When Pain Science Meets Magic: Frogs, Meaning, and Forty Years of Curiosity

That is why some readers may be surprised to learn that earlier this month I co-authored a perspective article with Birgit Heckemann and Lionel Snell in the journal Frontiers in Pain Research entitled "Exploring Magical Thinking in the Context of Pain".

Our article explores whether magical thinking, understood not as supernatural belief but as symbolic meaning-making and imaginative engagement with the world, might offer something valuable to people living with chronic pain. This article explores a corner of human experience where science and enchantment meet and can be read here.

Before my scientific colleagues wonder whether I have abandoned reason altogether, let me explain. Magic is often seen as the polar opposite of science. It is associated with symbolism, mystery, intuition, imagination, and forms of knowing that sit outside conventional scientific explanation. In scientific discourse, the word magic can be almost taboo, often lumped together with pseudoscience, irrationality, and wishful thinking.

So writing a serious scholarly article associated with the word magic might be regarded by some as a bold move. Or a reckless one.

Yet after decades immersed in pain science, I have become increasingly interested in looking through a broader lens. The longer I study pain, the more I appreciate that some aspects of human experience resist being neatly captured by a questionnaire, a brain scan, a p-value, or a clinical guideline.

The Value of Intellectual Mischief

This article was one of the most enjoyable projects I have ever worked on.

The idea came from Dr Birgit Heckemann of the University of Gothenburg, an associate professor, nurse researcher, qualitative scholar, advocate of person-centred care, and all-round champion of human flourishing. Birgit has a rare talent for asking questions that to some may sound slightly eccentric and then, after reflection, seem blindingly important.

Together we recruited Lionel Snell, better known to many readers as Ramsey Dukes. Lionel is a Cambridge-trained mathematician, philosopher, writer, and one of the world's most thoughtful commentators on magical thinking. He has spent decades exploring questions that most scientists would rather avoid, and doing so with remarkable intelligence and good humour. Check out his Wikki page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Snell

Why Magical Thinking Matters in the World of Pain

Our article is not about supernatural powers, occult claims, or abandoning science.

Rather, it explores magical thinking as a human capacity for symbolism, imagination, ritual, meaning-making, agency, and connection. People living with long-term pain often face experiences that medicine cannot completely explain, predict, or fix. In such circumstances, meaning matters.

Our article asks whether symbolic practices and imaginative ways of relating to ourselves, our bodies, and our circumstances might support resilience, curiosity, self-understanding, and wellbeing. Not instead of science, but alongside it.

After all, pain is never just a biological signal. It is also emotional, social, existential, and deeply personal.

A Final Thought

I never imagined that one day I would co-author a peer-reviewed article discussing the possible value of magical thinking in pain care.

Nor did I imagine that the article would contain the wonderfully reassuring sentence: “The authors explicitly exclude … magical acts can directly impact physical reality (such as enabling levitation or turning people into frogs).

Yet there it is, in print: a peer-reviewed reassurance that the discussion does not extend to enabling levitation or turning people into frogs.

After four decades in pain science, I remain committed to evidence, reason, and critical thinking. But I have also learned that understanding human suffering sometimes requires us to explore territory beyond our usual maps.

What I did not anticipate when I began my career was that those explorations would eventually lead to a peer-reviewed discussion about magical thinking, complete with an explicit statement that we are not advocating levitation or amphibian transformation.

Science has always fascinated me. What has changed is not my view of science, but my appreciation of where rigorous scientific enquiry can sometimes lead. And if that journey occasionally involves publishing a serious academic paper reassuring readers that nobody is trying to enable levitation or turn people into frogs, then perhaps science is more interesting than we sometimes give it credit for.