Phantom Limb

An emotion or circumstance, which recalls those in which the wound was received, creates a phantom limb in subjects who had none. It happens that the imaginary arm is enormous after the operation, but that it subsequently shrinks and is absorbed into the stump ‘as the patient consents to accept his mutilation’.

Merleau-Ponty argues that phantom limb phenomena are determined by ‘psychic’ as well as physiological factors, making them irreducible to either peripheral or central neurological explanation and pointing instead toward existential and temporal dimensions of embodiment.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962thesis

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Why can the memories recalled to the one-armed man cause the phantom arm to appear? The phantom arm is not a recollection, it is a q

Merleau-Ponty positions the phantom arm as categorically distinct from memory or recollection, situating it within his analysis of the body’s temporal sedimentation and its irreducible entanglement with lived past experience.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962thesis

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The best evidence for this kind of representation is the phenomenon of phantom limb, mentioned earlier. After a surgical amputation, some patients imagine the missing limb as if it were still there. They are even capable of perceiving imaginary modifications in the state of the nonexistent limb.

Damasio uses the phantom limb as the primary empirical evidence for ‘off-line’ dispositional body maps, interpreting the experience as the activation of a stored representational memory in the absence of live somatic input.

Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994thesis

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Simmel claims that the aplasic phantom is not part of a body schema, although she contends that the non-aplasic (post-amputation) phantom is precisely that. The body schema’s relative resistance to alteration accounts for the non-aplasic phantom.

Gallagher critiques Simmel’s conflation of body schema and body image in aplasic phantom research, arguing that precise conceptual distinction between the two is essential for drawing valid inferences about the innate versus acquired character of bodily self-representation.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005thesis

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The missing hand comes to be represented as the ‘other end’ of that circuit. Implicit in the representation of the motor possibilities of the mouth, there must be a representation of the missing limb as well — enough, at least, so it ‘closes the circuit’ and completes the coordinated mouth-limb schema. Activating the circuit generates a virtual or phantom limb.

Gallagher proposes that the aplasic phantom arises from the activation of an innate hand-mouth motor schema in which the absent limb is implicitly represented as the neural counterpart necessary to complete a coordinated action circuit.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005thesis

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The issue of phantom limb in cases of congenital absence of limb (aplasia). The logic internal to this issue will be familiar, for it is the same logic that had been debated in the context of the question about the possibility of neonate imitation.

Gallagher frames the aplasic phantom as the critical test case for adjudicating between acquired and innate accounts of the body schema, aligning this debate with parallel controversies over neonate imitation.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005thesis

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Weir Mitchell described several sorts of phantom — some strangely ghost-like and unreal (these were the ones he called ‘sensory ghosts’); some compellingly, even dangerously, lifelike and real; some intensely painful, others (most) quite painless.

Sacks catalogues the clinical taxonomy of phantom phenomena established by Silas Weir Mitchell, foregrounding the historical depth of the problem and the multiple determinants — peripheral, central, and psychological — that any adequate theory must address.

Sacks, Oliver, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, 1985thesis

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When ‘Philip’ saw his reflected limb in the place of the phantom, he was elated and said, ‘My left arm is plugged in again. It’s as if I’m in the past. All these movements from many years ago are flooding back into my mind.’

Fogel documents Ramachandran’s mirror-box intervention as evidence that visual-proprioceptive integration can restore or dissolve phantom experience, illustrating the body schema’s plasticity and its dependence on multi-modal perceptual input.

Fogel, Alan, Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-Awareness, 2009supporting

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Forgetting is explained in the normal workings of body schemas, and the inference is that the phantom, precisely in this respect, operates as a normal part of the body schematic system.

Gallagher argues that the phantom limb’s capacity for experiential forgetting — its transparency in motor action — demonstrates that it functions within the normal body schema rather than as an aberrant percept requiring special explanation.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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Lacking experiential reinforcement they deteriorate to some degree, and are displaced or dominated by neighboring neurons, stimulation of which can generate phantom limb experience.

Gallagher’s second hypothesis concerning aplasic phantoms grounds them in genetically specified neural representations that, absent experiential reinforcement from actual limb movement, undergo cortical displacement whose stimulation nonetheless generates phantom experience.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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Awareness of movement may in fact be ontogenetically the first instance of phenomenal consciousness. In this specific case the proprioceptive sense of hand-mouth-coordinated movement may form the initial aspect of an experienced phantom.

Gallagher, following Butterworth, proposes that prenatal hand-mouth coordination generates the proprioceptive substrate from which the aplasic phantom emerges, situating phantom experience at the ontogenetic origin of phenomenal consciousness itself.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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Patients with the phantom-limb condition may report that they feel their missing limb is still there, but they realize that it clearly is not. They do not have a delusion or hallucination; indeed, it is their sense of reality that leads them to complain about their inconvenient state.

Damasio differentiates phantom limb experience from anosognosia by emphasizing that phantom patients retain an intact reality-testing capacity, using the contrast to illuminate the distinct neural substrates of body-part representation versus whole-body self-monitoring.

Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994supporting

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One can experimentally induce a phantom limb only when vision is excluded. Once the subject sees the position of his real limb, the proprioceptive phantom immediately merges with it.

Gallagher cites experimental evidence that phantom induction and dissolution are governed by the relative weighting of visual and proprioceptive input, demonstrating the multi-modal character of body schematic self-representation.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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In the case of the phantom limb the subject appears to be unaware of the mutilation and relies on his imaginary limb as he would on a real one.

Merleau-Ponty contrasts the phantom limb case with anosognosia to argue that both phenomena reveal a preconscious bodily knowledge that eludes reduction to either awareness or ignorance of physical fact.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962supporting

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The evidence cited in the above studies suggests that the aplasic phantom is an element of the body image that develops relatively late. Clearly on this evidence the inference made by several of the researchers, namely that the body schema is innate, is not logically justified.

Gallagher adjudicates that the empirical data on aplasic phantoms support their classification as elements of a relatively late-developing body image rather than as direct evidence for an innate body schema, while acknowledging that such an innate schema is not thereby disproven.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting

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By exploring the phenomenon of phantom limbs in congenital absence of limb (aplasia) it is possible to investigate the innate status of the body schema.

Gallagher’s chapter abstract announces the aplasic phantom as the methodological lever for investigating whether the body schema is innate or acquired, framing the inquiry within broader debates about primitive self-consciousness.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005aside

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Schneider, J., Hofmann, A., Rost, C., & Shapiro, F. (2008). EMDR in the treatment of chronic phantom limb pain. Pain Medicine, 9, 76-82.

Shapiro’s reference list cites clinical research on EMDR as a treatment for chronic phantom limb pain, situating the phenomenon within the broader therapeutic framework of trauma-related somatic symptoms addressed by adaptive information-processing models.

Shapiro, Francine, Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy, 2012aside

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