The Phenomenological Encounter Between Being-in-Pain and Receiving Acupuncture: A Qualitative Study using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

By Emma Van Loock - Online MSc - Advanced Oriental Medicine

Abstract

Background

Chronic pain, while a significant healthcare issue, remains poorly understood. Acupuncture is a frequently sought after intervention. Its analgesic effect may be through a combination of 'specific' and 'nonspecific' effects, however controversy exists over whether acupuncture is more than 'placebo'. In pain research an ongoing paradigm shift is gradually undermining the Cartesian view of pain as a structural, orthopaedic condition. There is a move towards complexity, with pain now understood as emergent involving a number of dimensions interacting to produce individual outcomes. Acupuncture, understood as a complex intervention, may be well placed to interact with pain within a number of these dimensions.

Aim

To apply a phenomenological perspective to the lived experiences of chronic pain acupuncture patients in order to enhance understandings of the relationship between being-in-pain and receiving acupuncture.

Methodology

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is a research methodology influenced by phenomenology and hermeneutics that offers a novel perspective for scrutinising in depth the complex therapeutic encounter between being-in-pain and receiving acupuncture.

Findings

Three superordinate themes explicated the therapeutic encounter: (1) A journey of becoming a person-in-pain and arriving at acupuncture, (2) The embodied encounter with acupuncture, and (3) Acupuncture as an intersubjective encounter of evolving meanings.

Conclusion

The phenomenological perspective has opened up the inquiry to consider aspects of self-identity, temporally and socially constituted meanings and intersubjectivity in the therapeutic encounter. The embodied encounter revealed de qi as a complex construct that goes beyond sensory descriptors and is open to further exploration. Pain analgesia was important, but validation and the alleviation of personal suffering sometimes took priority. The meaning of the encounter was dynamic and intersubjective, evolving over time through a number of worldly influences. There is no simple universal explanation for how between being-in-pain encounters acupuncture, but by fragments the phenomena is gradually comprehended.