Observations placeholder
Dr. Solfier – Hemiplegics claim to feel and see very close to them, on the paralyzed side, another person whom they regard as the exact reproduction of themselves
Identifier
027907
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Half way to being out of body
A description of the experience
As quoted in Professor Ernest Bozzano Les phénomènes de bilocation Traduit de l’italien par Gabriel Gobron and translated further into English by Serge Patlavskiy
First category -"Senses of integrity" in amputees and impressions of "doubling" in hemipleges.
Turning to the brief overview of the related impressions of the disabled with hemiplegia, I also note in this regard how the "peripheral" hypothesis is becoming increasingly problematic and unsustainable, given what the disabled in question claim to feel and see very close to them, and precisely on the paralyzed side, another person whom they regard as the exact reproduction of themselves, and they have the impression that he enjoys the full sensitivity that has been taken from them.
Dr. Solfier describes such facts in the Bulletin de l'Institut Général Psychologique (Bulletin of the General Psychological Institute, 1902, p. 45 and 1904, p. 539) and explains them by using a variant of the "peripheral" hypothesis, namely as "hallucinatory projections of cenesthetic origin". Nevertheless, it should be noted that if, for amputees, both hypotheses are legitimate as for them the centres of peripheral innervation and the cenesthetic sense remain intact, the same cannot be said of hemiplegics, whose centres of innervation corresponding to the paralysed side are destroyed and whose cenesthetic sense is more or less impaired. It would not be lawful to speak here of sensations of "duplication" resulting from peripheral excitations transmitted to non-existent centres, just as it would be contradictory to speak of an hypertrophy of the cenesthetic sense going so far as to cause hallucinatory objectification, whereas the sense in question is weakened and diminished as a result of central traumatic injuries, and not of functional disorders, which would be something else.
ET PER CONVERSO, there would be no contradiction, and the facts would be reconciled with the theory when, in today's psychological research on the phenomena of "externalization of sensitivity", the thesis of duplication in cases of hemiplegia would be supported, noting how, by the effect of the paralysis that occurred, the links that united the "fluidic double" to one half of the body have probably disappeared and thus determined a partial separation of one from the other.