It is simply the awareness that one s body hurts, yet at the same time one is still aware of objects in the external world. However, Scarry differentiates between lesser degrees of physical pain, such as stomping one s toe against a table, and the most extreme pain imaginable like that experienced during torture. It is this point, where the subjective world constricts in on itself, that physical pain can be legitimately placed in a category completely independent of all interior states, including psychological pain. The cause of this collapse of the subjective world under extreme pain is due to the unique relationship between pain and the imagination. For Scarry, all thought, being an external projection of oneself in relation to oneself, is the imaginative capacity of human beings.
All thoughts hold as their intentionality objects or relations to objects, from the external world.
Even the most far-fetched world or monster is but a mismatched representation or opposition of our own world. Under extreme pain, ones ability for imagination, including desire, wants, needs, and all other bodily and thought processes constrict to the point where there is nothing but pain. It is not that mind has ceased to exist, only that both mind and body have enveloped one another to the point where both are the same manifestation, both have become pain. As the reality of extreme pain, pain itself becomes the only reality. Extreme pain is ultimately the complete absence of imagination.