Doctors can find patients who express their symptoms in unusual ways problematic to manage and Pilowsky's work has proven useful in assisting medical practitioners and other in this difficult territory.
Pilowsky obtained a medical degree in South Africa before developing an interest in the experience of pain when working under the well respected psychiatrist Erwin Stengel in Sheffield, England.
[1] Pilowsky made a significant contribution to the medical literature through the development of the concept known as abnormal illness behaviour.
Pilowsky had previously been struck by general hospital patients who were totally preoccupied by their pain or alternatively seemed almost completely oblivious to their plight.
[4] In 1991 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for "service to medicine, particularly in the field of psychiatry".