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Human StudiesA Journal for Philosophy and the SocialSciences ISSN 0163-8548 Hum StudDOI 10.1007/s10746-015-9366-0

I Am Not My Body, This Is Not My Body

Yochai Ataria

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THEORETICAL / PHILOSOPHICAL PAPER

I Am Not My Body, This Is Not My Body

Yochai Ataria1

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract This paper suggests that during severe and prolonged traumatic expe-

riences such as trauma type II, one may develop disownership toward the entire

body. In this situation one’s body becomes a pure object and as such an integral part

of the hostile environment. This article applies Merleau-Ponty’s approach to per-

ception in order to improve our understanding of this process.

Keywords Disownership � Trauma type II � Phenomenology � Merleau-Ponty

Introduction

In one of his most famous and influential songs, Like A Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan

asks ‘‘How does it feel?’’. A decade later, Nagel (1974) echoes this question,

presenting his own thought experiment in which he asks ‘‘What is it like to be a

bat?’’. Inspired by these two giants, this paper tackles the issue of how it feels or

what it is like to experience severe and prolonged trauma in the most extreme and

brutal manner. To that end it adopts the phenomenological approach toward the

traumatic experience, as part of a series of theoretical (Ataria 2014a, 2015a) and

empirical (Ataria 2014b, c; Ataria and Neria 2013; Ataria and Somer 2013) studies

which apply this approach in order to reexamine the very nature of the traumatic

experience. This paper is thus part of a larger project describing various aspects of

the traumatic experience from a phenomenological perspective (Ataria 2014a,

2015a, b, d, in press; Ataria and Gallagher 2015).

Within this framework, it has been argued (Ataria 2015a) that the more severe the

traumatic experience, the greater the decrease in sense of ownership. In turn, so it

& Yochai Ataria

yochai.ataria@gmail.com

1 Neurobiology Department, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel

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DOI 10.1007/s10746-015-9366-0

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has been suggested, the weaker the sense of ownership grows in the short term

(during the trauma), the more serious the symptoms in the long term are, and the

probability of the onset of PTSD rises (Ataria 2014a). Yet with this in mind, a

fundamental question still remains unanswered: what in the nature of the traumatic

experience leads to unique post-traumatic symptoms such as (a) self-harming

behavior (SHM), (b) a dissociative subtype of posttraumatic stress disorder (D-

PTSD), and (c) complex PTSD (C-PTSD) which is also known as Disorders of

Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified (DESNOS) (van der Kolk et al. 2005).

Principally, it appears that these phenomena are not independent but rather all

correlate with trauma type II (Terr 1991), which typically involves chronic,

repeated, and ongoing exposure to traumatic events, in particular those resulting

from intentional human design such as combat, sexual abuse of minors, physical

abuse (e.g., spousal abuse), imprisonment as a political prisoner or a prisoner of war

(POW), or victimization.

It has further been suggested (Ataria 2015c, in press; Ataria and Gallagher 2015)

that disownership toward the entire body during trauma can lead, at least in some

cases, to the above symptoms and, in particular, to C-PTSD (or DESNOS) which

correlates with self-harming behavior and dissociative subtypes of posttraumatic

stress disorder. Essentially, C-PTSD includes the core symptoms of PTSD such as

re-experiencing, avoidance/numbing, and hyper-arousal. According to Herman

(1992a), however, the classic symptoms of PTSD fail to explain the various

symptoms that some post-traumatic survivors develop such as (a) emotion

regulation difficulties, (b) disturbances in relational capacities, (c) dissociation,

(d) adverse effects on belief systems, and (e) somatic distress or disorganization.

Having said that, it is important to understand what conditions enable such a

radical phenomenon such as C-PTSD to occur. It has been proposed that while

enduring constant torture a sense of disownership toward the entire body may

develop, yet in order for this to happen the following criteria must be met: (1) lack

of cognitive, mental, or emotional resources to handle the situation; (2) the

experience that any object in one’s surroundings, including the disowned body

itself, is hostile; (3) an existential sense of helplessness and; (4) internalization of

the notion that s/he must be annihilated. In this paper I would like to go a step

further and offer a phenomenological description of the conditions that might lead

to the phenomenon of disownership toward the entire body, in particular the

experience that any object in one’s surroundings, including the disowned body

itself, is hostile.

Fundamentally, disownership toward the entire body is not equivalent to dis-

identification with one’s body. Rather it identifies one’s body as the enemy. In this

sense, a very thick line must to be drawn between a lack of sense of ownership and

disownership toward the entire body.1 While previous papers have examined the

cognitive and psychological reasons (Ataria and Gallagher 2015) and long term

effects (Ataria, in press) of disownership, this paper seeks to analyze this unique

phenomenon from a phenomenological perspective; to be more specific, this paper

1 I deeply thank Prof. Yemima Ben-Menahem for this insight. In a sense, this paper continues my

dialogue with her.

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mainly (but not only) adopts Merleau-Ponty’s approach to perception in order to

improve our understanding of what is it like to feel disownership toward the entire

body. Somewhat surprisingly, a search for such endeavors in the relevant literature

did not find any similar studies, making the current paper unique.2

As I have argued elsewhere (2014a), the phenomenological approach allows us to

reveal the pre-reflective experience and, in particular, the bodily level of experience.

If we accept the main principle of one of today’s leading scholars in the field of

trauma, Bessel van der Kolk, who has argued that the body keeps the score (1994,

2014), it is very clear that we need to find a way to expose the bodily level of

experience during trauma. While in other studies of mine I have examined the

matter on an empirical basis (2014b, c; Ataria and Neria 2013; Ataria and Somer

2013), in this paper I will discuss the bodily level of experience during trauma

(focusing on trauma type II) more theoretically. In order to generate some insights

into the bodily level of experience during trauma, it is only natural to focus on

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body.

In sum, the goal of this paper is to describe, phenomenologically, the

phenomenon of disownership toward the entire body. As such, this paper constitutes

part of an endeavor to describe the traumatic experience and its long terms effects

using a phenomenological approach (Davidson 2000; Larrabee 1995; Stolorow

2003, 2010).

The next section examines Merleau-Ponty’s theory that we perceive the world

through our body, which is at the same time both a subject and an object. Thereafter

the paper attempts to explain how this twofold structure (subject/object) can

collapse during severe and prolonged traumatic experiences (such as trauma type II)

and, as a result, in the most extreme cases, disownership toward the entire body may

develop.

Being a Body in the World: The Twofold (Subject/Object) Structure

Perceiving the World Through the Body: Revealing the Transparent Body

In many ways we are all (at least to some extent) ‘‘naı̈ve realistic’’ beings. As such

we feel that we perceive the world in a direct and reliable manner. Our ability to

remain naı̈ve and realistic rests on the fact that ‘‘our body is transparent in the sense

that one looks through it to the world’’ (Legrand 2007: 504). In Sartre’s words, ‘‘the

body is present in every action although invisible…. The body is lived and not

known’’ (1956: 324).

Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy focuses precisely on this lived and not known bodily

experience, that is, on the lived body. In order to understand what Merleau-Ponty

actually means by the lived body, it is useful to compare this to the corporeal body.

The corporeal body, or the body as object, is simply the anatomical object of

2 Almost none of the papers discussing ‘‘trauma’’ and ‘‘PTSD’’ in connection with ‘‘phenomenology’’

(e.g., Carrion et al. 2002; Mellman et al. 1992; Tomb 1994) do not really adopt a phenomenological

approach to trauma.

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physiology, that is the body which can be observed by others; it is the body as an

object of scientific investigation, the body that has undergone a process of

objectifying. The lived body, or the body-as-subject, by contrast, ‘‘is not one more

among external objects, with the peculiarity of always being there’’ (105) and thus it

should be defined in terms of embodied being-in-the-world. The lived body ‘‘is

always near me, always there for me, is to say that it is never really in front of me,

that I cannot array it before my eyes, that it remains marginal to all my perceptions,

that it is with me’’ (104).

By developing a unique kind of phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty tries to reveal

the transparent body which has been somewhat forgotten by western Cartesian

philosophy (Matthews 2002; Priest 2003; Romdenh-Romluc 2011). Merleau-Ponty

(2002) reminds us that our body is ‘‘always being with us’’ (239). By this Merleau-

Ponty means that our surroundings are perceived through the lived body or, in

Zahavi’s (2003) words, ‘‘we are aware of perceptual objects by being aware of our

own body’’ (105). Essentially while perceiving the world we simply cannot bypass

our body, thus it is not merely that ‘‘the body is our general medium for having a

world’’ (Merleau-Ponty 2002: 169) but in fact, like it or not, we are doomed to be

thrown into the world on a bodily level: ‘‘we are our body…we perceive the world

with our body….we are in the world through our body’’ (239). To clarify this issue

further, one could say that according to Merleau-Ponty the process of perceiving

objects is conducted through bodily processes—‘‘the synthesis of the object is here

effected, then, through the synthesis of one’s own body’’ (238). With this in mind

Merleau-Ponty can indeed argue that ‘‘I am conscious of the world through the

medium of my body’’ (95). Yet this notion requires clarification: Merleau-Ponty

famously wrote that ‘‘the theory of the body schema is, implicitly, a theory of

perception’’ (239), meaning that we perceive the world through changes in our body

schema (Carman 1999). With this in mind we may say that the process by which

objects in our surroundings become familiar (that is recognized, identified, and

known) occurs on the level of body schema (Gallagher 1995).

The Body Becomes Known in the Process of Exploring the World

As was discussed above, for Merleau-Ponty the body is our general medium for

having a world. Thus, for instance, in order to identify unknown objects through

touch (with closed eyes) one must allocate all of one’s attention to the way these

objects are sensed by the body (fingers and hands) (O’Shaughnessy 1989; Ratcliffe

2012, 2013). Yet this process does not only open up the world to us but, in fact,

through this process of exploration the body itself is revealed: ‘‘I am conscious of

my body via the world’’ (Merleau-Ponty 2002: 94) or, as Husserl puts it, ‘‘the body

is not first given for us and subsequently used to investigate the world. On the

contrary, the world is given to us as bodily investigated, and the body is revealed to

us in this exploration of the world’’ (Hua 5/128, 15/287 in Zahavi 2003: 105). This

notion becomes clearer when considering the process of perceiving through sensing

and exploring the world on a tactile level with closed eyes. In this case it is very

obvious that the process of perceiving is mediated by the way that one’s body is

sensed during the process of sensing (X) or, in other words, how it touches while

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being touched: ‘‘But when it is found, it is felt; just as the body is felt, the feeling of

which is also an abstraction, because never is the body felt all alone, but always

together with other things’’ (James 1890: 299). Interestingly, this notion goes back

to Spinoza (2000/1677) who argued, ‘‘the idea of every mode, in which the human

body is affected by external bodies, must involve the nature of the human body, and

also the nature of the external body’’ (prop. XVI).

In principle then, bodily self-awareness is necessary for any kind of perception:

‘‘the body can indeed feel itself feeling’’ (Carman 1999: 213). That being said, in

the process of exploring the world the body itself is revealed, explored, and thus

becomes known as a kind of object—yet from within, pre-reflectively.

Bodily World

Merleau-Ponty (2002) ties the sense of subjectivity to our body and the world,

which is in fact a bodily world: subjectivity is ‘‘bound up with that of the body and

that of the world’’ (475). Thus Merleau-Ponty believes that ‘‘subjectivity is merely

one with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world, and because

the subject that I am, when taken concretely, is inseparable from this body and this

world’’ (2002: 475; my emphasis). Essentially, according to Merleau-Ponty, the

world should be redefined as a bodily world. We are not familiar with the

‘‘objective’’ world but instead only with the world as we can perceive it.

Interestingly, Husserl (1960, 1989, 1997/1907), Heidegger (1996), and Merleau-

Ponty (2002) all classify ‘‘the world’’ as a field of possibilities. As humans, we are

not interested in the world in itself but rather in what we can do (or cannot do) in the

world (Husserl 1989). The world is not an abstract place. The world is never

absolutely foreign; pre-reflectively we are already familiar with it because we are

made of the same stuff.

The phenomenal field represents the way we are open to the world (Carman

2004); it is a field of perception and possibilities, in other words it is the world as we

actually perceive it (Matthews 2002). Fundamentally, the phenomenal field is pre-

scientific (Merleau-Ponty 1964) and ‘‘prior to any theoretical thought’’ (Merleau-

Ponty 2002: 63). It is a unified field of the world and the body, the world that we

actually live in and act within; the phenomenal field should be defined as a field of

possibilities of what one can and cannot do.

Both a Subject and an Object (Among Objects)

For Merleau-Ponty an object must be, by definition, an observable thing: ‘‘It is an

object, which means that it is standing in front of us, only because it is observable’’

(2002: 103). If this is the case, objects are defined through their relations with the

subject: ‘‘an object is an object only in so far as it can be moved away from me’’

(103). Thus the body cannot merely be an object among others since it (the body)

will never stand in front of oneself: ‘‘I observe external objects with my body, I

handle them, examine them, walk round them, but my body itself is a thing which I

do not observe: in order to be able to do so, I should need the use of a second body

which itself would be unobservable’’ (2002: 103; my emphasis). Yet, this is not to

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say that the body is not physical or that it does not share properties with other

objects; rather the opposite is true. As Matthews (2002) notes, ‘‘it would be

impossible to experience objects unless, for each of us, our own experience were not

itself one of those objects’’ (48). Thus in the most fundamental way, Merleau-

Ponty’s phenomenological stance is rooted within the notion that the body is made

of the same flesh as the world (1968).

With the concept of flesh, Merleau-Ponty attempts to expose the complexity of

being-in-the-world. It is not posible to make an absolute distinction between on the

one hand being in the world as touching, and being in the world as touched on the

other. These two aspects are, by defnition, intertwinined with each other. To be

more precise, although there is a clear separation between the being-in-the-world as

touching and being-in-the-world as touched, these two phenomena overlap: while

the right hand is touching the left hand (that being touched) both hands are part of

the same whole body that is at once touching and being touched. This relation is

defined by Merleau-Ponty as a chiasmic kind of association. Simmilarly, according

to Merleau-Ponty, subject and object, self and world are also associated

chiasmically. Most importantly, our body, is at once both a subject and an object

and, as such, is associated chiasmically with the world. In this sense we are part of

the world, constituted by the same flesh and therefore we cannot be separated from

the world.

Clearly then, the body is not merely an object among objects because our body is

a precondition for any kind of object; it is rather a ‘‘subject-object’’ (Merleau-Ponty

1964: 166). It is a lived and knowing-body, a subject that perceives the world

(Husserl 1989). Therefore it appears that our body is based upon a twofold structure:

as a perceiver it is a subject yet at the same time it is ‘‘an object which does not

leave me’’ (Merleau-Ponty 2002: 103).

Disownership Toward the Entire Body

Opening

It is well known and documented that during radical cases such as trauma type II,

the only alternative for survival available to the survivor is to avoid her own body

(Herman 1992a, b; Janet 1904; Nijenhuis et al. 1998; Scaer 2007; van der Hart et al.

2000, 2004). Yet there is a significant difference between avoiding one’s own body

and treating the body as the enemy. This section attempts to shed light on the

conditions that may lead to the development of disownership toward the entire

body. While Ataria and Gallagher (2015) discuss the cognitive conditions that allow

for such a radical phenomenon to occur, this section offers a phenomenological

discussion of its development.

To this end, it is necessary to return to Merleau-Ponty’s notion that as humans we

are both subject and object at the same time—touching while being touched.

Logically, it is very clear that in order for one to develop disownership toward the

entire body, one’s body must become a pure object. The following sections describe

the process by which this takes place.

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In the next (‘‘Disownership: Definitions’’ section) the phenomenon of disown-

ership will be briefly defined, thereafter (‘‘When the Simple Dissociative Coping/

Defense Mechanism is Simply not Enough’’) it will be demonstrated how in some

cases the dissociative defensive/coping mechanism does not allow the victim to deal

with traumatic events. Finally (‘‘Development of Disownership Toward the Entire

Body: A Phenomenological Perspective’’) the process by which disownership

toward the entire body can develop will be illustrated and some limited clinical

implications will be noted.

Disownership: Definitions

According to de Vignemont disownership, as a phenomenon, includes three

different sub-phenomena:

1. The experience of a limb as alien, yet still believing that the limb belongs to the

individual; e.g., depersonalization (Simeon and Abugel 2006).

2. The experience of a limb as one’s own, but nevertheless the individual believes

that the limb does not belong to her—e.g., Body Integrity Identity Disorder

(BIID) (First 2005).

3. The experience of a limb as alien accompanied by the belief that the limb does

not belong to the individual; the limb may seem to belong to someone else—

e.g., alien hand syndrome—somatoparaphrenia (Vallar and Ronchi 2009).

When the Simple Dissociative Coping/Defense Mechanism is Simplynot Enough

By shifting the spotlight to the transparent body, Merleau-Ponty reveals the very

nature of perception: it is not merely that we perceive the world through the body

but in fact, while perceiving the world, we cannot bypass our body by any means. It

is well known that dissociation during trauma can serve as a defense mechanism that

allows the subject to disconnect from reality (Herman 1992b; van der Kolk 1987;

van der Kolk and Fisler 1995; van der Kolk and van der Hart 1989; van der Kolk

et al. 1996). Thus, as has been argued elsewhere (Ataria 2015a), dissociation can be

defined in terms of the sense of body ownership: as the sense of body ownership

decreases, so the intensity of the dissociative experience increases. This mechanism

allows the victim to become somewhat detached from her surroundings. In extreme

cases, as the sense of body ownership drops to zero, one may develop a full out of

body experience (OBE): ‘‘During an OBE people seem to be awake and feel that

their ‘self,’ or center of awareness, is located outside of the physical body and

somewhat elevated. It is from this elevated extrapersonal location that the subjects

experience seeing their body and the world’’ (Blankea and Mohr 2005: 186; my

emphasis). A careful reading of this appears to indicate that while detached from

one’s body one may nevertheless still know that the body one sees is one’s own. In

this sense, even though one is detached from the body during an OBE, one is

detached from one’s own body; this body from which one is detached remains one’s

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own. The simple dissociative mechanism does now allow the victim to become

completely detached from reality, yet during radical situations such as imprison-

ment as a prisoner of war (POW) or extended instances of incest, the (so-called)

simple dissociative mechanism is not enough (Ataria and Neria 2013; Ataria and

Somer 2013); in other words, dis-identification by itself cannot do the job. In this

situation, disownership toward the entire body may be the only remaining

alternative.

Development of Disownership Toward the Entire Body:A Phenomenological Perspective

Merleau-Ponty argues that one is one’s body (I am my body). Having said that, we

should realize that in order to survive radical situations one must first develop the

experience of I am not my body (e.g., OBE) and, in extreme cases, when this

mechanism fails to help, the experience of I am not my body, this is not my body,

this body is my enemy.

Severe traumatic events are characterized by a hostile environment in which the

victim is isolated, tortured, and humiliated. The victim cannot avoid any of these

horrifying phenomena—she belongs to the captors in the most fundamental way

possible since she is at once tortured and kept alive by the same figure(s). Given that

one is thrown into the world with one’s body, it is at the very least reasonable that in

order for the victim to survive in a situation such as this, she must reject her own

body (Ataria and Gallagher 2015). Yet as long as one identifies, even weakly, with

one’s body, one cannot avoid the world altogether. Indeed as was demonstrated,

during an OBE one sees both one’s body and the world, but one knows that the body

one sees is one’s own. By contrast, during radical situations of pure and constant

suffering, one must identify the body as not being one’s own (even in the weakest

manner) but rather as the enemy. This is the only way to avoid being absorbed by

the hostile environment: I am not my body ? this is not my body ? this body is my

enemy.

We have seen that Merleau-Ponty suggests that the theory of the body schema is,

implicitly, a theory of perception. Accepting this principle, being completely

detached from the world would appear to constitute a real difficulty. Yet under

conditions in which one ceases to be one’s own body; stops identifying with one’s

body; and, most importantly, identifies one’s body as the enemy, one may detach

from one’s body schema. In this situation the sense of subjectivity, or what remains

of it, is no longer rooted in (or constructed upon) the body schema. Furthermore,

subjectivity in this situation is not one with the body and the world but rather

completely separated. In this sense, during this kind of experiences the body ceases

being a lived-body since the lived-body always already contains, pre-reflectively,

the world. We are being-in-the-world through the lived body and hence the process

of diminishing the lived-body allows one to become disconnected from the world.

For this reason, and phenomenologically speaking this is a crucial point (de

Vignemont 2010, 2011), disownership toward the entire body is not equivalent to an

OBE (Ataria, in press). Indeed, as was explained above, during an OBE one

nevertheless continues to perceive the world, at least to some degree—even if in a

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distorted manner. However, if we are conscious of our body via the world (Merleau-

Ponty 2002), then in order to detach truly from one’s body one must not perceive the

world whatsoever. As has been demonstrated (Ataria and Gallagher 2015; Ataria

and Neria 2013; Ataria and Somer 2013), in this situation one must exist in some

kind of alternative reality—a non-bodily reality. This should come as no surprise,

since if it is indeed true that the body is revealed to us in this exploration of the

world, then in order to escape from constantly unbearable surroundings one must

become completely closed to the world and develop a disembodied alternative

reality. That is to say that the sense of subjectivity must be completely separated

from one’s body. In this situation, the body becomes merely the corporeal body.

We exist in a phenomenal field which is defined by our abilities and alternatives;

namely what counts is what I can or cannot do. It seems that while being tortured

constantly, without any ability to change the situation, one is likely become

helpless—there is simply nothing one can do. Yet being helpless is one of the most

important features of any kind of trauma. Thus it is obvious that although this

continuous sense of helplessness is in all likelihood a pre-condition for developing

disownership toward the entire body, something else must lead to the development

of this radical phenomenon. Essentially, during severe and prolonged trauma the

phenomenal field is transformed into a hostile field, it does not allow the victim to

find a place to hide—it is filled with violence.

Under these conditions, the objective dimension is reduced to pure pain and,

moreover, any object in one’s phenomenal field is perceived as dangerous.

Furthermore, each and any every object, one’s body included, generates pure

suffering for the victim. In a situation in which objects of any kind are strongly

connected with pure suffering, one has no choice but to dispose of the objective

dimension, to the extent that the victim could become a pure subject lacking any

kind of objective dimension. By so doing, the victim, as a subject, is no longer part

of the flesh; the victim is not able to touch or be touched. Moreover, in this situation,

and this is a critical point indeed, the victim’s body becomes a pure physical object,

an object among objects. The body is no longer both a subject and an object. In this

sense the structure of the human body (being a subject and an object in the same

time) collapses.

Yet the body is not merely ‘‘another object’’ in the victim’s surroundings;

essentially, the victim’s body itself becomes the source of suffering. The hostile

environment becomes one with the victim’s body. Indeed, if the body itself becomes

an object that generates pain and suffering, it cannot be distinguished from the

victim’s hostile environment. Furthermore, the victim’s body comes to be identified

as responsible for the victim’s suffering. However, as long as the victim’s body

retains its subjective dimension it cannot be disposed of or, from the opposite

perspective, only when the victim’s body becomes a pure object does it become

possible for the victim to get rid of her body and treat it as the enemy.

In the process of separating oneself completely from one’s body the victim, as a

subject, ceases to be part of the world. In this process the victim’s body loses its

subjective dimension, subjectivity existing now only in an alternative reality—a

non-bodily kind of reality.

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When the victim is torn from the world, the sense of subjectivity is no longer

bound up with that of the body and that of the world. Instead, the victim identifies

the body and the world, which are always bound together, as her most vicious

enemy since, as was noted, in a radical situation (trauma type II) the victim does not

identify the world (that contains the victimizers) as the source of pain but rather the

victim’s body becomes the source of pain. In the very moment that this process

reaches its conclusion, the victim starts to identify the body as the enemy and may

develop disownership toward the entire body. Clearly, the question of whether there

is a way back from this point remains unanswered.

Answering this question is not within the scope of this paper and given that this

paper is merely theoretical in nature, the clinical implications cannot be formulated

in an objective, cold, and medical manner. Yet, with is these limitations in mind, I

would nevertheless like to suggest some insights. As we saw, disownership toward

the entire body can be defined as a situation in which the lived body (body-as-

subject) and the corporeal body (body-as-object) are torn apart. Hence, any kind of

treatment should try to unite these two dimensions once again. In other articles I

have also attempted to tackle this issue (Ataria 2015c, in press), suggesting that we

should embrace more bodily therapeutic approaches, e.g., to deal with this unique

situation. Yet it seems that we are still far from being able to help those for whom

their body is no longer both a subject and an object at the same time. To this end, we

must find new ways to revive the survivor’s body as a unique entity which is at once

both a subject and an object.

Closing Remarks

As was noted in ‘‘Disownership: Definitions’’ section, de Vignemont identifies three

different kinds of experiences that can be labeled as kinds of disownership. In the

first case, one experiences a limb as alien, yet one nevertheless believes that the limb

is one’s own; in the second case one experience a limb as one’s own but

nevertheless believes that the limb does not belong to her. Both of these phenomena

do not allow for the victim to deal with a hostile environment in which torture,

humiliation, isolation, and pure suffering continue for prolonged periods, since in

both cases the victim remains somewhat attached to her body and the world.

In contrast to these two phenomena, in the case of somatoparaphrenia de

Vignemont presents a situation in which one experiences one’s limb as alien and, in

addition, this is accompanied by the belief that the limb does not belong to the

individual. It is this phenonmenon (extended from one limb to the whole body) that

may allow the victim to develop disownership toward her entire body. Through this

process, the body ceases to be one’s own. Furthermore, in this process the victim’s

body loses its subjective dimension and instead is transformed into the victim’s

enemy.

Returning to Merleau-Ponty’s philosphy, it thus seems that when disownership

toward the entire body develops, the Merleau-Pontyian picture of the world is

turned on its head: ‘‘The unity of man has not yet been broken; the body has not yet

been stripped of human predicates; it has not yet become a machine’’ (1965: 188).

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Future studies should examine how different kinds of disownership experiences

develop following varying types of traumatic events, moving from a general

definition of trauma type II to examining different kinds of traumatic experiences

that can result in what this paper defined as disownership toward the entire body.

Furthermore, as been argued elsewhere (Ataria 2014a) the phenomenological

approach in general and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body in particular

appear to allow us to improve our understanding of the traumatic expereince and its

long term effects. Future studies should to embrace the phenomnological approach

in order to generate insights that, in turn, will allow us to understand the subjective

expereince during radical, life-threatening expereinces. Without understanding how

does it feel to undergo radical life-threatening expereinces, we will not be able to

help the victims.

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