Dr. Ronald Melzack - Early Academics

Gate control theory proposed that pain was not as simple as the literature suggested. Melzack and Wall proposed that psychological factors and environment play a large role in how pain is experienced. In Dr. Melzack's words, "There are examples of soldiers at the battlefront who have suffered severe injuries, but they feel no pain initially. What they know is that they're still alive, they've escaped death, and the brain might process [pain] almost as a good thing."

"Then you might see someone with mild gas pain who is experiencing it as intolerable pain because his close friend is dying from stomach cancer and that's what he's thinking about." Gate control theory says what the biologically driven field of medicine tries to avoid - that pain is subjective and ultimately at the mercy of the brain.