The right hemisphere sees the body as something we live, while the for the left it is devitalized
In considering that the right hemisphere is concerned with the self as embodied, the right and left brain hemispheres see the body in different ways. The right hemisphere, as one can tell from the fascinating changes that occur after unilateral brain damage, is responsible for our sense of the body as something we ‘live’, something that is part of our identity, and which is the phase of intersection between our selves and the world at large. For the left hemisphere, by contrast, the body is something from which we are relatively detached, a thing in the world, like other things, devitalized, a ‘corpse’. It is sometimes as if I am my body, sometimes as if I have a body. Some languages, such as German, see the body in these two senses as so distinct that they have different words for them: Leib for the first, Körper for the second.
References
- Mcgilchrist, Iain. (2010). The Master and His Emissary Chapter 2 What Do the Hemispheres Do (p. 135). London, UK: Yale University Press.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Neuropsychology Status:☀️