1.1 When the Body Is the EnemyâAmĂ©ryâs Basic Intuition
Jean AmĂ©ry survived the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and was later liberated at Bergen Belsen. In 1978, he took his own life. According to his own testimony , his suicide cannot be detached from his experiences at the concentration and death camps. Indeed, these experiences led him to claim that only under torture does one experience the body for the first time as totally oneâs own: âWhoever is overcome by pain through torture experiences his body as never beforeâ and thus, âonly in torture does the transformation of the person into flesh become completeâ (AmĂ©ry, 1980, p. 33).
More precisely, in extreme circumstances victims experience the body as being too much their own. They have a sense of over-presence , or in cognitive terms, their sense of body-ownership is too strong. In effect, not only do victims completely identify with their body, but also they are reduced solely to the body: âthe tortured person is only a body, and nothing else beside thatâ (p. 33).
The main consequence of this reduction is that the individual identifies the body as the source of intolerable suffering and pain : âBody = Pain = Deathâ (p. 34). The main contention of this book is that this equation can trigger the development of a destructive cognitive mechanism which seeks to destroy the victimâs body as the source of suffering: âWhen the whole body is filled with pain, we try to get rid of the whole bodyâ (Schilder, 1935, p. 104). Throughout the book, the term âbody-disownershipâ is used to describe this cognitive mechanism. This bookâs aim is to describe body-disownership on the cognitive and phenomenological levels and to demonstrate that this mechanism is responsible for the development of complex posttraumatic symptoms.
1.2 Disownership
Scholarly literature discusses disownership of body parts (de Vignemont, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2017), for example the case of somatoparaphrenia , defined as a âdelusion of disownership of left-sided body partsâ (Vallar & Ronchi, 2009, p. 533). Those who develop such a delusion strongly believe that a particular body part does not belong to them but rather to someone else. Another such condition, known as body integrity identity disorder (BIID) , is defined as a persistent and ongoing desire to undergo amputation , which often presents as an attempt to adjust oneâs actual body to oneâs desired body (First, 2005).
A phenomenological investigation of cases of somatoparaphrenia and BIID reveals inconsistencies at the body-schema level as well as between body-schema and body-image . Gallagher (2005) argues that âbody-image and body-schema refer to two different but closely related systems.â While body-image can be defined as a âsystem of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs pertaining to oneâs own body,â body-schema is âa system of sensory-motor capacities that function without awareness or the necessity of perceptual monitoringâ (p. 24). In effect, âbodily experience involves a complex integration of (a) automatic , bottom-up sensory and organisational processes (body-schema) with (b) higher order, top-down bodily and perceptual representations (body-image)â (Giummarra, Gibson, Georgiou-Karistianis, & John, 2008, p. 146). When the intentional structure is directed toward the body-as-an-object of perception , we are directed to the body-image and not the body-schema. To rephrase this notion, when we contemplate our body from a third-person perspective (3PP) , we are contemplating our body-image.
Gallagher (2005) advocates the notion of a double dissociation between body-image and body-schema. This disparity can also be described in terms of the discrepancy between the lived-body ( Leib ) or body-as-subject (body-schema) and the physical body ( Körper ) or body-as-object (body-image) .
Leib | Körper |
---|---|
First-person perspective (1PP) | Third-person perspective (3PP) |
Body-as-subject | Body-as-object |
Body-schema | Body-image |
Having clarified these concepts, let us return to the cognitive incongruities responsible for the development of limb-disownership . On the cognitive level, a twofold incongruity appears to be necessary for limb-disownership to develop. The first-order contradiction is between sense of body-ownership (SBO), that is âthe sense that I am the one who is undergoing an experience,â and sense of agency (SA), that is, âthe sense that I am the one who is causing or generating an actionâ (Gallagher, 2000, p. 15). These two independent yet closely related mechanisms routinely work together. Yet if SBO and SA collide, the result is contradiction at the body-schema level. In the case of somatoparaphrenia , the individual loses SA but not SBO, while in the case of BIID the individual loses SBO but not SA.
Sense of agency (SA) | Sense of body-ownership (SBO) | |
---|---|---|
Somatoparaphrenia | â | + |
Body integrity identity disorder (BIID) | + | â |
Yet, this first-order contradiction between SBO and SA at the body-schema level is insufficient for limb-disownership to develop. Rather, a second-order contradiction is also necessary. To understand this second-order contradiction, we must first differentiate between feeling and judgmentâbetween knowing this is my body and feeling it. This incongruity can be defined in terms of the discrepancy between oneâs feeling of body-ownership at the body-schema level and oneâs judgment of body-ownership at the body-image level. A similar gap exists between the feeling of agency (body-schema) and the judgment of agency (body-image). Feelings of agency and ownership are non-conceptual and implicit, emerging at the body-schema level. In contrast, judgments of agency and ownership require an interpretive judgment based on oneâs conceptual framing of the situation and oneâs beliefs.
We can therefore explain the second-order contradiction in terms of an inconsistency between oneâs feeling of agency or ownership (body-schema) and oneâs judgment of agency or ownership (body-image). As this mismatch between body-schema and body-image becomes more intolerable, the consequences become increasingly acute. In effect, the second-order contradiction can only emerge if there exists a first-order contradiction at the body-schema level. Nevertheless, the first-order contradiction alone is not sufficient for limb-disownership to occur.
This double dissociation between body-schema and body-image is the key to understanding the bookâs central argument. If two different mechanisms were indeed at work, it would be possible for one to sustain damage while the other remains intact. Yet the fact that these mechanisms are detached from one another does not mean they do not engage in dialogue. Indeed, they work together on a regular basis; their synchronization enables us to act naturally, automatically, and unconsciously in-the-world . Hence, if a problem arises in one of these mechanisms, their synchronization will be gravely harmed, with varied and grievous consequences.
This book seeks to show that a possible consequence of a problem in one of these body maps is the loss of the synchronization between body-s...