Stroke, Body Image, and Self Representation

Stroke, Body Image, and Self Representation provides a psychoanalytic reading of the subjective difficulties encountered by patients who have suffered a stroke. The book is based on the words of stroke patients and on their self-portraits, which are then compared with the words and portraits of subjects devoid of brain lesions. Pathological and normal self-portraits illustrate in very concrete terms the libidinal investment of our body parts.

Catherine Morin is a neurologist and a researcher (INSERM) with neurophysiological and psychoanalytic training. She has been involved in the rehabilitation process of stroke patients at the Rehabilitation department in the Hôpital Pitié-Salpetrière in Paris from 1972 to 2010. Since 1983, both her clinical and research work have been on body image and body schema disorders after a stroke. She is a member of Association Lacanienne Internationale and of the International Society of Neuropsychoanalysis.

Foreword by D. Caine; Introduction; 1. Body Schema 2. Body Image 3. The Subjective Effects of Stroke and The Specificity Of Brain Lesions. Methods 4. The Psychological Effects of Stroke in Patients Without Body Schema Disorders 5. The Psychological Effects of Stroke in Patients With Body Schema Disorders 6. Case Studies. Personification of The Hand, Broken Up Body, Orality Disorders, Aggressivness And Transitivism. 7. Right Hemispheric Syndrome. Physiopathological Hypothesis 8. Anosognosia 9. Right Hemispheric Syndrome and Pathological Mourning; Conclusion