ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an analysis of bodily integrity in hand transplants from a phenomenological narrative perspective, while drawing on two contrasting case stories. It considers bodily integrity as the subjective bodily experience of wholeness which, instead of referring to actual bodily intactness, involves a positive identification with one's physical body. Drawing on two contrasting cases, the chapter investigates how to approach bodily integrity bodily intactness, wholeness and inviolability in people who have lost a body part. It explains how to deal with people who have lost a body part so that their bodily integrity is respected. The variety of (disturbed) body experiences identified include: phantom limb sensation; experience of numbness of the grafted hands; experiences of (un)successfully incorporating a prosthetic device; experience of truly integrating strange body parts into one’s own body; and experience of a ‘misfit’ with a neurologically and physically well-functioning body part.
