of attention. In Open Focus, attention is dispersed to all aspects of our present existence, pain being but a singular element no more worthy of our attention than a light breeze. The Open Focus brand of nirvana can be achieved through a succession of guided imagery exercises, provided throughout the book, which lead the patient through a series of" incantations asking if he or she is able to imagine not the object itself, but the space it occupies.