Introduction : dimensions of pain / Lisa Folkmarson Käll -- When language runs dry : pain, the imagination, and metaphor / David Biro -- Intercorporeality and the sharability of pain / Lisa Folkmarson Käll -- On the borderlands : chronic pain as crisis of identity / Anna Gotlib -- Pain and sex(uality) among women suffering from vulvar pain / Renita Sörensdotter -- The Cartesian mind in the abused body : dissociation and the mind body dualism / Peg O'Connor -- Between health and illness : positive pain and world-formation / Sheena Hyland -- Doing pain 'right' : the pleasures of pain in aerial dance / Jillian Deri and Wendy Mendes -- The good and normal pain : midwives' perception of pain in childbirth / Jenny Gleisner -- Birth work : suffering rituals in late modernity. A case study from a Swedish birth-clinic / Diana Mulinari -- Child, birth : an aesthetic / Cressida J. Heyes.