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Odyssey
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This article is about Homer's epic poem. For other uses, see Odyssey (disambiguation).
Odyssey
Beginning of Odyssey in original language
Author
Homer
Country
Greece
Language
Ancient Greek
Genre(s)
Epic Poetry
Publisher
Various
Publication date
Before Common Era
ISBN
n/a
The Odyssey (Greek: Ὀδύσσεια or Odússeia) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. The poem was probably written near the end of the eighth century BC, somewhere along the Greek-controlled western Turkey seaside, Ionia.[1] The poem is, in part, a sequel to Homer's Iliad and mainly centers on the Greek hero Odysseus (or Ulysses, as he was known in Roman myths) and his long journey home to Ithaca following the fall of Troy.
It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War.[2] During this absence, his son Telemachus and wife Penelope must deal with a group of unruly suitors, called Proci, to compete for Penelope's hand in marriage, since most have assumed that Odysseus has died.
The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon and is indeed the second—the Iliad is the first—extant work of Western literature. It continues to be read in Homeric Greek and translated into modern languages around the world. The original poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos, perhaps a rhapsode, and was intended more to be sung than read.[3] The details of the ancient oral performance, and the story's conversion to a written work inspire continual debate among scholars. The Odyssey was written in a regionless poetic dialect of Greek and comprises 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter. Among the most impressive elements of the text are its strikingly modern non-linear plot, and the fact that events are shown to depend as much on the choices made by women and serfs as on the actions of fighting men. In the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage.
Contents[hide]
1 Synopsis
2 Character of Odysseus
3 Structure
4 The geography of the Odyssey
5 Dating the Odyssey
6 Near Eastern influences
7 Derivative works
7.1 Written works
7.2 Stage and film
7.3 Music
7.4 Other
8 References
9 External links
9.1 Partial list of English translations
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Synopsis
Telemachus, Odysseus' son, is only a month old when Odysseus sets out for Troy.[4] At the point where the Odyssey begins, ten years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War, Telemachus is twenty and is sharing his missing father’s house on the island of Ithaca with his mother Penelope and a crowd of 108 boisterous young men, "the Suitors," whose aim is to persuade Penelope to accept her husband’s disappearance as final and to marry one of them.
The goddess Athena (who is Odysseus’s protector) discusses his fate with Zeus, king of the gods, at a moment when Odysseus's enemy, the god of the Sea Poseidon, is absent from Mount Olympus. Then, disguised as a Taphian chieftain named Mentes, she visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father. He offers her hospitality; they observe the Suitors dining rowdily, and the bard Phemius performing a narrative poem for them. Penelope objects to Phemius's theme, the "Return from Troy"[5] because it reminds her of her missing husband, but Telemachus rebuts her objections.
That night, Athena disguised as Telemachus finds a ship and crew for the true Telemachus. Next morning Telemachus calls an assembly of citizens of Ithaca to discuss what should be done to the suitors. Along this journey Telemachus will mature and become a man. Accompanied by Athena (now disguised as his friend Mentor) he departs for the Greek mainland and the household of Nestor, most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy, now at home in Pylos. From there Telemachus rides overland, accompanied by Nestor's son, to Sparta, where he finds Menelaus and Helen, now reconciled. He is told that they returned to Greece after a long voyage by way of Egypt; there, on the magical island of Pharos, Menelaus encountered the old sea-god Proteus, who told him that Odysseus is a captive of the mysterious nymph Calypso. Incidentally Telemachus learns the fate of Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks at Troy, murdered on his return home by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.
Further information: Telemachy

Charles Gleyre, Odysseus and Nausicaä
Meanwhile, Odysseus, after wanderings about which we are still to learn, has spent seven years in captivity on the nymph Calypso's distant island. She is now persuaded by the messenger god Hermes, sent by Zeus to release him. Odysseus builds a raft and is given clothing, food and drink by Calypso. It is wrecked (the sea-god Poseidon is his enemy) but he swims ashore on the island of Scherie, where, naked and exhausted, he falls asleep. Next morning, awakened by the laughter of girls, he sees the young Nausicaa, who has gone to the seashore with her maids to wash clothes. He appeals to her for help. She encourages him to seek the hospitality of her parents Arete and Alcinous. Odysseus is welcomed and is not at first asked for his name. He remains several days with Alcinous, takes part in an athletic competition, and hears the blind singer Demodocus perform two narrative poems. The first is an otherwise obscure incident of the Trojan War, the "Quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles"; the second is the amusing tale of a love affair between two Olympian gods, Ares and Aphrodite. Finally Odysseus asks Demodocus to return to the Trojan War theme and tell of the Trojan Horse, a stratagem in which Odysseus had played a leading role. Unable to hide his emotion as he relives this episode, Odysseus at last reveals his identity. He then begins to tell the amazing story of his return from Troy.

Odysseus Overcome by Demodocus' Song, by Francesco Hayez, 1813-15
After a piratical raid on Ismaros in the land of the Cicones, he and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms. They visited the lazy Lotus-Eaters and were captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus, escaping by blinding him with a wooden stake. They stayed with Aeolus the master of the winds; he gave Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home, had not the sailors foolishly opened the bag while Odysseus slept. All the winds flew out and the resulting storm drove the ships back the way they had come just as Ithaca came into sight.
After pleading in vain with Aeolus to help them again, they re-embarked and encountered the cannibal Laestrygones. Odysseus’s own ship was the only one to escape. He sailed on and visited the witch-goddess Circe. She turned half of his men into swine after feeding them cheese and wine. Hermes met with Odysseus and gave him a drug called moly, a resistance to Circe’s magic. Circe, being attracted to Odysseus' resistance, fell in love with him. Circe released his men. Odysseus and his crew remained with her on the island for one year, while they feasted and drank. Finally, Odysseus' men convinced Odysseus that it was time to leave for Ithaca. Guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew crossed the ocean and reached a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrificed to the dead and summoned the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias to advise him. Next Odysseus met the spirit of his own mother, who had died of grief at his long absence; from her he learned for the first time news of his own household, threatened by the greed of the suitors. Here, too, he met the spirits of famous women and famous men; notably he encountered the spirit of Agamemnon, of whose murder he now learned, who also warned him about the dangers of women (for Odysseus' encounter with the dead see also Nekuia).
Returning to Circe’s island, they were advised by her on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirted the land of the Sirens, passed between the many-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, and landed on the island of Thrinacia. There Odysseus’ men, ignoring the warnings of Tiresias and Circe, hunted down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios. This sacrilege was punished by a shipwreck in which all but Odysseus himself were drowned. He was washed ashore on the island of Calypso, where she compelled him to remain as her lover for seven years, and he had only now escaped.
Having listened with rapt attention to his story, the Phaeacians, who are skilled mariners, agree to help Odysseus on his way home. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbor on Ithaca. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own former slaves, the swineherd Eumaeus. Odysseus now plays the part of a wandering beggar in order to learn how things stand in his household. After dinner he tells the farm laborers a fictitious tale of himself: he was born in Crete, had led a party of Cretans to fight alongside other Greeks in the Trojan War, and had then spent seven years at the court of the king of Egypt; finally he had been shipwrecked in Thesprotia and crossed from there to Ithaca.
Meanwhile Telemachus, whom we left at Sparta, sails home, evading an ambush set by the suitors. He disembarks on the coast of Ithaca and makes for Eumaeus’s hut. Father and son meet; Odysseus identifies himself to Telemachus (but still not to Eumaeus) and they determine that the suitors must be killed. Telemachus gets home first. Accompanied by Eumaeus, Odysseus now returns to his own house, still disguised as a beggar. He experiences the suitors’ rowdy behavior and plans their death. He meets Penelope: he tests her intentions with an invented story of his birth in Crete, where, he says, he once met Odysseus. Closely questioned, he adds that he had recently been in Thesprotia and had learned something there of Odysseus’s recent wanderings.
Odysseus’s identity is discovered by the housekeeper, Eurycleia, as she is washing his feet and discovers an old scar Odysseus got during a boar hunt; he swears her to secrecy. Next day, at Athena’s prompting, Penelope maneuvers the suitors into competing for her hand with an archery competition using Odysseus' bow. Odysseus takes part in the competition himself; he alone is strong enough to string the bow and therefore wins. He turns his arrows on the suitors and with the help of Athena, Telemachus and Eumaeus, all the suitors are killed. Odysseus and Telemachus kill (by hanging) twelve of their household maids, who had slept with the suitors; they mutilate and kill the goatherd Melanthius, who had mocked and abused Odysseus. Now at last Odysseus identifies himself to Penelope. She is hesitant, but accepts him when he correctly describes to her the bed he built for her when they married.
The next day he and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laertes, who likewise accepts his identity only when Odysseus correctly describes the orchard that Laertes once gave him.
The citizens of Ithaca have followed Odysseus on the road, planning to avenge the killing of the Suitors, their sons. Their leader points out that Odysseus has now caused the deaths of two generations of the men of Ithaca—his sailors, not one of whom survived, and the suitors, whom he has now executed. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades both sides to give up the vendetta. After this, Ithaca is at peace once more, concluding The Odyssey.[6]

Character of Odysseus
Main article: Odysseus
Odysseus' heroic trait is his mētis, or "cunning intelligence"; he is often described as the "Peer of Zeus in Counsel." This intelligence is most often manifested by his use of disguise and deceptive speech. His disguises take forms both physical (altering his appearance) and verbal, such as telling the Cyclops (Polyphemus) that his name is Ουτις, "Nobody", then escaping after blinding Polyphemus. When queried by other Cyclopes about why he is screaming, Polyphemus replies that "Nobody" is hurting him, and with that, it sounds as if nobody or rather no mortal is hurting him and therefore the other Cyclopes assume that he is suffering at the hand of immortal Zeus. "If alone as you are [Polyphemus] none uses violence on you, why, there is no avoiding the sickness sent by great Zeus; so you had better pray to your father, the lord Poseidon." From the Odyssey of Homer translated by Richmond Lattimore [Book 9, page 147/8, lines 410 - 412]. The most evident flaw that Odysseus sports is that of his arrogance and his pride, or hubris. As he sails away from the Cyclops's island, he shouts his name and boasts that no one can defeat the "Great Odysseus". The Cyclops then throws the top half of a mountain at him, and tells his father, Poseidon, that Odysseus blinded him, which enrages Poseidon and causes the god to thwart Odysseus' homecoming for a very long time.

Structure
The Odyssey begins in medias res, meaning that the plot begins in the middle of the overall story, and that prior events are described through flashbacks or storytelling. This device is imitated by later authors of literary epics, for example, Virgil in the Aeneid, as well as modern poets such as Alexander Pope in the mock-epic, or mock-heroic, "The Rape of the Lock".
In the first episodes, we trace Telemachus' efforts to assert control of the household, and then, at Athena’s advice, to search for news of his long-lost father. Then the scene shifts: Odysseus has been a captive of the beautiful nymph Calypso, with whom he has spent seven of his ten lost years. Released by the intercession of his patroness Athena, he departs, but his raft is destroyed by his divine enemy Poseidon, who is angry because Odysseus blinded his son, Polyphemus. When Odysseus washes up on Scherie, home to the Phaeacians, he is assisted by the young Nausicaa and is treated hospitably. In return he satisfies the Phaeacians' curiosity, telling them, and the reader, of all his adventures since departing from Troy. This renowned, extended "flashback" leads Odysseus back to where he stands, his tale told. The shipbuilding Phaeacians finally loan him a ship to return to Ithaca, where he is aided by the swineherd Eumaeus, meets Telemachus, regains his household, kills the suitors, and is reunited with his faithful wife, Penelope.
Nearly all modern editions and translations of the Odyssey are divided into 24 books. This division is convenient but not original; it was developed by Alexandrian editors of the 3rd century BC. In the Classical period, moreover, several of the books (individually and in groups) were given their own titles: the first four books, focusing on Telemachus, are commonly known as the Telemachy; Odysseus' narrative, Book 9, featuring his encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus, is traditionally called the Cyclopeia; and Book 11, the section describing his meeting with the spirits of the dead is known as the Nekuia. Books 9 through 12, wherein Odysseus recalls his adventures for his Phaeacian hosts, are collectively referred to as the Apologoi: Odysseus' "stories". Book 22, wherein Odysseus kills all the suitors, has been given the title Mnesterophonia: "slaughter of the suitors".
The last 548 lines of the Odyssey, corresponding to Book 24, are believed by many scholars to have been added by a slightly later poet. Several passages in earlier books seem to be setting up the events of Book 24, so if it is indeed a later addition, the offending editor would seem to have changed earlier text as well. For more about varying views on the origin, authorship and unity of the poem see Homeric scholarship.

The geography of the Odyssey

Reconstitution of the world described by the Odyssey
Main articles: Homer's Ithaca and Geography of the Odyssey
Events in the main sequence of the Odyssey (excluding the narrative of Odysseus) take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands. There are difficulties in the identification of Ithaca, the homeland of Odysseus, which may or may not be the same island that is now called Ithake. The wanderings of Odysseus as told to the Phaeacians, and the location of the Phaeacians' own island of Scherie, pose more fundamental geographical problems: scholars both ancient and modern are divided as to whether or not any of the places visited by Odysseus (after Ismaros and before his return to Ithaca) are real.

Dating the Odyssey
In 2008, scientists Marcelo Magnasco and Constantino Baikouzis at Rockefeller University used clues in the text and astronomical data to attempt to pinpoint the time of Odysseus's return from his journey after the Trojan War. [7]
The first clue is Odysseus's sighting of Venus just before dawn as he arrives on Ithaca. The second is a new moon on the night before the massacre of the suitors. The final clue is a total eclipse, falling over Ithaca around noon, when Penelope's suitors sit down for their noon meal. The seer Theoclymenus approaches the suitors and foretells their death, saying, "The Sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world."
Doctors Baikouzis and Magnasco state that "[t]he odds that purely fictional references to these phenomena (so hard to satisfy simultaneously) would coincide by accident with the only eclipse of the century are minute." They conclude that these three astronomical "references 'cohere,' in the sense that the astronomical phenomena pinpoint the date of 16 April, 1178 B.C." as the most likely date of Odysseus' return.

Near Eastern influences
Scholars have seen strong influences from Near Eastern mythology and literature in the Odyssey. Martin West has noted substantial parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey.[8] Both Odysseus and Gilgamesh are known for traveling to the ends of the earth, and on their journeys go to the land of the dead. On his voyage to the underworld Odysseus follows instructions given to him by Circe, a goddess who is the daughter of the sun-god Helios. Her island, Aeaea, is located at the edges of the world, and seems to have close associations with the sun. Like Odysseus, Gilgamesh gets directions on how to reach the land of the dead from a divine helper: in this case she is the goddess Siduri, who, like Circe, dwells by the sea at the ends of the earth. Her home is also associated with the sun: Gilgamesh reaches Siduri's house by passing through a tunnel underneath Mt. Mashu, the high mountain from which the sun comes into the sky. West argues that the similarity of Odysseus's and Gilgamesh's journeys to the edges of the earth are the result of the influence of the Gilgamesh epic upon the Odyssey.

Derivative works

Written works
True Story by Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd century AD. A parody of the Odyssey describing a journey beyond the Pillars of Hercules and to the moon.
A modern novel inspired by the Odyssey is James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). Every episode of Joyce's novel has an assigned theme, technique and correspondences between its characters and those of Homer's Odyssey.
Merugud Uilix maicc Leirtis is an eccentric Old Irish version of the material; the work exists in a twelfth-century manuscript that linguists believe is based on an eighth-century original
Some of the tales of Sinbad the Sailor from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) were taken from Homer's Odyssey.
Nikos Kazantzakis wrote The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, a 33,333 line epic poem which continues Odysseus's journeys past the point of his arrival in Ithaca.
Andrew Lang and H. Rider Haggard collaborated on The World's Desire in which Odysseus and Helen meet in Egypt at the time of the Exodus.
The 1997 novel Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, about a confederate war deserter returning home, is based on The Odyssey.
The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood, retells the story from the point of view of Penelope.
"Menelaiad," by John Barth, is a retelling of Telemachus's visit to Menelaus, reprinted in Barth's Lost in the Funhouse.
The short story The Ulyssey by Uruguayan writer Rodrigo Tisnés, tells in a humorous way, the frustrated attempt of two friends both named Ulysses in Eastern Holidays, to travel from Montevideo in Uruguay to Florianopolis in Brazil.
The third part of Thomas Wolfe's novel Of Time and the River is entitled Telemachus.
R.A. Lafferty retold the story in a science fiction setting in his novel Space Chantey. Another science fiction retelling of the Odyssey is R L Fanthorpe's novel Negative Minus, in which all the names are spelled backwards (for example "Suessydo", "Ecric" and "Acahti").
The first half of Virgil's Aeneid parallels the Odyssey in structure.
Alfred Lord Tennyson alludes to the epic in two of his poems, Ulysses and The Lotus-Eaters.
In Dante's Divine Comedy ("Inferno XXVI"), Odysseus is punished as a fraudulent advisor in Hell, talking about the Hubris of his last voyage (over the edge). (Yet this story is not taken from Homer's Odyssey.)
Ilium and Olympos, by author Dan Simmons, are a science fiction adaptation of the events of the Iliad and Odyssey, complete with robots and posthumans.
Dr. Jonathan Shay's book "Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming" (2002), uses Odysseus as metaphor, focusing on the veteran’s experience upon returning from war and highlighting the role of military policy in promoting the mental and physical safety of soldiers.

Stage and film
The contemporary play Highway Ulysses by Rinde Eckert tells the story of the journey of a Vietnam veteran traveling to his son, meeting modern day characters akin to characters or monsters in the Odyssey (including the Sirens and Cyclops).
"Telemachus Clay" by Lewis John Martin is a contemporary play about the movies that an old man watches that rekindles his childhood, and his son, Telemachus, watches the father he never knew grow up in the big city as he meets many strange characters along the way.
The 1954 Broadway musical The Golden Apple by librettist John Treville Latouche and composer Jerome Moross was freely adapted from the Iliad and the Odyssey, re-setting the action to the American state of Washington in the years after the Spanish-American War, with events inspired by the Iliad in Act Four and events inspired by the Odyssey in Act Three.
2001: A Space Odyssey, a 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick. Besides the title, there are also other influences of the Homeric Odyssey on the film.
in 1969 RAI produced a series strongly based on the original Homer's epic.
"The Odyssey", a made for TV movie from 1997 made by Hallmark Entertainment and directed by Andrei Konchalovsky is a slightly abbreviated version of the tale which encompasses Homer's epic. It stars Armand Assante, Greta Scacchi, Isabella Rossellini and Vanessa L. Williams.
The movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? has the basic plot of The Odyssey;[9] Joel and Ethan Coen admit to basing the movie loosely on the Odyssey (and explicitly reference it in the opening credits) but insist that they haven't read it.
Odyssey: A Stage Version, 1993 play, divided into two acts (respectively broken up into 14 and 6 scenes) written by Derek Walcott and originally performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The film Paris-Texas (1984) by Wim Wenders has broad allusions to the Odyssey. Wim Wenders explained on Australian SBS television that he wanted to make a film about a man coming out of hell to reunite his family and reread the epic prior to commencing the film.
The anime Ulysses 31 featured a science-fiction tale of a hero trying to get back to his wife Penelope.
The Desmond Hume storyline on Lost may be based partly on The Odyssey; Desmond goes on a "race around the world" in order to win back his honor and marry his girlfriend Penelope. In addition, Desmond discovers an underground Hatch in which he must type a computer code every 108 minutes, echoing Penelope's 108 suitors.
The main character of Hayao Miyazaki's movie Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is named after the princess in the Odyssey.
The film To Vlemma tou Odyssea (Ulysses' Gaze) (1995) by Theo Angelopoulos strongly relies on thematic parallels with the epic.
On the television series Stargate SG-1, the BC-304 Odyssey is the flagship of Earth's interstellar war fleet.
The Spongebob Squarepants Movie has several points based on the Odyssey, including a bag of winds, and a diver akin to a cyclops.
In the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, it is stated that the film Apocalypse Now takes some inspiration from the Odyssey.
Naomi Iizuka's play Anon(ymous) resets the Odyssey in modern America.
The Simpsons episode Tales from the Public Domain features Homer Simpson as Odysseus, Marge as Penelope and Bart as Telemachus.

Music
Progressive metal band Symphony X pays tribute to the poem with an epic "Beast" song The Odyssey clocking in at 24:14 minutes.
Cream's Tales of Brave Ulysses recounts Odysseus's encounter with the Sirens.
Tank Girl: Odyssey borrows freely and irreverently from Homer and from James Joyce's Ulysses, casting targets in the contemporary media as the trials the heroine must overcome to get back to her mutant kangaroo boyfriend.
"An Odyssey of Homecoming", was a 2007 piano adaptation by composer and author Maia McCormick.
The Steely Dan song Home at Last is inspired by Odysseus' encounter with the Sirens.
Suzanne Vega's song "Calypso".
"More News From Nowhere" on Nick Cave's 2008 album "Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!" is based on the Odyssey and appears to draw parallels between Cave's life and Odysseus' long journey back to Ithaca.
"Mons Venus", "Sins, They Run Like Wine" and "The Snakepit" on Betty X's 2006 album "Memoirs of a Pain Junkie" are loosely based on the Odyssey and inspired the creation of a Medusa and Kali hybrid demon Mons Venus, who is a recurring lyrical character throughout songs in Betty X's lyrics. Betty X is also mentioned in the Nick Cave song "More News From Nowhere."

Other
The Peabody Award-winning The Odyssey of Homer (1981), written, produced and directed by Yuri Rasovsky, dramatized the epic for radio in eight one-hour episodes. Syndicated in the U.S. and broadcast by the CBC, the program was later published as an audiobook.
In Jean-Luc Godard's film Le Mépris (Contempt) (1963) German film director Fritz Lang plays himself trying to direct a film adaptation of Homer's Odyssey.
Odds Bodkin has published a retelling of the Odyssey, featuring vocal storytelling and musical accompaniment, entitled "The Odyssey". This work includes most of the plot of Homer's "Odyssey," and is narrated from Odysseus's point of view.
Odysseus: The Greatest Hero Of Them All was a spin-off of children's programme Jackanory in which Tony Robinson tells a version of the Odyssey re-written for children by himself and Richard Curtis. The narration and characters were all performed by Robinson in real locations. Their version of the story was also published as 2 print books and an audio book.
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria is an opera by Monteverdi based on the final part of Homer's Odyssey.

References
^ D.C.H. Rieu's introduction to The Odyssey (Penguin, 2003), p. xi.
^ The dog Argos dies autik' idont' Odusea eeikosto eniauto ("seeing Odysseus again in the twentieth year"), Odyssey 17.327; cf. also 2.174-6, 23.102, 23.170.
^ D.C.H. Rieu's introduction to The Odyssey (Penguin, 2003), p. xi.
^ The Odyssey, Book XIV.
^ This theme once existed in the form of a written epic, Nostoi, now lost.
^ Outline originally based on Dalby, Andrew (2006), written at New York, London, Rediscovering Homer, Norton, ISBN 0393057887 pp. xx-xxiv.
^ Baikouzis, Constantino & Magnasco, Marcelo O. (June 24, 2008), Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.0803317105, <http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0803317105v1>. Retrieved on 27 June 2008
^ West, Martin. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. (Oxford 1997) 402-417.
^ Joel Coen said in an interview, We didn’t start out to do an adaptation of The Odyssey. It just sort of occurred to us after we’d gotten into it somewhat that it was a story about someone going home, and sort of episodic in nature and it kind of evolved into that. It's very loosely and very sort of unseriously based on The Odyssey. See: Steve Palopoli,Joel and Ethan’s Big Adventure, Total Movie, pp. 55.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Odyssey

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Odyssey

Look up Odyssey inWiktionary, the free dictionary.
Odyssey in Ancient Greek and translation from Perseus Project, with hyperlinks to grammatical and mythological commentary
Greek Myth: the Odyssey
The Meaning of Tradition in Homer's Odyssey by Marcel Bas. Views The Odyssey from the perspective of Indo-European tradition and religion.
Homer's Odyssey resources on the Web by Jorn Barger. Provides links to the original and various public domain translations.
Detailed synopsis with analysis
Odyssey Audio with English Text
Dindorf's edition of Scholia to the Odyssey, 1855

Partial list of English translations




This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Odyssey. For a more complete list see English translations of Homer.
George Chapman, 1616 (couplets)
Alexander Pope, 1713 (couplets); Project Gutenberg edition; [1]
William Cowper, 1791 (blank verse)
Samuel Henry Butcher and Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg edition; [2]
William Cullen Bryant, 1871 (blank verse)
William Morris, 1887
Samuel Butler, 1898 (prose), Project Gutenberg edition; [3]
Padraic Colum, 1918 (prose), Great Books Online
A. T. Murray (revised by George E. Dimock), 1919; Loeb Classical Library (ISBN 0-674-99561-9)
T. E. Shaw (T. E. Lawrence), 1932
W. H. D. Rouse, 1937, prose
E. V. Rieu, 1945, prose
Robert Fitzgerald, 1963 (ISBN 0-679-72813-9)
Richmond Lattimore, 1965 (ISBN 0-06-093195-7)
Albert Cook, 1967 (Norton Critical Edition)
Walter Shewring, 1980 (ISBN 0-19-283375-8), Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), prose
Allen Mandelbaum, 1990
Robert Fagles, 1996 (ISBN 0-14-026886-3); an unabridged audio recording by Ian McKellen is also available (ISBN 0-14-086430-X).
Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 2000 (ISBN 0-87220-484-7). An audio CD recording read by the translator is also available (ISBN 1-930972-06-7).
Martin Hammond, 2000, prose
Edward McCrorie, 2004 (ISBN 0-8018-8267-2), Johns Hopkins University Press.
Perseus Project Od.1.1
Ian Johnston, 2004 - verse: Full text
[show]
v • d • eEpic Cycle
Cypria · Iliad · Aithiopis · Little Iliad · Iliou persis · Nostoi · Odyssey · Telegony
[show]
v • d • ePlaces visited by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey
Ismarus · The island of Lotophagi · The island of Polyphemus · Aeolia · Telepylos · Aeaea · The Underworld · The Sirens · Scylla and Charybdis · Thrinacia · Ogygia · Scheria · Ithaca

Four Minute Mile
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This article is about the album by The Get Up Kids. For the running of a mile in under four minutes, see four-minute mile .
Four Minute Mile

Studio album by The Get Up Kids
Released
September 30, 1997
Recorded
April 1997
Genre
EmoAlternative rock
Length
34:49
Label
Doghouse
Producer
Bob Weston
Professional reviews
Allmusic link
Star Pulse Music link
The Get Up Kids chronology
Woodson EP(1997)
Four Minute Mile(1997)
Red Letter Day EP(1999)
Alternate cover

Alternate cover for the remastered edition re-released in 2001
Four Minute Mile is the first full-length album released by Emo band The Get Up Kids. It was recorded in April 1997 with Bob Weston in Chicago in only two days.[1] It was released by Doghouse Records on September 30, 1997.
A remastered version of the album was released in 2001.
Contents[hide]
1 Track listing
2 Personnel
3 References
4 External links
//

[edit] Track listing
All songs written and composed by The Get Up Kids.
Something to Write Home About
#
Title
Length
1.
"Coming Clean"
2:07
2.
"Don't Hate Me"
2:54
3.
"Fall Semester"
3:21
4.
"Stay Gold, Ponyboy"
2:55
5.
"Lowercase West Thomas"
1:59
6.
"Washington Square Park"
3:08
7.
"Last Place You Look"
2:31
8.
"Better Half"
3:25
9.
"No Love"
3:05
10.
"Shorty"
3:22
11.
"Michele With One "L""
6:02

[edit] Personnel
Matt Pryor - Lead Vocals, Guitar
Jim Suptic - Guitar, Vocals
Rob Pope - Bass
Ryan Pope - Drums
Bob Weston - Producer, Engineering, Mixing
Robert A.A. Lowe - Vocals
Scott Ritcher - Cover Art

[edit] References
^ Alternative Press Issue 204 "Say Goodnight, Mean Goodbye: The Oral History of The Get Up Kids"

[edit] External links
Doghouse Records
The Get Up Kids
[hide]
v • d • eThe Get Up Kids
Matthew Pryor – Jim Suptic – Rob Pope – Ryan Pope – James Dewees
Studio Albums
Four Minute Mile – Something to Write Home About – On a Wire – Guilt Show
EPs
Woodson – Red Letter Day – iTunes Session EP
Split 7"
Split with Coalesce – Post Marked Stamps No. 4 – Split with The Anniversary
Compilation Albums
Eudora
Live Albums
Live! @ The Granada Theater
Singles
Shorty – A Newfound Interest in Massachusetts – Ten Minutes – Action & Action – Wouldn't Believe It
Labels
Vagrant – Doghouse
Side Projects
Reggie and the Full Effect – The New Amsterdams – Blackpool Lights – The Terrible Twos – Spoon – White Whale – Tijuana Crime Scene
Related Articles
Emo – Ed Rose – Black Lodge Studios
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Minute_Mile"
Categories: The Get Up Kids albums 1997 albums Debut albums The Get Up Kids Matt Pryor albums

Pain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about physical pain. For pain in a broader sense, see suffering. For other uses, see Pain (disambiguation).
Pain
ICD-10
R52
ICD-9
338
DiseasesDB
9503
MedlinePlus
002164
MeSH
D010146
Pain, in the sense of physical pain,[1] is a typical sensory experience that may be described as the unpleasant awareness of a noxious stimulus or bodily harm. Individuals experience pain by various daily hurts and aches, and occasionally through more serious injuries or illnesses. For scientific and clinical purposes, pain is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage".[2][3]
Pain is highly subjective to the individual experiencing it. A definition that is widely used in nursing was first given as early as 1968 by Margo McCaffery: "'Pain is whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he says it does".[4][5]
Pain of any type is the most frequent reason for physician consultation in the United States, prompting half of all Americans to seek medical care annually.[6] It is a major symptom in many medical conditions, significantly interfering with a person's quality of life and general functioning. Diagnosis is based on characterizing pain in various ways, according to duration, intensity, type (dull, burning or stabbing), source, or location in body. Usually pain stops without treatment or responds to simple measures such as resting or taking an analgesic, and it is then called ‘acute’ pain. But it may also become intractable and develop into a condition called chronic pain, in which pain is no longer considered a symptom but an illness by itself. The study of pain has in recent years attracted many different fields such as pharmacology, neurobiology, nursing sciences, dentistry, physiotherapy, and psychology. Pain medicine is a separate subspecialty[7] figuring under some medical specialties like anesthesiology, physiatry, neurology, psychiatry.
Pain is part of the body's defense system, triggering a reflex reaction to retract from a painful stimulus, and helps adjust behaviour to increase avoidance of that particular harmful situation in the future. Given its significance, physical pain is also linked to various cultural, religious, philosophical, or social issues.
Etymology : "Pain (n.) 1297, "punishment," especially for a crime; also (c.1300) "condition one feels when hurt, opposite of pleasure," from O.Fr. peine, from L. poena "punishment, penalty" (in L.L. also "torment, hardship, suffering"), from Gk. poine "punishment," from PIE *kwei- "to pay, atone, compensate" (...)."Online Etymology Dictionary
Contents[hide]
1 Clarification on the use of certain pain-related terms
2 Mechanism
3 Evolutionary and behavioral role
4 Diagnosis
4.1 Verbal characterization
4.2 Intensity
4.3 Localization
5 Management
5.1 Anesthesia
5.2 Analgesia
5.3 Complementary and alternative medicine
6 Special cases
6.1 Phantom pain
6.2 Pain asymbolia
6.3 Insensitivity to pain
6.4 Psychogenic pain
6.5 Pain as pleasure
7 Society and culture
8 In other species
9 Notes and references
10 External links
//

[edit] Clarification on the use of certain pain-related terms
The word pain used without a modifier usually refers to physical pain, but it may also refer to pain in the broad sense, i.e. suffering. The latter includes physical pain and mental pain, or any unpleasant feeling, sensation, and emotion. It may be described as a private feeling of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm in an individual. Care should be taken to make the appropriate distinction when required between the two meanings. For instance, philosophy of pain is essentially about physical pain, while a philosophical outlook on pain is rather about pain in the broad sense. Or, as another quite different instance, nausea or itch are not 'physical pains', but they are unpleasant sensory or bodily experience, and a person 'suffering' from severe or prolonged nausea or itch may be said 'in pain'.
Nociception, the unconscious activity induced by a harmful stimulus in sense receptors, peripheral nerves, spinal column and brain, should not be confused with physical pain, which is a conscious experience. Nociception or noxious stimuli usually cause pain, but not always, and sometimes pain occurs without them.[8]
Qualifiers, such as mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual, are often used for referring to more specific types of pain or suffering. In particular, 'mental pain' may be used in relationship with 'physical pain' for distinguishing between two wide categories of pain. A first caveat concerning such a distinction is that it uses 'physical pain' in a sense that normally includes not only the 'typical sensory experience' of 'physical pain' but also other unpleasant bodily experience such as itch or nausea. A second caveat is that the terms physical or mental should not be taken too literally: physical pain, as a matter of fact, happens through conscious minds and involves emotional aspects, while mental pain happens through physical brains and, being an emotion, it involves important bodily physiological aspects.
The term unpleasant or unpleasantness commonly means painful or painfulness in a broad sense. It is also used in (physical) pain science for referring to the affective dimension of pain, usually in contrast with the sensory dimension. For instance: “Pain-unpleasantness is often, though not always, closely linked to both the intensity and unique qualities of the painful sensation.”[9] Pain science acknowledges, in a puzzling challenge to IASP definition, that pain may be experienced as a sensation devoid of any unpleasantness: see below pain asymbolia.[10]
Suffering is sometimes used in the specific narrow sense of physical pain, but more often it refers to mental pain, or more often yet to pain in the broad sense. Suffering is described as an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm.
The terms pain and suffering are often used together in different senses which can become confusing, for example:
being used as synonyms;
being used in contradistinction to one another: e.g. "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional", or "pain is physical, suffering is mental";
being used to define each other: e.g. "pain is physical suffering", or "suffering is severe physical or mental pain".
To avoid confusion: this article is about physical pain in the narrow sense of a typical sensory experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. This excludes pain in the broad sense of any unpleasant experience, which is covered in detail by the article Suffering.

[edit] Mechanism
Stimulation of a nociceptor, due to a chemical, thermal, or mechanical event that has the potential to damage body tissue, may cause nociceptive pain.
Damage to the nervous system itself, due to disease or trauma, may cause neuropathic (or neurogenic) pain.[11] Neuropathic pain may refer to peripheral neuropathic pain, which is caused by damage to nerves, or to central pain, which is caused by damage to the brain, brainstem, or spinal cord.
Nociceptive pain and neuropathic pain are the two main kinds of pain when the primary mechanism of production is considered. A third kind may be mentioned: see below psychogenic pain.
Nociceptive pain may be classified further in three types that have distinct organic origins and felt qualities.[12]
Superficial somatic pain (or cutaneous pain) is caused by injury to the skin or superficial tissues. Cutaneous nociceptors terminate just below the skin, and due to the high concentration of nerve endings, produce a sharp, well-defined, localized pain of short duration. Examples of injuries that produce cutaneous pain include minor wounds, and minor (first degree) burns.
Deep somatic pain originates from ligaments, tendons, bones, blood vessels, fasciae, and muscles. It is detected with somatic nociceptors. The scarcity of pain receptors in these areas produces a dull, aching, poorly-localized pain of longer duration than cutaneous pain; examples include sprains, broken bones, and myofascial pain.
Visceral pain originates from body's viscera, or organs. Visceral nociceptors are located within body organs and internal cavities. The even greater scarcity of nociceptors in these areas produces pain that is usually more aching or cramping and of a longer duration than somatic pain. Visceral pain may be well-localized, but often it is extremely difficult to localize, and several injuries to visceral tissue exhibit "referred" pain, where the sensation is localized to an area completely unrelated to the site of injury.
Nociception is the unconscious afferent activity produced in the peripheral and central nervous system by stimuli that have the potential to damage tissue. It should not be confused with pain, which is a conscious experience.[8] It is initiated by nociceptors that can detect mechanical, thermal or chemical changes above a certain threshold. All nociceptors are free nerve endings of fast-conducting myelinated A delta fibers or slow-conducting unmyelinated C fibers, respectively responsible for fast, localized, sharp pain and slow, poorly-localized, dull pain. Once stimulated, they transmit signals that travel along the spinal cord and within the brain. Nociception, even in the absence of pain, may trigger withdrawal reflexes and a variety of autonomic responses such as pallor, diaphoresis, bradycardia, hypotension, lightheadedness, nausea and fainting.[13]
Brain areas that are particularly studied in relation with pain include the somatosensory cortex which mostly accounts for the sensory discriminative dimension of pain, and the limbic system, of which the thalamus and the anterior cingulate cortex are said to be especially involved in the affective dimension.
The gate control theory of pain describes how the perception of pain is not a direct result of activation of nociceptors, but instead is modulated by interaction between different neurons, both pain-transmitting and non-pain-transmitting. In other words, the theory asserts that activation, at the spine level or even by higher cognitive brain processes, of nerves or neurons that do not transmit pain signals can interfere with signals from pain fibers and inhibit or modulate an individual's experience of pain.
Pain may be experienced differently depending on genotype; as an example individuals with red hair may be more susceptible to pain caused by heat,[14] but redheads with a non-functional melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene are less sensitive to pain from electric shock.[15] Gene Nav1.7 has been identified as a major factor in the development of the pain-perception systems within the body. A rare genetic mutation in this area causes non-functional development of certain sodium channels in the nervous system, which prevents the brain from receiving messages of physical damage, resulting in congenital insensitivity to pain.[16] The same gene also appears to mediate a form of pain hyper-sensitivity, while other mutations may be the root of paroxysmal extreme pain disorder.[16][17]

[edit] Evolutionary and behavioral role
Pain is part of the body's defense system, triggering mental and physical behavior to end the painful experience. It promotes learning so that repetition of the painful situation will be less likely.
Despite its unpleasantness, pain is an important part of the existence of humans and other animals; in fact, it is vital to healthy survival (see below Insensitivity to pain). Pain encourages an organism to disengage from the noxious stimulus associated with the pain. Preliminary pain can serve to indicate that an injury is imminent, such as the ache from a soon-to-be-broken bone. Pain may also promote the healing process, since most organisms will protect an injured region in order to avoid further pain.
Interestingly, the brain itself is devoid of nociceptive tissue, and hence cannot experience pain. Thus, a headache is not due to stimulation of pain fibers in the brain itself. Rather, the membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord, called the dura mater, is innervated with pain receptors, and stimulation of these dural nociceptors is thought to be involved to some extent in producing headache pain. The vasoconstriction of pain-innervated blood vessels in the head is another common cause. Some evolutionary biologists have speculated that this lack of nociceptive tissue in the brain might be because any injury of sufficient magnitude to cause pain in the brain has a sufficiently high probability of being fatal that development of nociceptive tissue therein would have little to no survival benefit.
Chronic pain, in which the pain becomes pathological rather than beneficial, may be an exception to the idea that pain is helpful to survival, although some specialists believe that psychogenic chronic pain exists as a protective distraction to keep dangerous repressed emotions such as anger or rage unconscious.[18] It is not clear what the survival benefit of some extreme forms of pain (e.g. toothache) might be; and the intensity of some forms of pain (for example as a result of injury to fingernails or toenails) seem to be out of all proportion to any survival benefits.

[edit] Diagnosis
To establish an understanding of an individual's pain, health-care practitioners will typically try to establish certain characteristics of the pain: site, onset and offset, character, radiation, associated symptoms, time pattern, exacerbating and ameliorating factors and severity.[19]
By using the gestalt of these characteristics, the source or cause of the pain can often be established. A complete diagnosis of pain will require also to look at the patient's general condition, symptoms, and history of illness or surgery. The physician may order blood tests, X-rays, scans, EMG, etc. Pain clinics may investigate the person's psychosocial history and situation.
Pain assessment also uses the concepts of pain threshold, the least experience of pain which a subject can recognize, and pain tolerance, the greatest level of pain which a subject is prepared to tolerate. Among the most frequent technical terms for referring to abnormal perturbations in pain experience, there are:
allodynia, pain due to a stimulus which does not normally provoke pain,
hyperalgesia, an increased response to a stimulus which is normally painful,
hypoalgesia, diminished pain in response to a normally painful stimulus.[20]

[edit] Verbal characterization
The quality of the pain remains a key characteristic, and is often the first question a practitioner will ask. Typical descriptions of pain quality include sharp, stabbing, tearing, squeezing, cramping, burning, lancinating (electric-shock like), or heaviness. It may be experienced as throbbing, dull, nauseating, shooting or a combination of these. Indeed, individuals who are clearly in extreme distress such as from a myocardial infarction may not describe the sensation as pain, but instead as an extreme heaviness on the chest. Another individual with pain in the same region and with the same intensity may describe the pain as tearing which would lead the practitioner to consider aortic dissection. Inflammatory pain is commonly associated with some degree of itch sensation, leading to a chronic urge to rub or otherwise stimulate the affected area. The difference between these diagnoses and many others rests on the quality of the pain. The McGill Pain Questionnaire is an instrument often used for verbal assessment of pain.

[edit] Intensity
Pain may range in intensity from slight through severe to agonizing and can appear as constant or intermittent. The threshold of pain varies widely between individuals. Many attempts have been made to create a pain scale that can be used to quantify pain, for instance on a numeric scale that ranges from 0 to 10 points. In this scale, zero would be no pain at all and ten would be the worst pain imaginable. The purpose of these scales is to monitor an individual's pain over time, allowing care-givers to see how a patient responds to therapy for example. Accurate quantification can also allow researchers to compare results between groups of patients.

[edit] Localization
Pains are usually called according to their subjective localization in a specific area or region of the body: headache, toothache, shoulder pain, abdominal pain, back pain, joint pain, myalgia, etc. Localization is not always accurate in defining the problematic area, although it will often help narrow the diagnostic possibilities. Some pain sensations may be diffuse (radiating) or referred. Radiation of pain occurs in neuralgia when stimulus of a nerve at one site is perceived as pain in the sensory distribution of that nerve. Sciatica, for instance, involves pain running down the back of the buttock, leg and bottom of foot that results from compression of a nerve root in the lumbar spine. Referred pain usually happens when sensory fibres from the viscera enter the same segment of the spinal cord as somatic nerves i.e. those from superficial tissues. The sensory nerve from the viscera stimulates the nearby somatic nerve so that the pain localization in the brain is confused. A well-known example is when the pain of a heart attack is felt in the left arm rather than in the chest.[21]

[edit] Management
Main article: Pain management
Medical management of pain has given rise to a distinction between acute pain and chronic pain. Acute pain is 'normal' pain, it is felt when hurting a toe, breaking a bone, having a toothache, or walking after an extensive surgical operation. Chronic pain is a 'pain illness', it is felt day after day, month after month, and seems impossible to heal.
In general, physicians are more comfortable treating acute pain, which usually is caused by soft tissue damage, infection and/or inflammation among other causes. It is usually treated simultaneously with pharmaceuticals, commonly analgesics, or appropriate techniques for removing the cause and for controlling the pain sensation. The failure to treat acute pain properly may lead to chronic pain in some cases.[22]
General physicians have only elementary training in chronic pain management. Often, patients suffering from it are referred to various medical specialists. Though usually caused by an injury, an operation, or an obvious illness, chronic pain may as well have no apparent cause, or may be caused by a developing illness or imbalance. This disorder can trigger multiple psychological problems that confound both patient and health care providers, leading to various differential diagnoses and to patient's feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. Multidisciplinary pain clinics are growing in number since a few decades.

[edit] Anesthesia
Anesthesia is the condition of having the feeling of pain and other sensations blocked by drugs that induces a lack of awareness. It may be a total or a minimal lack of awareness throughout the body (i.e. general anesthesia), or a lack of awareness in a part of the body (i.e. regional or local anesthesia).

[edit] Analgesia
Main article: Analgesic
Analgesia is an alteration of the sense of pain without loss of consciousness. The body possesses an endogenous analgesia system, which can be supplemented with painkillers or analgesic drugs to regulate nociception and pain. Analgesia may occur in the central nervous system or in peripheral nerves and nociceptors. The perception of pain can also be modified by the body according to the gate control theory of pain.
The endogenous central analgesia system is mediated by 3 major components : the periaquaductal grey matter, the nucleus raphe magnus and the nociception inhibitory neurons within the dorsal horns of the spinal cord, which act to inhibit nociception-transmitting neurons also located in the spinal dorsal horn. The peripheral regulation consists of several different types of opioid receptors that are activated in response to the binding of the body's endorphins. These receptors, which exist in a variety of areas in the body, inhibit firing of neurons that would otherwise be stimulated to do so by nociceptors.[citation needed]
The gate control theory of pain postulates that nociception is "gated" by non-noxious stimuli such as vibration. Thus, rubbing a bumped knee seems to relieve pain by preventing its transmission to the brain. Pain is also "gated" by signals that descend from the brain to the spinal cord to suppress (and in other cases enhance) incoming nociceptive information.

[edit] Complementary and alternative medicine
A survey of American adults found pain was the most common reason that people use complementary and alternative medicine.
Traditional Chinese medicine views pain as a 'blocked' qi, akin to electrical resistance, with treatments such as acupuncture claimed as more effective for nontraumatic pain than traumatic pain. Although the mechanism is not fully understood, acupuncture may stimulate the release of large quantities of endogenous opioids.[23]
Pain treatment may be sought through the use of nutritional supplements such as curcumin, glucosamine, chondroitin, bromelain and omega-3 fatty acids.
Hypnosis as well as diverse perceptional techniques provoking altered states of consciousness have proven to be of important help in the management of all types of pain.[24]
Some kinds of physical manipulation or exercise are showing interesting results as well.[25]

[edit] Special cases

[edit] Phantom pain
Main article: Phantom pain
Phantom pain is the sensation of pain from a limb or organ that has been lost or from which a person no longer receives physical signals. Phantom limb pain is an experience almost universally reported by amputees and quadriplegics. Phantom pain is a neuropathic pain.

[edit] Pain asymbolia
Pain science acknowledges, in a puzzling challenge to IASP definition,[3] that pain may be experienced as a sensation devoid of any unpleasantness: this happens in a syndrome called pain asymbolia or pain dissociation, caused by conditions like lobotomy, cingulotomy or morphine analgesia. Typically, such patients report that they have pain but are not bothered by it, they recognize the sensation of pain but are mostly or completely immune to suffering from it.[10]

[edit] Insensitivity to pain
The ability to experience pain is essential for protection from injury, and recognition of the presence of injury. Insensitivity to pain may occur in special circumstances, such as for an athlete in the heat of the action, or for an injured soldier happy to leave the battleground. This phenomenon is now explained by the gate control theory. However, insensitivity to pain may also be an acquired impairment following conditions such as spinal cord injury, diabetes mellitus, or more rarely Hansen's Disease (leprosy).[26] A few people can also suffer from congenital insensitivity to pain, or congenital analgesia, a rare genetic defect that puts these individuals at constant risk from the consequences of unrecognized injury or illness. Children with this condition suffer carelessly repeated damages to their tongue, eyes, bones, skin, muscles. They may attain adulthood, but they have a shortened life expectancy.

[edit] Psychogenic pain
Main article: Psychogenic pain
Psychogenic pain, also called psychalgia or somatoform pain, is physical pain that is caused, increased, or prolonged by mental, emotional, or behavioral factors.[27][28] Headache, back pain, or stomach pain are some of the most common types of psychogenic pain.[27] Sufferers are often stigmatized, because both medical professionals and the general public tends to think that pain from psychological source is not "real". However, specialists consider that it is no less actual or hurtful than pain from other sources.

[edit] Pain as pleasure
See algolagnia and sadomasochism.

[edit] Society and culture
The Utilitarianism series,part of the Politics series
Utilitarian Thinkers[show]
Jeremy Bentham
John Stuart Mill
Henry Sidgwick
Peter Singer
Forms[show]
preference utilitarianism
rule utilitarianism
act utilitarianism
Two-level utilitarianism
Total utilitarianism
Average utilitarianism
Negative utilitarianism
animal welfare
Abolitionism (bioethics)
Hedonism
Enlightened self-interest
Predecessors[show]
Epicurus
David Hume
William Godwin
Key concepts[show]
Pain
Suffering
Pleasure
Utility
Happiness
Eudaimonia
Consequentialism
Felicific calculus
Problems[show]
Mere addition paradox
Paradox of hedonism
Utility monster
See Also[show]
Rational choice theory
Game theory
Social choice
Economics
Portal:Politics
Physical pain has been diversely understood or defined from antiquity to modern times.[29]
Philosophy of pain is a branch of philosophy of mind that deals essentially with physical pain. Identity theorists assert that the mental state of pain is completely identical with some physical state caused by various physiological causes. Functionalists consider pain to be defined completely by its causal role and nothing else.
Religious or secular traditions usually define the nature or meaning of physical pain in every society.[30] Sometimes, extreme practices are highly regarded: mortification of the flesh, painful rites of passage, walking on hot coals, etc.
Variations in pain threshold or in pain tolerance occur between individuals because of genetics, but also according to cultural, ethnical, or gender background.
Physical pain is an important political topic in relation to various issues, including resources distribution for pain management, drug control, animal rights, torture, pain compliance (see also pain beam, pain maker, pain ray). Corporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain intended to punish a person or change his/her behavior. Historically speaking, most punishments, whether in judicial, domestic, or educational settings, were corporal in basis.
More generally, it is rather as a part of pain in the broad sense, i.e. suffering, that physical pain is dealt with in cultural, religious, philosophical, or social issues.

[edit] In other species
The presence of pain in an animal, or another human for that matter, cannot be known for sure, but it can be inferred through physical and behavioral reactions.[31] Specialists currently believe that all vertebrates can feel pain, and that certain invertebrates, like the octopus, might too.[32][33] As for other animals, plants, or other entities, their ability to feel physical pain is at present a question beyond scientific reach, since no mechanism is known by which they could have such a feeling. In particular, there are no known nociceptors in groups such as plants, fungi, and most insects,[34] except for instance in fruit flies.[35]
Veterinary medicine uses, for actual or potential animal pain, the same analgesics and anesthetics as used in humans.[36]

[edit] Notes and references
^ See section Clarification on the use of certain pain-related terms.
^ This often quoted definition was first published in 1979 by IASP in Pain journal, number 6, page 250. It is derived from a definition of pain given earlier by Harold Merskey: "An unpleasant experience that we primarily associate with tissue damage or describe in terms of tissue damage or both." Merskey, H. (1964), An Investigation of Pain in Psychological Illness, DM Thesis, Oxford.
^ a b See IASP Pain Terminology. The whole entry on the term pain itself reads like this:
Pain. An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. Note: The inability to communicate verbally does not negate the possibility that an individual is experiencing pain and is in need of appropriate pain-relieving treatment. Pain is always subjective. Each individual learns the application of the word through experiences related to injury in early life. Biologists recognize that those stimuli which cause pain are liable to damage tissue. Accordingly, pain is that experience we associate with actual or potential tissue damage. It is unquestionably a sensation in a part or parts of the body, but it is also always unpleasant and therefore also an emotional experience. Experiences which resemble pain but are not unpleasant, e.g., pricking, should not be called pain. Unpleasant abnormal experiences (dysesthesias) may also be pain but are not necessarily so because, subjectively, they may not have the usual sensory qualities of pain. Many people report pain in the absence of tissue damage or any likely pathophysiological cause; usually this happens for psychological reasons. There is usually no way to distinguish their experience from that due to tissue damage if we take the subjective report. If they regard their experience as pain and if they report it in the same ways as pain caused by tissue damage, it should be accepted as pain. This definition avoids tying pain to the stimulus. Activity induced in the nociceptor and nociceptive pathways by a noxious stimulus is not pain, which is always a psychological state, even though we may well appreciate that pain most often has a proximate physical cause.
^ McCaffery M. Nursing practice theories related to cognition, bodily pain, and man-environment interactions. LosAngeles: UCLA Students Store. 1968.
^ More recently, McCaffery defined pain as "whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever the experiencing person says it does.” Pasero, Chris; McCaffery, Margo (1999). Pain: clinical manual. St. Louis: Mosby. ISBN 0-8151-5609-X. .
^ National Pain Education Council
^ From the American Board of Medical Specialties website: "Pain Medicine is the medical discipline concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of the entire range of painful disorders. (...) Due to the vast scope of the field, Pain Medicine is a multidisciplinary subspecialty (...)."
^ a b "Activity induced in the nociceptor and nociceptive pathways by a noxious stimulus is not pain, which is always a psychological state, even though we may well appreciate that pain most often has a proximate physical cause." Source: IASP Pain Terminology.
^ Donald D. Price, Central Neural Mechanisms that Interrelate Sensory and Affective Dimensions of Pain, ‘’Molecular Interventions’’ 2:392-403 (2002)
^ a b Nikola Grahek, Feeling pain and being in pain, Oldenburg, 2001. ISBN 3-8142-0780-7.
^ Compare definitions at IASP Pain Terminology: "Neurophathic pain —– Pain initiated or caused by a primary lesion or dysfunction in the nervous system." and "Neurogenic pain — Pain initiated or caused by a primary lesion, dysfunction, or transitory perturbation in the peripheral or central nervous system."
^ Pain Physiology
^ Feinstein B, J Langton, R Jameson, F Schiller. Experiments on pain referred from deep somatic tissues. J Bone Joint Surg 1954;36-A(5):981-97.
^ Liem EB, Joiner TV, Tsueda K, Sessler DI (2005). "Increased sensitivity to thermal pain and reduced subcutaneous lidocaine efficacy in redheads". Anesthesiology 102 (3): 509–14. PMID 15731586.
^ Mogil JS, Ritchie J, Smith SB, et al (2005). "Melanocortin-1 receptor gene variants affect pain and mu-opioid analgesia in mice and humans". J. Med. Genet. 42 (7): 583–7. doi:10.1136/jmg.2004.027698. PMID 15994880.
^ a b Fertleman CR, Baker MD, Parker KA, et al (2006). "SCN9A mutations in paroxysmal extreme pain disorder: allelic variants underlie distinct channel defects and phenotypes". Neuron 52 (5): 767–74. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2006.10.006. PMID 17145499.
^ Hopkin, M (2006-12-13). "The mutation that takes away pain", Nature News. Retrieved on 2008-03-29.
^ Sarno, John E., MD, et al., The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders 2006 (ISBN 0-06-085178-3)
^ The mnemonic SOCRATES is used for these "dimensions of a painful complaint".
^ IASP Pain Terminology.
^ Other examples include headache while eating ice cream, toothache resulting from a strained upper back, foot soreness caused by a tumor in the uterus, and hip discomfort when the problem is really arthritis in the knee. These examples are taken from Nerves Tangle, and Back Pain Becomes a Toothache, by Kate Murphy, The New York Times, September 16, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/health/research/16pain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
^ Dahl JB, Moiniche S (2004). "Pre-emptive analgesia". Br Med Bull 71: 13–27. doi:10.1093/bmb/ldh030. PMID 15596866.
^ Sapolsky, Robert M. (1998). Why zebras don't get ulcers: An updated guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping. New York: W.H. Freeman and CO. ISBN 0-585-36037-5.
^ Robert Ornstein PhD, David Sobel MD (1988). The Healing Brain. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc, pp 98-99. ISBN 0-671-66236-8.
^ Douglas E DeGood, Donald C Manning MD, Susan J Middaugh (1997). The headache & Neck Pain Workbook. Oakland, California: New Harbinger Publications. ISBN 1-57224-086-5.
^ Brand, Paul; Philip Yancey (c1997). The gift of pain : why we hurt & what we can do about it. Zondervan Publ.. ISBN 0-310-22144-7.
^ a b Cleveland Clinic, Health information
^ Psychogenic pain - definition from Biology-Online.org
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[edit] External links

Look up pain, nociception, painful, hurting, dolor in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Acute Pain Medicine: Scientific Evidence (2nd ed) (2007 updated version)
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v • d • ePain and nociception
Head and neck
Jaw and mouth pain (Odynophagia , temporal arteritis) • Ear pain (otalgia, otitis media, otitis externa) • Eye pain (glaucoma) • Head pain (headache, migraine, tension headache, cluster headache, cerebral aneurysm, sinusitis, meningitis) • Neck pain (atypical myocardial infarction)
Thorax
Back pain (upper back pain, lower back pain, spinal disc herniation, degenerative disc disease, coccydynia) • Breast pain (perimenstrual, breast cancer) • Chest pain (myocardial infarction, gastroesophageal reflux disease, pancreatitis, hiatus hernia, aortic dissection, asymptomatic pulmonary embolism, Tietze's syndrome) • Shoulder pain (right side - cholecystitis)
Abdominal pain
Left and right upper quadrant (peptic ulcer disease, gastroenteritis, hepatitis, pancreatitis, cholecystitis, atypical myocardial infarction, abdominal aortic aneurysm, asymptomatic gastric cancer) • Left and right lower quadrant (appendicitis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, ectopic pregnancy, endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, diverticulitis, urolithiasis, pyelonephritis, colorectal cancer)
Limbs
Arms (myocardial infarction, left arm) • Legs (deep vein thrombosis, peripheral artery occlusive disease, claudication, spinal disc herniation, sciatica)
Joints (arthralgia)
Small joints (osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosis, gout, pseudogout • Large joints (septic arthritis, hemarthrosis, osteonecrosis) • Back joints (ankylosing spondylitis, inflammatory bowel disease) • Other (psoriatic arthritis, Reiter's syndrome)
Musculoskeletal
Delayed onset muscle soreness, Myalgia, Physical trauma
Other/unspecified pain
Allodynia, breakthrough pain, chronic pain, congenital insensitivity to pain, congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, hyperalgesia, hyperpathia, neuralgia, pain asymbolia, pain disorder, paroxysmal extreme pain disorder, phantom pain, referred pain
Related concepts
Anterolateral system, gate control theory of pain, pain management (anesthesia, cordotomy), pain scale, pain threshold, posteromarginal nucleus, substance P, OPQRST
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v • d • eNervous system, receptors: somatosensory system
Medial lemniscus
Touch/mechanoreceptors: Pacinian corpuscles – vibration • Meissner's corpuscles – light touch • Merkel's discs – pressure • Ruffini endings • Free nerve endings – pain • Hair cells • Baroreceptor
Proprioception: Golgi organ – tension/length • Muscle spindle – velocity of change (Intrafusal muscle fiber • Nuclear chain fiber • Nuclear bag fiber)
Spinothalamic tract
Pain: Nociception and Nociceptors
Temperature: Thermoreceptors
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v • d • eNervous system: Sensory systems / senses
Special senses
Visual system – sight • Auditory system – hearing • Chemoreception (Olfactory system – smell • Gustatory system – taste)
Touch
Pain • Heat • Balance • Mechanoreception (Pressure, vibration, proprioception)
Other
Sensory receptor
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain"
Categories: Pain Nociception Sensory system Greek loanwords
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