Shaun Gallager (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780199271948
- eISBN:
- 9780191603112
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199271941.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
By exploring the phenomenon of phantom limbs in congenital absence of limb (aplasia) it is possible to explicate in detail the prenatal development of body schemas. The same logic that denied the ...
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By exploring the phenomenon of phantom limbs in congenital absence of limb (aplasia) it is possible to explicate in detail the prenatal development of body schemas. The same logic that denied the existence of neonate imitation also predicts that aplasic phantoms are impossible. This logic is overturned by recent scientific evidence and a clear distinction between body image and body schema. The new logic that allows for neonate imitation, aplasic phantoms, and innate body schemas, also suggests that the onset of consciousness may be tied to prenatal movement.Less
By exploring the phenomenon of phantom limbs in congenital absence of limb (aplasia) it is possible to explicate in detail the prenatal development of body schemas. The same logic that denied the existence of neonate imitation also predicts that aplasic phantoms are impossible. This logic is overturned by recent scientific evidence and a clear distinction between body image and body schema. The new logic that allows for neonate imitation, aplasic phantoms, and innate body schemas, also suggests that the onset of consciousness may be tied to prenatal movement.
Cassandra S. Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789285
- eISBN:
- 9780814764824
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789285.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter examines the features of phantom limb syndrome and how corporeal ideology influenced efforts to legitimate the work being done on phantom limb syndrome. It first considers the ambiguity ...
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This chapter examines the features of phantom limb syndrome and how corporeal ideology influenced efforts to legitimate the work being done on phantom limb syndrome. It first considers the ambiguity that has characterized the medical literature on phantom limb syndrome and goes on to discuss how phantoms have imitated the posture and sensation of intact limbs. It then explores the notion of phantom “forgetting” as it relates to the vividness and at times eerie reality of phantom mimicry and the accuracy with which ethereal limbs were positioned in and occupied space. It also looks at the kinesthetic, temporal, and morphologic peculiarities of phantom limbs before concluding with an analysis of phantom paralysis, “supernumerary limbs” as a manifestation of phantom “distortion,” and phantom pain.Less
This chapter examines the features of phantom limb syndrome and how corporeal ideology influenced efforts to legitimate the work being done on phantom limb syndrome. It first considers the ambiguity that has characterized the medical literature on phantom limb syndrome and goes on to discuss how phantoms have imitated the posture and sensation of intact limbs. It then explores the notion of phantom “forgetting” as it relates to the vividness and at times eerie reality of phantom mimicry and the accuracy with which ethereal limbs were positioned in and occupied space. It also looks at the kinesthetic, temporal, and morphologic peculiarities of phantom limbs before concluding with an analysis of phantom paralysis, “supernumerary limbs” as a manifestation of phantom “distortion,” and phantom pain.
Michael N. Marsh
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199571505
- eISBN:
- 9780191722059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571505.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Theology
The preceding chapter encapsulates the argument that extra-corporeal experiences (ECE) are probably best accounted for in terms of functional perturbations of brains in their recovery from severe ...
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The preceding chapter encapsulates the argument that extra-corporeal experiences (ECE) are probably best accounted for in terms of functional perturbations of brains in their recovery from severe preceding metabolic insults. This chapter articulates material on the brain and consciousness germane to the argument stressing, in particular, the degree to which our day-to-day environments are created by the brain, and that the content of much conscious-awareness is illusory. It further exemplifies that theme by considering ‘phantom limb’ phenomenology, that is, the ability of the brain to create an illusory limb or organ no longer present. The goal is to emphasize that if a normal brain can elaborate a non-existent limb, or a torso in someone with a broken neck, it could also manufacture a non-existent ‘body’ thereby generating an out-of-body experience.Less
The preceding chapter encapsulates the argument that extra-corporeal experiences (ECE) are probably best accounted for in terms of functional perturbations of brains in their recovery from severe preceding metabolic insults. This chapter articulates material on the brain and consciousness germane to the argument stressing, in particular, the degree to which our day-to-day environments are created by the brain, and that the content of much conscious-awareness is illusory. It further exemplifies that theme by considering ‘phantom limb’ phenomenology, that is, the ability of the brain to create an illusory limb or organ no longer present. The goal is to emphasize that if a normal brain can elaborate a non-existent limb, or a torso in someone with a broken neck, it could also manufacture a non-existent ‘body’ thereby generating an out-of-body experience.
Carlo Semenza
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199234110
- eISBN:
- 9780191594250
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199234110.003.12
- Subject:
- Psychology, Neuropsychology, Clinical Psychology
This chapter begins with a discussion of the various pathological conditions involved in disorders of awareness and representation of body parts. It then discusses autotopagnosia, personal neglect ...
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This chapter begins with a discussion of the various pathological conditions involved in disorders of awareness and representation of body parts. It then discusses autotopagnosia, personal neglect and related disorders, alien hand syndrome, altered muscular proprioception, phantom limb and related phenomena, and body-specific cognitive biases in eating disorders.Less
This chapter begins with a discussion of the various pathological conditions involved in disorders of awareness and representation of body parts. It then discusses autotopagnosia, personal neglect and related disorders, alien hand syndrome, altered muscular proprioception, phantom limb and related phenomena, and body-specific cognitive biases in eating disorders.
Cassandra S. Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789285
- eISBN:
- 9780814764824
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789285.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter examines how the major psychogenic theories of phantom phenomena exposed the anxiety evoked by dismemberment throughout the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth ...
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This chapter examines how the major psychogenic theories of phantom phenomena exposed the anxiety evoked by dismemberment throughout the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It also considers how particular features of phantom phenomena were foregrounded and engaged as proof of theory by focusing on the concept of the body scheme and its psychologization. The chapter shows how proponents enlisted peculiar phantoms in an effort to buttress claims about the primordial nature of the body scheme, including congenital phantoms, paralyzed phantoms, exposure phantoms, penetrating phantoms, dreamt phantoms, and disposal phantoms. Finally, it discusses phantom limb syndrome in the psychiatric/psychological and medical literature and the proliferation of phantoms as support for the psychological organ, along with the medicalization of phantom limb syndrome.Less
This chapter examines how the major psychogenic theories of phantom phenomena exposed the anxiety evoked by dismemberment throughout the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It also considers how particular features of phantom phenomena were foregrounded and engaged as proof of theory by focusing on the concept of the body scheme and its psychologization. The chapter shows how proponents enlisted peculiar phantoms in an effort to buttress claims about the primordial nature of the body scheme, including congenital phantoms, paralyzed phantoms, exposure phantoms, penetrating phantoms, dreamt phantoms, and disposal phantoms. Finally, it discusses phantom limb syndrome in the psychiatric/psychological and medical literature and the proliferation of phantoms as support for the psychological organ, along with the medicalization of phantom limb syndrome.
Cassandra S. Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789285
- eISBN:
- 9780814764824
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789285.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter examines how phantoms have driven transformations within the field of neuroscience, within the bodies, minds, and brains of amputees, and between bodies and prosthetic technologies. It ...
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This chapter examines how phantoms have driven transformations within the field of neuroscience, within the bodies, minds, and brains of amputees, and between bodies and prosthetic technologies. It first historicizes and contextualizes phantom limb syndrome, mainly by situating ethereal appendages within the social worlds of psychology, medicine, and biomedicine, while also noting the importance of phantoms as the source of and a resource for embodied recalcitrance. It then considers how embodied ghosts became a distinctively productive way of tapping into the most vital and compelling mysteries of the human brain, including its ability to generate the most complex sensory experiences. It also discusses research on the sensory and motor homunculi, “mislocation phenomenon” or “referred sensation” in cases of major amputation, the causal role of cortical plasticity in phantom limb pain after major amputation, and the impact of spatiality on phantom–prosthetic relations.Less
This chapter examines how phantoms have driven transformations within the field of neuroscience, within the bodies, minds, and brains of amputees, and between bodies and prosthetic technologies. It first historicizes and contextualizes phantom limb syndrome, mainly by situating ethereal appendages within the social worlds of psychology, medicine, and biomedicine, while also noting the importance of phantoms as the source of and a resource for embodied recalcitrance. It then considers how embodied ghosts became a distinctively productive way of tapping into the most vital and compelling mysteries of the human brain, including its ability to generate the most complex sensory experiences. It also discusses research on the sensory and motor homunculi, “mislocation phenomenon” or “referred sensation” in cases of major amputation, the causal role of cortical plasticity in phantom limb pain after major amputation, and the impact of spatiality on phantom–prosthetic relations.
Cassandra S. Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789285
- eISBN:
- 9780814764824
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789285.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This book examines the link between phantom limb pain and prosthetic innovation—a relationship between ghosts and machines that has at times been pleasant, accommodating, and mutually beneficial. It ...
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This book examines the link between phantom limb pain and prosthetic innovation—a relationship between ghosts and machines that has at times been pleasant, accommodating, and mutually beneficial. It considers how prosthetization has transformed the bodies, selves, and identities of individuals who have survived amputation; how the promises and realizations of revolutionary forms of techno-corporeality shape our expectations from prosthetic technologies and from bodies, especially the “disfigured” or “functionally impaired”; and how corporeal ideology inform understandings of phantom peculiarities and influence efforts to legitimate the work being done on phantom limb syndrome. The book also explores how the phantom–prosthetic relations unfolded in the context of the modernization of amputation, including the maturation of the prosthetic industry and the development of a collaborative association between amputation surgery and prosthetic science.Less
This book examines the link between phantom limb pain and prosthetic innovation—a relationship between ghosts and machines that has at times been pleasant, accommodating, and mutually beneficial. It considers how prosthetization has transformed the bodies, selves, and identities of individuals who have survived amputation; how the promises and realizations of revolutionary forms of techno-corporeality shape our expectations from prosthetic technologies and from bodies, especially the “disfigured” or “functionally impaired”; and how corporeal ideology inform understandings of phantom peculiarities and influence efforts to legitimate the work being done on phantom limb syndrome. The book also explores how the phantom–prosthetic relations unfolded in the context of the modernization of amputation, including the maturation of the prosthetic industry and the development of a collaborative association between amputation surgery and prosthetic science.
Cassandra S. Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789285
- eISBN:
- 9780814764824
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789285.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter examines how phantom–prosthetic relations unfolded in the context of the modernization of amputation, including the rapid state-sponsored expansion and maturation of the prosthetic ...
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This chapter examines how phantom–prosthetic relations unfolded in the context of the modernization of amputation, including the rapid state-sponsored expansion and maturation of the prosthetic industry and the collaboration between amputation surgery and prosthetic science. It first considers the debate between practitioners and researchers about the nature of phantom–prosthetic relations, a debate that was engendered by two apparently contradictory findings: prostheses both provoked phantom limbs and cured phantom limb syndrome. It then analyzes phantom limbs and prostheses in order to show how phantom–prosthetic relations have evolved over the twentieth and into the twenty-first century from the prosthetization of phantoms to the phantomization of prostheses and to phantom–prosthetic reciprocity. It also discusses the potential for prosthetic animation to prevent phantom pain and enable facile prosthesis use as well as the fundamental utility of phantom exercise to prevent or reverse cortical reorganization.Less
This chapter examines how phantom–prosthetic relations unfolded in the context of the modernization of amputation, including the rapid state-sponsored expansion and maturation of the prosthetic industry and the collaboration between amputation surgery and prosthetic science. It first considers the debate between practitioners and researchers about the nature of phantom–prosthetic relations, a debate that was engendered by two apparently contradictory findings: prostheses both provoked phantom limbs and cured phantom limb syndrome. It then analyzes phantom limbs and prostheses in order to show how phantom–prosthetic relations have evolved over the twentieth and into the twenty-first century from the prosthetization of phantoms to the phantomization of prostheses and to phantom–prosthetic reciprocity. It also discusses the potential for prosthetic animation to prevent phantom pain and enable facile prosthesis use as well as the fundamental utility of phantom exercise to prevent or reverse cortical reorganization.
Cassandra S. Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789285
- eISBN:
- 9780814764824
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789285.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter examines the extraordinary increase and subsequent decrease of phantom limb pain within the American context. It shows that the pervasiveness of phantom pain coincided with the invention ...
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This chapter examines the extraordinary increase and subsequent decrease of phantom limb pain within the American context. It shows that the pervasiveness of phantom pain coincided with the invention of pain medicine, the instantiation of the pain clinic, the institutionalization of pain therapeutics, the clinical management of the pained patient, and the American “plague” of pain around 1975. It also considers how the widespread adoption of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ), developed by Ronald Melzack, made the pleasurable phantom rare and the painful phantom common. The chapter proceeds by evaluating a variety of treatment options for phantom limb pain before concluding with a discussion of the role of the etiology of phantom limb syndrome in the reduced prevalence of phantom pain.Less
This chapter examines the extraordinary increase and subsequent decrease of phantom limb pain within the American context. It shows that the pervasiveness of phantom pain coincided with the invention of pain medicine, the instantiation of the pain clinic, the institutionalization of pain therapeutics, the clinical management of the pained patient, and the American “plague” of pain around 1975. It also considers how the widespread adoption of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ), developed by Ronald Melzack, made the pleasurable phantom rare and the painful phantom common. The chapter proceeds by evaluating a variety of treatment options for phantom limb pain before concluding with a discussion of the role of the etiology of phantom limb syndrome in the reduced prevalence of phantom pain.
Cassandra S. Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789285
- eISBN:
- 9780814764824
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789285.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This concluding chapter explores how, after the turn of the twenty-first century, phantom–prosthetic relations went awry despite the fact that ghosts and machines have never been more intimate. Using ...
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This concluding chapter explores how, after the turn of the twenty-first century, phantom–prosthetic relations went awry despite the fact that ghosts and machines have never been more intimate. Using the concept of authenticity as a rhetorical frame, it considers biomedical knowledge on phantom limb syndrome and the biopolitics of phantom–prosthetic relations in the present-day context. It also discusses the significance of phantoms becoming at once extraordinary and seemingly inconsequential, and how phantom–prosthetic relations have transformed and been transformed by the modernization of amputation. It also looks at the case of phantom penis to demystify claims of scientific authenticity and goes on to explain how transsexuality and apotemnophilia have been dragged in the debate over what counts as authentic amputation. It concludes by reflecting on phantom endangerment in relation to biomedicine and biopolitical order in the second decade of the twenty-first century.Less
This concluding chapter explores how, after the turn of the twenty-first century, phantom–prosthetic relations went awry despite the fact that ghosts and machines have never been more intimate. Using the concept of authenticity as a rhetorical frame, it considers biomedical knowledge on phantom limb syndrome and the biopolitics of phantom–prosthetic relations in the present-day context. It also discusses the significance of phantoms becoming at once extraordinary and seemingly inconsequential, and how phantom–prosthetic relations have transformed and been transformed by the modernization of amputation. It also looks at the case of phantom penis to demystify claims of scientific authenticity and goes on to explain how transsexuality and apotemnophilia have been dragged in the debate over what counts as authentic amputation. It concludes by reflecting on phantom endangerment in relation to biomedicine and biopolitical order in the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Luke Gibbons
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226236179
- eISBN:
- 9780226236209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226236209.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Dublin in James Joyce's spectral imagination is akin to a phantom limb. His literary modernism turns on what is absent or off the page, an apophatic style in which text is intimately bound up with ...
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Dublin in James Joyce's spectral imagination is akin to a phantom limb. His literary modernism turns on what is absent or off the page, an apophatic style in which text is intimately bound up with context, and language re-enacts the material texture of the city. In keeping with Wittgenstein's argument that language is embedded in a form of life, Joyce's language operates as if a physical acquaintance with the city and its social practices are required to complete sentences, with the fiction in turn giving the impression, as Joyce remarked, that the city could be rebuilt from his prose. Joyce's narrative techniques chart cultural intimacy in a new way, allowing the stranger access to the inner life of a city and the native Dubliner to become part of a wider cosmopolitan world. By this means, Joyce pioneered a vernacular modernism in which the local is universal, and national literature becomes world literature. Joyce's revolution of the word draws on the “open secrets” of a colonial public sphere, a coded cultural space shared with the republican political underground in the decades leading up to the 1916 Irish rebellion.Less
Dublin in James Joyce's spectral imagination is akin to a phantom limb. His literary modernism turns on what is absent or off the page, an apophatic style in which text is intimately bound up with context, and language re-enacts the material texture of the city. In keeping with Wittgenstein's argument that language is embedded in a form of life, Joyce's language operates as if a physical acquaintance with the city and its social practices are required to complete sentences, with the fiction in turn giving the impression, as Joyce remarked, that the city could be rebuilt from his prose. Joyce's narrative techniques chart cultural intimacy in a new way, allowing the stranger access to the inner life of a city and the native Dubliner to become part of a wider cosmopolitan world. By this means, Joyce pioneered a vernacular modernism in which the local is universal, and national literature becomes world literature. Joyce's revolution of the word draws on the “open secrets” of a colonial public sphere, a coded cultural space shared with the republican political underground in the decades leading up to the 1916 Irish rebellion.
Jennifer M. Windt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262028677
- eISBN:
- 9780262327466
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262028677.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Chapter 7 introduces the idea, developed over the following chapters, that the key to a unified framework of dreaming is the investigation of phenomenal selfhood, or the experience of being or having ...
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Chapter 7 introduces the idea, developed over the following chapters, that the key to a unified framework of dreaming is the investigation of phenomenal selfhood, or the experience of being or having a self. Chapter 7 lays the groundwork for describing the relationship between phenomenal selfhood and bodily experience in dreams. A preliminary conclusion is that the phenomenology of embodied selfhood is more variable in dreams than in wakefulness. Importantly, in dreams, phenomenal selfhood can persist even when bodily experience is lost altogether. I introduce different conceptual tools for describing phenomenal embodiment in dreams, ranging from phenomenal indeterminacy and phenomenal disembodiment to strong phenomenal embodiment. Their metatheoretical relevance consists in the fact that the phenomenology of being an embodied self is shown to be unnecessary for the experience of being or having a self.Less
Chapter 7 introduces the idea, developed over the following chapters, that the key to a unified framework of dreaming is the investigation of phenomenal selfhood, or the experience of being or having a self. Chapter 7 lays the groundwork for describing the relationship between phenomenal selfhood and bodily experience in dreams. A preliminary conclusion is that the phenomenology of embodied selfhood is more variable in dreams than in wakefulness. Importantly, in dreams, phenomenal selfhood can persist even when bodily experience is lost altogether. I introduce different conceptual tools for describing phenomenal embodiment in dreams, ranging from phenomenal indeterminacy and phenomenal disembodiment to strong phenomenal embodiment. Their metatheoretical relevance consists in the fact that the phenomenology of being an embodied self is shown to be unnecessary for the experience of being or having a self.
Cassandra S. Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789285
- eISBN:
- 9780814764824
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789285.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
Phantom limb pain is one of the most intractable and merciless pains ever known—a pain that haunts appendages that do not physically exist, often persisting with uncanny realness long after fleshy ...
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Phantom limb pain is one of the most intractable and merciless pains ever known—a pain that haunts appendages that do not physically exist, often persisting with uncanny realness long after fleshy limbs have been traumatically, surgically, or congenitally lost. The very existence and “naturalness” of this pain has been instrumental in modern science's ability to create prosthetic technologies that many feel have transformative, self-actualizing, and even transcendent power. This book critically examines phantom limb pain and its relationship to prosthetic innovation, tracing the major shifts in knowledge of the causes and characteristics of the phenomenon. It exposes how the meanings of phantom limb pain have been influenced by developments in prosthetic science and ideas about the extraordinary power of these technologies to liberate and fundamentally alter the human body, mind, and spirit. The book examines the modernization of amputation and exposes how medical understanding about phantom limbs has changed from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. It interrogates the impact of advances in technology, medicine, psychology and neuroscience, as well as changes in the meaning of limb loss, popular representations of amputees, and corporeal ideology. The book questions our most deeply held ideas of what is normal, natural, and even moral about the physical human body.Less
Phantom limb pain is one of the most intractable and merciless pains ever known—a pain that haunts appendages that do not physically exist, often persisting with uncanny realness long after fleshy limbs have been traumatically, surgically, or congenitally lost. The very existence and “naturalness” of this pain has been instrumental in modern science's ability to create prosthetic technologies that many feel have transformative, self-actualizing, and even transcendent power. This book critically examines phantom limb pain and its relationship to prosthetic innovation, tracing the major shifts in knowledge of the causes and characteristics of the phenomenon. It exposes how the meanings of phantom limb pain have been influenced by developments in prosthetic science and ideas about the extraordinary power of these technologies to liberate and fundamentally alter the human body, mind, and spirit. The book examines the modernization of amputation and exposes how medical understanding about phantom limbs has changed from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. It interrogates the impact of advances in technology, medicine, psychology and neuroscience, as well as changes in the meaning of limb loss, popular representations of amputees, and corporeal ideology. The book questions our most deeply held ideas of what is normal, natural, and even moral about the physical human body.
Aaron Shaheen
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198857785
- eISBN:
- 9780191890406
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198857785.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The chapter first shows how the spiritualized version of prosthetics originated in the Civil War, which rendered approximately 60,000 veterans limbless. Prominent physicians such as Oliver Wendell ...
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The chapter first shows how the spiritualized version of prosthetics originated in the Civil War, which rendered approximately 60,000 veterans limbless. Prominent physicians such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and S. Weir Mitchell postulated that artificial limbs gave both physical and emotional solace to shattered soldiers, especially among those who suffered phantom limb syndrome. The devices’ “spiritual” potential proved limited, if not illusory; in fact, they were often so fragile, cumbersome, and painful that amputees simply preferred to go without them. Upon entering World War I, the United States created a rehabilitation and vocational program that aided injured veterans to reenter the workforce. Reflecting the way in which “personality” had come to replace a more traditional notion of spirit, orthopedists such as Joel Goldthwait and David Silver, both employed at Walter Reed Hospital, designed artificial limbs for both physical and psychological compatibility.Less
The chapter first shows how the spiritualized version of prosthetics originated in the Civil War, which rendered approximately 60,000 veterans limbless. Prominent physicians such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and S. Weir Mitchell postulated that artificial limbs gave both physical and emotional solace to shattered soldiers, especially among those who suffered phantom limb syndrome. The devices’ “spiritual” potential proved limited, if not illusory; in fact, they were often so fragile, cumbersome, and painful that amputees simply preferred to go without them. Upon entering World War I, the United States created a rehabilitation and vocational program that aided injured veterans to reenter the workforce. Reflecting the way in which “personality” had come to replace a more traditional notion of spirit, orthopedists such as Joel Goldthwait and David Silver, both employed at Walter Reed Hospital, designed artificial limbs for both physical and psychological compatibility.
Stephen Gaukroger
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190490447
- eISBN:
- 9780190490478
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190490447.003.0014
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Phantom limbs pose a philosophical problem about the location of pains. The work of Descartes first used them to make a philosophical point about the brain in relation to the body. They have ...
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Phantom limbs pose a philosophical problem about the location of pains. The work of Descartes first used them to make a philosophical point about the brain in relation to the body. They have traditionally been thought of as being due to nerve endings on the pathway to the original limb being activated. However, it was subsequently discovered that the phenomenon occurs even when the spinal chord is severed, suggesting that it is rather a question of brain activity, part of a neurosignature through which the brain indicates the body is one’s own. More recent resarch suggests involvement not only of the sensory systems but also the parietal cortex and the limbic system, which is concerned with emotion and motivation.Less
Phantom limbs pose a philosophical problem about the location of pains. The work of Descartes first used them to make a philosophical point about the brain in relation to the body. They have traditionally been thought of as being due to nerve endings on the pathway to the original limb being activated. However, it was subsequently discovered that the phenomenon occurs even when the spinal chord is severed, suggesting that it is rather a question of brain activity, part of a neurosignature through which the brain indicates the body is one’s own. More recent resarch suggests involvement not only of the sensory systems but also the parietal cortex and the limbic system, which is concerned with emotion and motivation.
Shaun Gallagher
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780199271948
- eISBN:
- 9780191603112
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199271941.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This book contributes to the idea that to have an understanding of the mind, consciousness, or cognition, a detailed scientific and phenomenological understanding of the body is essential. There is ...
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This book contributes to the idea that to have an understanding of the mind, consciousness, or cognition, a detailed scientific and phenomenological understanding of the body is essential. There is still a need to develop a common vocabulary that is capable of integrating discussions of brain mechanisms in neuroscience, behavioral expressions in psychology, design concerns in artificial intelligence and robotics, and debates about embodied experience in the phenomenology and philosophy of mind. This book helps to formulate this common vocabulary by developing a conceptual framework that avoids both the overly reductionistic approaches that explain everything in terms of bottom-up neuronal mechanisms, and the inflationistic approaches that explain everything in terms of Cartesian, top-down cognitive states. Through discussions of neonate imitation, the Molyneux problem, gesture, self-awareness, free will, social cognition and intersubjectivity, as well as pathologies such as deafferentation, unilateral neglect, phantom limb, autism and schizophrenia, the book proposes to remap the conceptual landscape by revitalizing the concepts of body image and body schema, proprioception, ecological experience, intermodal perception, and enactive concepts of ownership and agency for action. Informed by both philosophical theory and scientific evidence, it addresses two basic sets of questions that concern the structure of embodied experience. First, questions about the phenomenal aspects of that structure, specifically the relatively regular and constant phenomenal features found in the content of experience. Second, questions about aspects of the structure of consciousness that are more hidden, those that may be more difficult to get at because they happen before one knows it, and do not normally enter into the phenomenal content of experience in an explicit way.Less
This book contributes to the idea that to have an understanding of the mind, consciousness, or cognition, a detailed scientific and phenomenological understanding of the body is essential. There is still a need to develop a common vocabulary that is capable of integrating discussions of brain mechanisms in neuroscience, behavioral expressions in psychology, design concerns in artificial intelligence and robotics, and debates about embodied experience in the phenomenology and philosophy of mind. This book helps to formulate this common vocabulary by developing a conceptual framework that avoids both the overly reductionistic approaches that explain everything in terms of bottom-up neuronal mechanisms, and the inflationistic approaches that explain everything in terms of Cartesian, top-down cognitive states. Through discussions of neonate imitation, the Molyneux problem, gesture, self-awareness, free will, social cognition and intersubjectivity, as well as pathologies such as deafferentation, unilateral neglect, phantom limb, autism and schizophrenia, the book proposes to remap the conceptual landscape by revitalizing the concepts of body image and body schema, proprioception, ecological experience, intermodal perception, and enactive concepts of ownership and agency for action. Informed by both philosophical theory and scientific evidence, it addresses two basic sets of questions that concern the structure of embodied experience. First, questions about the phenomenal aspects of that structure, specifically the relatively regular and constant phenomenal features found in the content of experience. Second, questions about aspects of the structure of consciousness that are more hidden, those that may be more difficult to get at because they happen before one knows it, and do not normally enter into the phenomenal content of experience in an explicit way.
Peter Szendy
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823267057
- eISBN:
- 9780823272303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823267057.003.0018
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
A return to Benjamin, Diderot and the concept of effiction. Hypothesis of a tempo proper to the evolution of bodies in the musical field, one that gives birth to phantom limbs.
A return to Benjamin, Diderot and the concept of effiction. Hypothesis of a tempo proper to the evolution of bodies in the musical field, one that gives birth to phantom limbs.
David Seed, Stephen C. Kenny, and Chris Williams (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382509
- eISBN:
- 9781786945297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781781382509.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Military History
This section focuses on the growing number of amputations, including excerpts from patients as well as surgeons. Dillan Jackson Carroll examines the case of Napoleon Perkins and the section includes ...
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This section focuses on the growing number of amputations, including excerpts from patients as well as surgeons. Dillan Jackson Carroll examines the case of Napoleon Perkins and the section includes discussions of walking by Oliver Wendell Holmes and of the ‘phantom limb’ phenomenon by the pioneer neurologist Silas weir Mitchell. The passages chart the rise of the prosthetics business, exemplifying advertisements and published testimonials.Less
This section focuses on the growing number of amputations, including excerpts from patients as well as surgeons. Dillan Jackson Carroll examines the case of Napoleon Perkins and the section includes discussions of walking by Oliver Wendell Holmes and of the ‘phantom limb’ phenomenon by the pioneer neurologist Silas weir Mitchell. The passages chart the rise of the prosthetics business, exemplifying advertisements and published testimonials.
Sarah Jackson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780748685318
- eISBN:
- 9781474412360
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748685318.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The concluding chapter to this study draws together themes of interruption, prohibition and prosthesis in order to present a reading of spectral contact. Examining phantom limbs in Elizabeth Bowen's ...
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The concluding chapter to this study draws together themes of interruption, prohibition and prosthesis in order to present a reading of spectral contact. Examining phantom limbs in Elizabeth Bowen's short story, ‘Hand in Glove’, it explores the relationship between haunting and haptology, suggesting that Bowen's story is itself subject to uncanny repetition. At the same time, the chapter opens up to broader questions of the significance of the dead hand, and considering the nature of ghostly contact, it asks how ways of thinking and writing are ‘handed on’ to other readers and writers. Responding to recent work by Nicole Pepperell on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx, it addresses the role of the hand in inheritance, and concludes by demonstrating that textual contact is always both a manipulation and a manoeuvre involving one or more phantom limbs.Less
The concluding chapter to this study draws together themes of interruption, prohibition and prosthesis in order to present a reading of spectral contact. Examining phantom limbs in Elizabeth Bowen's short story, ‘Hand in Glove’, it explores the relationship between haunting and haptology, suggesting that Bowen's story is itself subject to uncanny repetition. At the same time, the chapter opens up to broader questions of the significance of the dead hand, and considering the nature of ghostly contact, it asks how ways of thinking and writing are ‘handed on’ to other readers and writers. Responding to recent work by Nicole Pepperell on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx, it addresses the role of the hand in inheritance, and concludes by demonstrating that textual contact is always both a manipulation and a manoeuvre involving one or more phantom limbs.
Frédérique de Vignemont
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198735885
- eISBN:
- 9780191799846
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198735885.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
The embodied approach claims to return the mind to the body. This book returns the body to the mind. Let us leave aside what the body can do for cognition and focus on what it feels like to have a ...
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The embodied approach claims to return the mind to the body. This book returns the body to the mind. Let us leave aside what the body can do for cognition and focus on what it feels like to have a body. We constantly receive a flow of information about it, and yet the phenomenology of bodily awareness is relatively limited. It seems at first sight reducible to the “feeling of the same old body always there” or to a mere “feeling of warmth and intimacy” (James, 1890, p. 242). But when our body becomes less familiar we can grasp the many ways our body can appear to us. In particular, the experience of phantom limbs in amputees best brings bodily awareness into the limelight. The chapter describes a series of puzzling results, which raise fundamental questions about how we experience our body.Less
The embodied approach claims to return the mind to the body. This book returns the body to the mind. Let us leave aside what the body can do for cognition and focus on what it feels like to have a body. We constantly receive a flow of information about it, and yet the phenomenology of bodily awareness is relatively limited. It seems at first sight reducible to the “feeling of the same old body always there” or to a mere “feeling of warmth and intimacy” (James, 1890, p. 242). But when our body becomes less familiar we can grasp the many ways our body can appear to us. In particular, the experience of phantom limbs in amputees best brings bodily awareness into the limelight. The chapter describes a series of puzzling results, which raise fundamental questions about how we experience our body.