Traditionally, pain is thought of as an attack on the flesh, and suffering as an attack on the psyche. The relationship of care and support are, by nature, relational social facts. Following on from an initial study (Péoc’h et al. 2007) on carers’ professional representations about taking charge of pain, we studied the attitudes, representations, and ideological positions taken by those cared for towards the experience of their pain, using a framework of social thought (Rouquette, 1973). Two hundred and forty-four hospitalized patients in Toulouse filled out a questionnaire which involved free association tasks, questions about their attitudes, questions about the ideological dimension of pain, and, finally, a fourth section which used a phenomenological approach. The object “pain” was approached from the point of view of the consciousness and the experience of the patient, using the protocol of the “tale of the narrative life” (Le Grand, 1989). Our point of view in this was praxiological. The results show that patients’ conceptions of pain refer to two distinct fields: that of the body (illness, disability) and of the psyche (being unwell, suffering). The term “suffering” reveals the social face of pain, which has two aspects: an existential one (solitude, lack of understanding) and an ideological one (“one must bear one’s illness patiently,” P = 73.3%; X² = 39.83; p. < .05). The representational universe of pain is accompanied by a degree of underdetermination between two different illness events, pain and suffering.