Schmerz Denken: Über die Herkunft des Denkens aus dem Schmerz.

What is pain? How is it perceived and how is it processed? Where is it situated and how can it be specified within the framework of a theory of the psychic apparatus? These problems arose for Sigmund Freud ever since his »Project for a Scientific Psychology« in 1895, and throughout the development of his œuvre, he encountered them again and again and in the most diverse of contexts, without, however, ever being conclusively resolved. This article traces how the phenomenon of pain has repeatedly defied theory, forcing it to be questioned and revised. Thus, it becomes apparent that pain is not just one phenomenon among many, but the most fundamental and essential in the development of thinking and in the formation of the psychic apparatus: Since pain is that what brings about the most fundamental form of bodily representation, and since every other form of representation always remains bound to the body, then it is pain itself that constitutes the ultimate ground for thought, while at the same time also eluding it – as something »beyond« thought that unfailingly reminds us of the here and now of our body. The necessity to think at all begins with pain. And when we think pain, we think our body. In this sense, thinking and the entire psychic apparatus develop out of pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]