This book addresses organ transplantation from a psychoanalytical perspective. Where other authors consider topics of informed consent, scarcity and organ trade, Zwart explores the ways in which the practice fundamentally challenges our basic experience and image of the body, revolving around issues such as embodiment, ownership and bodily integrity. In organ transplantation, the body emerges as something which we simultaneously have and areconstituting a whole, as well as a set of partial objects that can be transplanted and replaced, donated and sold.

Presents a unique, psychoanalytical perspective on normative and experiential issues in organ transplantation Focuses on basic quandaries in transplantation medicine, such as embodiment, the moral status of the human body and the concept of bodily integrity Examines transplantation medicine via an oblique perspective, using genres of the imagination (notably organ transplant cinema) to broaden the area of reflection.

Autorentext
H.A.E. Zwart is Dean of Erasmus School of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Klappentext

This book addresses organ transplantation from a psychoanalytical perspective. Where other authors consider topics of informed consent, scarcity and organ trade, Zwart explores the ways in which the practice fundamentally challenges our basic experience and image of the body, revolving around issues such as embodiment, ownership and bodily integrity. In organ transplantation, the body emerges as something which we simultaneously have and are-constituting a whole, as well as a set of partial objects that can be transplanted and replaced, donated and sold.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Organ Recycling and Embodiment.- 2. The Body As an Aggregate of Replaceable Parts.- 3. An Ontological Struggle: Integrity Versus Fragmentation.- 4. The Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic: Lacan's Understanding of Embodiment.- 5. Love and the Idealisation of the Body.- 6. Cannibalism and the Partial Object.- 7. Another Analogy: The Catholic Devotion to the Sacred Heart.- 8. Types of Discourse.- 9. Commodification of Organs As Objects of Desire.- 10. A Lacanian Assessment of Organ Transplantation. 11. Alfred Adler's Concept of Organ Inferiority.- 12. Thomas Starzl: A Case History.- 13. The Transplant Organ As an Extimate Object.- 14. Separation and Desire.- 15. Bios and Techne.- 16. Revealing Intrusions/Intruding Revelations.- 17. An Oblique Perspective: Organ Transplant Cinema.- 18. Procuring the Gift.- 19. The Toxicity of the Purloined Implant.- 20. Crank 2: High Voltage, or the Purloined Organ.- 21. Depth Ethics and the Oblique Perspective.- 22. Encore: Middlesex and the Re-makeable Body.