Seminar No. 3, 1989, The Psychology of Torture, by Shirley Spitz\
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www.csvr.org.za]
"Pain cannot be shared. It is difficult to verbalize. In addition, acute pain destroys language. To witness the moment when pain causes a reversion to the pre-language of cries and whispers, is to witness the destruction of language. To be present when a person moves up out of the pre-verbal state to project the facts of the contents of her consciousness into speech is almost to be present at the birth of language itself. The torturer not only witnesses the death of language but is its murderer. "
I was reading this article on torture and thought of the exercise at the Forum where the leader "disappears" a headache, and proves that pain is a "all in one's head" or, in their words, a racket.
The leader, with fake concern, asked the audience after a very long day how everyone was feeling. Several people admitted to being tired, and one or two said they had a headache. The woman who ended up on the stage was asked about the severity and location of her head pain and couldn't really define it. This went on for about half an hour when she finally admitted she was going to use the headache as an excuse to not really give 100% and realized she was running a racket. Now, I have no doubt that this woman was a plant as she said things that I later found quoted on a pro-LEC website.
However, I have heard this type of conversation and seen it in the advertising of alternative health practitioners - if you can't verbalize and use language to describe your pain, it is likely that it really doesn't exist and you are using it as an excuse to avoid something.
The entire article is a great read.