Hostile interactions between body and self

Our body houses the various selves we are. It continuously informs us about the position of its limbs, both relative to themselves and relative to the trunk and head. It allows us to feel touch, to reach out and touch others, and to differentiate between passively received and self-delivered touch. It provides us with information about temperature, pressure, and gravity. and it mediates basic sensations, feelings, and emotions, from pain, fatigue, and hunger to relaxation, lust, and ticklish joy. Enabling us to look up to the stars, it even shows us how small we are, how limited in reach, and how alone most of the time. Only our body is constantly present; it is the only object that abidingly stays with us throughout our lives, it is perhaps this continuity that binds together the different components of our self - sensory-receptive, motor-agentive, emotional - and makes us feel that we are one self in one body. All this said, we note that there are various neurological conditions in which the unit y between body and self is thoroughly shaken. We may no longer acknowledge ownership of parts of the body, or we may deny agency over bodily actions. We may feel alienated or spatially separated from our body, or project the experience of touch info objects in extracorporeal space. Although not obligatorily eliciting a morbid reaction, such disintegrations between body and self occasionally induce overt hostility. The present note provides a glimpse into some major types of auto-aggression after body-self fragmentation.