Reading Blindly: Literature, Otherness, and the Possibility of an ...

paralyzed. Over time, this feedback stamps itself into the brain such that even when the limb is absent, the brain has learnt that the limb (and its subsequent phantom) is paralyzed. Hence, the patient feels discomfort or even pain because the phantom limb is in an uncomfortable position or is paralyzed. If the brain is tricked into seeing two complete hands when the hand that is present moves, the brain thinks that the phantom limb is also moving; in this way, the person can “move” her or his phantom limb, and so the brain no longer recognizes it as a paralyzed limb. ⁵ More recently, virtual reality has been used to treat sufferers of phantom-limb pain; by attaching the present limb to an interface that shows two limbs moving, the somatosensory cortex is tricked again. ⁶ Both the “mirror box” and the virtual-reality interface (developed by the University of Manchester) work on the same principle of visual-kinesthetic synesthesia, except that the illusion is stronger in the latter.

It is through the use of imagination—not accepting the absence as a lack but rather as a spectre that is present but cannot be encountered directly—that the symptoms suffered by phantom limb patients can be treated. This is not merely the creation of a “substitute formation” in the sense that Freud himself asserted, which is “the manufacturing of a [formation] which recompenses the subject for his loss of reality.” ⁷ In Freud's case, the “substitute formation” allows one to ignore the cause and simulate one in order to treat the symptom(s); as long as the patient believes that one is treating the “cause,” the symptom(s) will go away. This use of the imagination is more radical as the concept of the cause—origin—is done away with: it matters not if the limb in question is present or absent (phantom); both are treated as if they are one and the same. The line between the real and the virtual is erased. In fact,