The term ‘Left Side’ in the depth-psychology and neuroscientific corpus operates on at least three distinct registers that frequently intersect: the neurological, the symbolic-mythological, and the clinical-phenomenological. In neurological discourse, most extensively developed by Iain McGilchrist, the left side of the body is contralateral to the right hemisphere and thus serves as both a literal site of neglect following right-hemisphere lesions and a synecdoche for the experiential world governed by holistic, socially attuned, and emotionally rich processing. Damasio’s account of anosognosia renders the paralyzed left side a locus of radical unawareness, where the body’s own deficit disappears from consciousness. Van der Kolk’s trauma research shows that flashbacks activate the right hemisphere while the left side of cognitive functioning — analytical, linguistic — falls silent. The symbolic register is no less rich: Hillman retrieves the ancient medical-mythological tradition in which the left side is coded as feminine, contrasexual, and subordinate, a tradition traceable from Hippocrates through Fliess and contested by cross-cultural anthropology. Gallagher’s phenomenological work demonstrates how the left side of the body may be excluded from the body image while remaining functionally operative in the body schema. Across these registers, the left side is not a simple anatomical given but a contested boundary between consciousness and its other, between the represented and the unrepresented.
Fliess believed that the left side of a person expressed his contrasexual side, his own dominant sex belonging to the right. Where ‘a woman resemble
This passage traces the symbolic coding of the left side as contrasexual and inferior through Fliess’s bilateralism theory, which Hillman situates within a long tradition of right-left polarity in Western thought.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
the ancient idea ‘boys to the right, girls to the left’ handed down via the Hippocratic collection of medical aphorisms… left = female is not a universal law.
Hillman critically examines the cross-cultural range of left-side symbolism, challenging the assumed universality of the equation left = female = inferior by citing counter-evidence from the Andaman islanders and Jewish mystical tradition.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
a victim of a major stroke, entirely paralyzed in the left side of the body, unable to move hand and arm, leg and foot… oblivious to the entire problem, reporting that nothing is possibly the matter
Damasio uses the paralyzed left side of the anosognosic patient as the paradigm case of the brain’s capacity to deny its own deficit, linking left-side bodily loss to a failure of self-knowledge.
, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994thesis
A lesion in the right parietal lobe, for example, may cause neglect of the left side of the body… the left side of the body is excluded from the body image — it is ignored, denied, and sometimes disowned
Gallagher establishes that neglect of the left side following right-parietal lesions constitutes an exclusion from body image while the body schema may remain functionally intact, distinguishing between phenomenal representation and pre-reflective motor organisation.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005thesis
the right hand crosses over to the left (neglected) side… ‘he used the left side as well as the right in producing signs, and even used the left side of his signing space’
Gallagher demonstrates that the body schema governing instrumental action can preserve use of the left side even when unilateral neglect has eliminated it from conscious body image, complicating simple lateralisation models.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting
during flashbacks, our subjects’ brains lit up only on the right side… images of past trauma activate the right hemisphere of the brain and deactivate
Van der Kolk’s neuroimaging evidence that trauma flashbacks are right-hemisphere events implicitly positions the left side of brain function — analytic, linguistic — as deactivated during the re-living of traumatic experience.
, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, 2014supporting
the left hemisphere may prefer horizontal orientation, and the right hemisphere vertical… Is there some connection between the melancholy tendencies of the right hemisphere and the mediaeval belief that the left side of the body was dominated by black bile?
McGilchrist speculatively links the neurological asymmetry of hemispheric colour and orientation preferences to the pre-modern humoral tradition that associated the left side of the body with melancholy and black bile.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting
the left half of the world still exists for him, he just can’t see it easily. He turns his head so as to bring what he wants to see into the right field of vision. But not so with my patient Mike.
McGilchrist distinguishes hemianopia — an acknowledged loss of left-side vision — from neglect, where the patient’s right hemisphere damage causes the left half of the world to cease to exist as a concern.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the left half of the world still exists for him, he just can’t see it easily. He turns his head so as to bring what he wants to see into the right field of vision.
This parallel passage reinforces McGilchrist’s phenomenological distinction between the two modes of left-side loss, emphasising that neglect involves not mere perceptual absence but existential non-registration.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Positively valenced emotional states and more regulated, even states of mild interest and calm, are thought to be the left hemisphere’s range of affective experience.
Siegel situates the left hemisphere — and by extension the left side’s neural governance — within a contested model of emotional valence, associating it with positive, regulated affect as opposed to the more turbulent right-hemisphere range.
, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020supporting
Was there an overall left-side or right-side gestures bias and a gender effect? The findings suggested that infants showed no significant overall lateral bias of gestures
This infant research finds no significant left-side gestural bias in early development, complicating strong lateralisation hypotheses about regulatory and communicative asymmetry in the first year of life.
, The impact of early life trauma on health and disease the, 2010supporting
Trevarthen concluded that expressive and regulatory gestures (i.e., other-directed gestures) are asymmetrically organized to the left side of the brain.
Lanius reviews Trevarthen’s contested lateralisation hypothesis, which assigns other-directed regulatory gestures to left-side brain organisation, noting the high variability that undermines strong conclusions.
, The impact of early life trauma on health and disease the, 2010supporting
left side (of the body), see body
This index entry in McGilchrist cross-references the left side of the body to a broader conceptual framework, signalling its systematic treatment as a corporeal-hemispheric theme throughout the text.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009aside
the left hemisphere controls routine, oft-practiced approach behaviors in a safe, familiar environment, whereas the right forebrain controls sudden, arousing avoidance behaviors
Craig’s ethological survey of forebrain asymmetry across vertebrates positions the left hemisphere as governing routine approach, providing comparative evolutionary context for the left-side functional specialisation debate.
, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014aside