Anosognosie de l’hémiplégie, personnification de la main paralysée et image du corps

Psychological theories relating to anosognosia for hemiplegia generally suggest that anosognosic patients deny their hemiplegia in order to protect their self-image or avoid negative emotions: that a person tries to deny, refuse or forget hemiplegia, a major handicap, seems an understandable attitude. The psychological theories concerning anosognosia thus imply that psychological reactions to hemiplegia are not affected by the causal cerebral lesions. These interpretations do not account either for the link between right hemisphere lesions and anosognosia or for the links between anosognosia, body schema disorders and specific characteristics of the patients’ discourse when describing their paralysed limbs. The psychoanalytical conception of the links between self-representation and body image enables us to apprehend anosognosia as a neurological pathology of body image.