How the Mind Creates the Body and What Can Go Wrong: Case Studies of Misperceptions of the Body

Abstract

The review brings together a wealth of case studies, both from the authors' patients and from the literature, about people whose bodies do not feel as they really should. Body parts suddenly become longer or shorter, heavier or lighter and there may be a loss of body control to the point where individuals feel as if they no longer have a body at all. The article differentiates by type of causes: mental disorders (e.g., psychosis), the influence of drugs on body perception and neurological causes. Depending on the type of body change, examples are given from the categories of sexually toned changes in body perception, out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences. Since there are countless types of body image disorders, the article is limited to a selective selection of the most interesting and sometimes obscure deviations.

Keywords: coenaesthesia; misperceptions of the body; near-death studies; out-of-body experiences; paraesthesia; sexual hallucinations; tactile hallucinations.

Figure 1

In the text written in 1811 by Johann Christian Reil, he compares the body to a hollow sphere; the outer surface is stimulated by the outside world and is responsible for the “common feeling” (i.e., coenaesthesia), and the inside of the sphere performs its own stimulation: “The sensitivity of the soul organ. I have already said above that the human body can be thought of as a hollow sphere, with an inner and outer surface of equal sensitivity. The outer surface, set in motion merely by the objects of the world and the body itself, is intended for the common feeling and the outer senses. But the inner needs its own stimuli in order to produce an action”.

Figure 2

Albert Hofmann described how, when he washed his hands under the influence of LSD, he felt that those parts of his body did not belong to him.