cover image Reprogramming Pain: Transform Pain and Suffering Into Health and Success

Reprogramming Pain: Transform Pain and Suffering Into Health and Success

Barry Bittman. Ablex Publishing Corporation, $0 (219pp) ISBN 978-1-56750-208-4

Bittman, a neurologist and director of the Headache Center and Neurology Institute of Western Pennsylvania, avers that chronic-pain sufferers can call upon the relationship between the mind and the body to revise their experience of pain. To that end, he reiterates 10 steps, e.g., improving one's body awareness, facing one's continuing conflicts and becoming an informed consumer of medical caregivers. Bittman emphasizes that the decision to live without chronic pain must represent the conscious effort of one's entire being. While a small selection of recommended readings (by such authors as Richard Bach, Wayne Dyer and Bernie Siegel) is provided, references to scientific studies are noticeably missing. Sufferers of chronic pain may well find encouragement here, but the author's claims for a biofeedback machine of his own invention give much of his advice a self-serving cast. (Dec.)