Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology
Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology
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Abstract
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.
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Front Matter
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1
Introduction: Ghost in the Machine
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2
Characterizing Phantoms: Features of Phantom Limb Syndrome
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3
From Pleasure to Pain: Accounting for the Rise and Fall in Phantom Pain
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4
Phantoms in the Mind: The Psychogenic Origins of Ethereal Appendages
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5
Phantoms in the Brain: The Holy Grail of Neuroscience
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6
Phantom-Prosthetic Relations: The Modernization of Amputation
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7
Conclusion: Authenticity and Extinction
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End Matter
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