Pain acting and identity management of patients with headache in medical care and in partnerships

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Gerd Göckenjan
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2008 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 63956913

In this research project pain acting of patients with chronic headaches will be studied within the field of medical sociology. Pain acting involves all forms of communication to make pain socially relevant. Acting out pain within the medical system differs significantly from acting out pain in everyday life. This study will analyze the identity management of patients with chronic headaches who have to deal with expectations and role demands in medical treatment and in the family and in partnerships respectively.The careers of patients with chronic pain have their points of departure in the failure of mutual understanding and meaningful communication with significant other persons. For chronic back pain it is demonstrated that patient careers do not so much depend on pain alone, rather patients align their pain experience to their pathways into medical pain treatment according to their biographical projects. Chronic pain is used as a vehicle to improve precarious living conditions and to stabilize social relationships. These patients‘ ventures are supported by specialist pain medicine providing the label of the „pain patient“. This label promotes that patients‘ attention is shifted away from pain as everyday discomfort to pain symptoms as pathological entities.We will conduct participant observations in three in-patient clinics for headache treatment with different treatment approaches (two ambitious specialist clinics, one conventional neurological clinic) and conduct interviews with patients, their partners and staff. Interactions, attitudes, patient careers, relationships with partners, life styles and pain ideologies are observed and analyzed. Headaches is a pain field that provides a strong contrast to the present study on „body pain“ carried out in orthopedic and geriatric clinics from which concepts and hypotheses for the proposed project are derived. Our comprehensive research will result in an empirically grounded theory of a sociology of pain management and will contribute towards the sociology of pain.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants