The Self and Its Avatars in Neuropsychiatry

In this article, Peter Brugger provides an overview of various reduplications of the own body and self as seen in neuropsychiatric practice. Duplications can be primarily visual or exclusively somaesthetic, depending on lesion location. Phenomenal detail matters, for instance whether handedness of one's double is maintained or reversed, whether the double is recognized as a second self or experienced as an uncanny shadow, or whether the localization of the observer's perspective is apparently detached from the own body. Such details inform neuropsychiatry of the intimate and tight relationships between body and self which are yet highly malleable in special circumstances