ological purpose. Chronic pain can have asignificant impact on the quality of person’s life as chronic pain can triggerpsychological as well as physical and emotional problems that leads to feelings ofhelplessness and hopelessness as most chronic pain can not be cured (Goleman andGurin ,1993).Pain theories that I will discussing in this paper are specificity , pattern and gatecontrol theory as these are the major theories that assist in explaining the concepts ofpain . The modern perspective sees the concept of pain from a view that includespsychological factors but the earlier theories such as Specificity theory and Patterntheory were more focused on tissue damage as the cause of pain.The Specificity theory was originated in Greece .This theory was highlighted byDescartes in 1664 who expressed that the pain system as being like a “bell - ringingmechanism in a church”(Melzack and Wall , p196,1984) .Descartes (cited in Melzackand Wall ,1984) explained that when someone pulls the rope to ring the bell, the bellrings in the tower. Hence, specificity theory suggests that pain is caused by injury ordamage to body tissue. The damaged nerve fibres in our bodies sends directmessages through the specific pain receptors and fibres to the pain center, the brainwhich causes the individual to feel pain (Adams and Bromley ,1998). This theorysuggest that there is a strong link between pain and injury and that the severity ofinjury determines the amount of pain experienced by the person (Brannon and Feist ,2000). The Pattern theory was incorporated into the specificity theory which added moreconcepts to explain and extended its hypothesis of pain .The pattern theory states thatnerve fibres that carry pain signals can also transmit messages of cold, warmth andpressure can also transfer pain if an injury or damage to body tissue occurs (Adamsand Bromley,1998).The Pattern theory claims that pain is felt as a consequence to theamoun...
