[Problems posed by the evaluation of pain and its psychological aspects]

Pain is a complex, multidimensional and multifactorial neuropsychological phenomenon with sensory-discriminative, affective, cognitive and behavioral components. Issues on pain assessment are related to the objective evaluation of a subjective phenomenon. Different levels of evaluation are to be considered. Some methods such as visual analog scale, numerical scale and verbal permit a global pain estimation. The aim of other methods such as the McGill Pain Questionnaire is a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the sensory and affective pain components. The measure of objective behavioral changes is an interesting approach, but at the present time there is no valid, simple and commonly used method. There is also a need for methods permitting better exploration of pain, and in particular a selective evaluation of organic and functional factors. The limits of psychological factor evaluation are reported.