Limb Recipients’ Experience of Their Own Corporeality – Sociological Study of Reconstructed Body

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the problem of upper limb recipients’ experience of their own corporeality during the period before and after the transplantation. The research sample consisted of upper limb transplant recipients, the choice of whom was purposive and determined by the criterion of time which had passed since the transplantation. The subjects of the research were 3 men aged 30-38 who had lost a limb in consequence of an injury and, having been qualified as potential recipients, they underwent a successful hand transplantation surgery. The research material was collected in individual in-depth interviews with the hand recipients. In the collected research material three important parts can be distinguished, which refer to the consecutive stages in the biography of the research subjects: 1. experience of the integrated body; 2. experience of the fragmented body; 3. experience of the reconstructed body. Despite the limb recipients’ strong concentration on the subjective body experience, at each of these stages objective determinants of recognizing the recipients’ bodies as inadequate play their part, being an important background of the analyses. The paper is closed with practical conclusions, which confirm the usability of the conducted research to the limb transplantation program developed in Poland.