| Chronic pain and chronic diseases are the most significant public issues worldwide. Frequently, chronic pain is comorbid with symptoms of mood and substance abuse disorders and with underlying biopsychosocial factors, described as environmental and psychosocial stressors. Phantom limb pain (PLP) contributes to the prevalence of chronic pain, which affects soldiers who lost limbs due to traumatic injuries, and patients whose limbs were amputated due to organic diseases. The pathophysiology of phantom limb pain syndrome remains unknown. Efforts made in individual scientific disciplines to find an etiology, and to develop theories and treatment for PLP have yielded nonsignificant results. This researcher used a systematic qualitative meta-analysis and synthesis of concepts, hypotheses, and theories from the disciplines of biology, psychology, sociology, neurology, and micro-physics, with a concentration on themes classified as the biological, psychological, and sociological factors that underlie PLP. New concepts, such as subtle energy, provided a good basis for an accumulation of evidence and a meta-ethnographic line of inquiry. This study was conducted under the theoretical prism of cognitive behavioral theory (CBT), the holomovement, and the implicate and explicate orders of reality to answer two questions: What are the biopsychosocial factors underlying PLP, and how do these factors contribute to PLP? Results indicated that cells, cellular structures, and cell communication, through physiological reactions of enzymes, appear to be the expression of inherited genetic and experiential epigenetic elements by complementary subtle energies/information. In future psychological studies and applications, recommendations include the use of the concept "emergence of self" as a mediating variable effected by the described biopsychosocial factors. There is also heuristic value towards an expansion of research on the use of subtle energies in technological applications towards treatment for behavioral and medical chronic conditions on a worldwide basis. |
