Abstract
This study analyzes the "experience" of phantom limbs held by upper limb amputees and paraplegics, in line with the subjective perceptions of the parties involved collected during fieldwork. A phantom limb is a sensation in the hand that is not supposed to exist, but is still felt by the subject after the amputation or paralysis of the upper limb. Despite the fact that phantom limbs are extremely subjective sensations that have no physical counterparts, there are few studies that analyze the experiences of the patients involved. Previous studies on phantom limbs are largely divided into two categories: those that focus on numerical values such as electrical activity of the brain or changes in muscle potentials as the subject of treatment, and those that discuss only the continuity with the past body as a specific representation of "feeling a missing arm," and have not focused on phantom limbs as an experience accompanied by change.
In this paper, we take the phantom limb from the temporal perspective of "experience," and clarify what kind of "hand" the phantom limb is for the person concerned, in line with its specificity. As a result of repeated VR rehabilitation, which has been shown to be partially effective in alleviating phantom limb pain, the memory of the former hand fades, and the hand that can be moved for the person concerned is replaced by the "image hand" of the VR. In other words, the phantom limb that the party has is never a permanent "lost hand," even cognitively. Of course, it is not completely disconnected from the hand that once physically existed. For example, there were cases of paraplegics who were faced with the "conflict" of whether to consider the paralyzed limb or the shapeless phantom limb as the "real hand." The difference in the distance to the re-embodied body, which the paralyzed limb was considered to be the "real hand," was manifested in the difference in the hand that was reacquired as "my hand."
