Ataria Y. and Gallagher S. 2015. Somatic

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Somatic Apathy Body Disownership in the Context of Torture

Yochai AtariaThe Program for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel, Neurobiology Dept., Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

[email protected]

Shaun GallagherPhilosophy, University of Memphis, USA, Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia

[email protected]

Abstract

Muselmann was a term used in German concentration camps to describe prisoners near death due to exhaustion, starvation, and helplessness. This paper suggests that the inhuman conditions in the concentration camps resulted in the development of a defensive sense of disownership toward the entire body. The body, in such cases, is reduced to a pure object. However, in the case of the Muselmann this body-as-object is felt to belong to the captors, and as such is therefore identified as a tool to inflict suffer-ing and pain on the Muselmann himself. In this situation, lacking cognitive resources, the Muselmann may have no other alternative than to treat his body as an enemy, and then to retreat or disinvest from the body. This response is a form of somatic apathy, an indifference that is tied to a loss of the self/non-self distinction. This may, in turn, lead to suicidal inclinations, even after liberation from the camp.

Keywords

Muselmann – torture – disownership – sense of ownership – sense of agency

YA would like to thank his doctoral supervisors: Prof. Yemima Ben-Menahem and Prof. Yuval Neria. SG acknowledges support from the Humboldt Foundation’s Anneliese Maier Research Award.

Ataria and Gallagher106

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 46 (2015) 105–122

1 Introduction

According to Yehuda Bauer (1978), one of today’s leading historians of the Holocaust, in order to understand the uniqueness of the Holocaust, how it dif-fers from other horrific acts, it is necessary to discuss it in the context of other acts of genocide that both preceded and followed it. It appears that in this larger context, one phenomenon unique to the Holocaust is the Musselman (Agamben, 1999). Primo Levi, among twenty survivors from a transport of 650 sent from Italy to Auschwitz in 1944, describes in his work If This Is a Man (1959) the process that transformed concentration camp inmates into Muselmänner in the following manner:

It is enough to carry out all the orders one receives, to eat only the ration, to observe the discipline of the work and the camp. Experience showed that only exceptionally could one survive more than three months in this way. All the mussulmans who finished in the gas chambers have the same story, or more exactly, have no story; they followed the slope down to the bottom (p. 103)

He continues to provide a detailed depiction of Muselmänner:

Their life is short, but their number is endless; they, the Muselmanner, the drowned, form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to really suffer. One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand (p. 103)

Agamben (1998; 1999), in agreement with Levi (1993), believes that the Musselman constitutes the perfect witness. However, paradoxically, due to this very fact, the Musselman is unable to testify. This is true even if by some mira-cle the Musselman survived and were once again to become a “human being”: in that case the survivor’s testimony would no longer be that of the Musselman. Indeed, the testimony of the Musselman, the extreme phenomenon, is lost in the case of either death or recovery. Thus it appears that it is the compulsive silence that makes the Musselman the perfect witness. The Musselman, using Antelme’s (1992) words, is a “prey to a kind of infinite, untransmittable knowl-edge” (p. 289). This impossible paradox leads eventually to a serious crisis of testimony (Felman & Laub, 1992; Laub, 1995).

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There is a general consensus among scholars, as among survivors, that the phenomenon of the Muselmänner is beyond the possibility of descrip-tion. Indeed, any attempt to depict the Musselman’s experience (from the Musselman’s perspective) contradicts itself from the very outset. Accordingly, it is important to emphasize that the aim of this paper is not to describe the concentration camps, discuss the Holocaust or the Musselman as an histori-cal phenomenon (or make any other historical claims).1 Likewise, this paper does not pretend to explain the Musselman’s experience or way of existing or being-in-the-world. It does, however, seek to apply our existing knowledge of the Musselman experience in order to understand the phenomenon of body disownership, in which one feels as if one’s body is not one’s own: the Musselman is the most extreme example of this phenomenon in the face of absolute torture.

Typically, disownership is defined, in the context of pathologies such as somatoparaphrenia, as the feeling that a body part is alien: “It does not feel like a part of their body, although the patients can acknowledge that it is con-tiguous with the rest of their body. They experience that the body part does not belong to them” (de Vignemont 2011, p. 90, emphasis added). According to this description disownership is defined narrowly, in regard to limbs and not with respect to the body as a whole. Yet, it seems that at least in some cases of depersonalization, it is possible to refer to a sense of disownership towards the entire body (Sierra, Baker, Medford, & David, 2005; Simeon & Abugel, 2006). Similarly, it has been suggested that during extreme trauma subjects can feel somatic dissociation (Ataria, 2015a; Scaer, 2014). This paper seeks to develop this notion further by suggesting that under conditions such as the Muselmänner endured in the Nazi concentration camps, one may develop dis-ownership toward one’s entire body.

1 Bearing in mind the difficulties surrounding the testimonies of camp survivors in general and the Musselman in particular, this paper does not utilize archival evidence but rather relies on four central books written by former camp inmates who were familiar with (or who experienced) the phenomenon of the Musselman. These works are 1) Levi’s If This is a Man (1959; first published in Italian in 1947); 2) The Human Race (1992; first published in 1947) by Robert Antelme who was deported to Buchenwald in July 1944 and later sent to Gandersheim before being liberated in Dachau; 3) At the Mind’s Limits by Jean Amery (1980; written in the years 1964–1966). Amery was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, survived periods in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and was finally liberated at Bergen Belsen; and 4) Fatelessness by Imre Kertész, who was sent to a concentration camp aged only 15 (2004; the work was written in the years 1969–1973). All of these books are well known and readily available, yet at the same time go beyond superficial descriptions. They have all been widely referenced in the dialogue surrounding the Musselman.



The notion of a pattern theory of self can provide a theoretical background for understanding this phenomenon. On a pattern theory of self (Gallagher 2013), the self is constituted by a variety of aspects that range from very basic embodied (biological) and experiential differentiations of self and non-self, to affective, intersubjective, psychological/cognitive, narrative and extended aspects. One can find situations in which different aspects of self can be dis-rupted, as in psycho- or neuro-pathologies, or in circumstances of torture or solitary confinement (Gallagher 2014). In the case of the Muselman phenom-enon we find a connection between a disowning of the body and a complete loss of the very basic self / non-self distinction at the level of body experience. The result is a complete apathy or “in-difference” tied to a lack of differentia-tion between one’s body and one’s enemy.

The next section provides a detailed discussion of the Muselmann, while the third section demonstrates that not only is this phenomenon a case of disown-ership towards one’s entire body, but that in extreme cases the subject expe-riences the body in a severe apathetic fashion, where the subject affectively disinvests itself from and ignores the body.

2 The Muselmann

2.1 BackgroundMuselmann, the German word for “Muslim”,2 came to be used among concen-tration camp inmates to describe prisoners dying of starvation or exhaustion who no longer possessed the will to live. The Muselmänner could not stand up for more than a short period of time and therefore could not work. Since only the healthy and those capable of work could pass the frequent selections con-ducted by the Nazis, the Muselmänner were among the first to be sentenced to death (Sofsky, 1996).

The Muselmann has become a symbol of the mass murder committed by the Nazis. Thus, if the concentration camp represents the most extreme situation in which a human-being can exist, then the Muselmann, as a “perfect product” of the concentration camp, is the extreme within the extreme: the figure of the Muselmann encapsulates the very essence of being a prisoner in the concen-tration camps (Levi, 1993).

2 Some scholars suggest that the term arose as a result of the similarity between the near-death prone state of a concentration camp Muselmann and the image of the Muslim at prayer, prostrate on the ground (for more on this issue Agamben, 1999; Levi, 1993).

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The most significant characteristic of Muselmänner was hopelessness; they were practically living corpses. This is described in detail by many survivors of the camps, perhaps most famously by Primo Levi in many of his works, among them If this is a Man (1959), The Truce (1979), and The Drowned and the Saved (1993). Since so many of the concentration camp inmates were themselves close to becoming Muselmänner, many saw the Muselmann as a self-reflection, a kind of warning sign:

There is nowhere to look in a mirror, but our appearance stands in front of us, reflected in a hundred livid faces, in a hundred miserable and sor-did puppets. We are transformed into the phantoms glimpsed yesterday evening (Levi, 1959, p. 21).

Emaciated, eyes dimmed, an expression of sadness and apathy on their glazed faces, their grey, paper-like skin crawling with lice, with cheek-bones and eye sockets protruding from their elongated heads, the Muselmänner were easily recognized. Kertész (2004) describes them as follows:

Among them one can see those peculiar beings who at first were a little disconcerting. Viewed from a certain distance, they are senilely dodder-ing old codgers, and with their heads retracted into their necks, their noses sticking out from their faces, the filthy prison duds that they wear hanging loosely from their shoulders, even on the hottest summer’s day they put one in mind of winter crows with a perpetual chill. As if with each and every single stiff, halting step they take one were to ask: is such an effort really worth the trouble? These mobile question marks, for I could characterize not only their outward appearance but perhaps even almost their very exiguousness in no other way, are known in the concen-tration camps as ‘Musulmänner’ or ‘Muslims,’ I was told.

The Muselmänner were often unable to move and in addition suffered from weak muscles, pulse deceleration, shivering, drops in blood-pressure and tem-perature, slowing of the respiratory system, and at times edema, abscesses, and diarrhea, forcing some to run to the latrine 30–40 times each day and, on occasion, even sleep in their own excrement (for details see Sofsky, 1996). Nevertheless, according to Sofsky (1996), and this is an essential notion that must be considered, it is not clear that the Muselmann can be “reduced” to nosological diagnoses. By this Sofsky means that even if we were to gather all the Muselmann’s symptoms together, something would nevertheless be



missing; the “package of symptoms” does not explain what it is like to be a Muselmann. In fact, if one will choose to define the Muselmann in terms of a nosological diagnosis one will undoubtedly miss the very essence of the expe-rience of the Muselmann.

2.2 HungerIn the first stages after arrival in a concentration camp, inmates were often obsessed with food alone: “A fortnight after my arrival I already had the pre-scribed hunger, that chronic hunger unknown to free men, which makes one dream at night, and settles in all the limbs of one’s body” (Levi, 1959, p. 33). Indeed if the prisoner could not find any way of supplementing the tiny and non-nutritious meal provided by the camp, he or she would soon become a Muselmann: “Whosoever does not know how to become an ‘Organisator,’ ‘Kombinator,’ ‘Prominent’ (the savage eloquence of these words!) soon becomes a ‘musselman’ ” (Levi, 1959, p. 102). As Antelme (1992) puts it, “Hunger has us imprisoned already . . . we are obsessed with bread. Hunger is nothing less than an obsession” (p. 83). Indeed, according to his account, the Muselmann begins to consume his own body: “it is our body devouring itself” (Antelme, 1992, p. 268).

Yet, once again, Sofsky (1996) highlights that it would be a fundamental mis-take to (try to) explain the phenomenon of the Muselmann merely in terms of starvation. Being a Muselmann meant much more than starving to death. In the final phase of their lives, the Muselmänner did not feel hunger any more. Indeed, the Musselman is often described as someone who will “die holding his bread in his hand, trailing it absent-mindedly, like somebody who has for-gotten that he has bread in this hand, forgotten what bread is” (Antelme, 1992, p. 90). This constitutive moment at which the prisoner holds a piece of bread yet is unable to eat it enables us to penetrate, at least to some extent, into the very essence of the Musselman.

2.3 A New Metaphysical Stance toward the WorldFrom the outside, the Muselmann may seem indifferent to the world, “indif-ferent to the point of not even troubling to avoid tiredness and blows or to search for food . . . when they send him to his death he will go with the same total indifference” (Levi, 1959, p. 42). The Muselmann’s apathy towards life and the world may be only a by-product, a symptom. Alternatively, given that Muselmänner were completely helpless with regard to controlling their lives, it may be that this apathy was in fact a kind of defense mechanism activated in a radical situation:

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Cold, damp, wind, or rain were no longer able to bother me; they did not get through to me, I did not even sense them. Even my hunger passed; I continued to carry to my mouth anything edible I was able to lay my hands on, but more out of absentmindedness, mechanically, out of habit, so to say (Kertész, 2004).

This feeling of radical helplessness may eventually develop into a new meta-physical stance toward the world or, more precisely, toward the human race: the Muselmann loses faith in fellow humans. Indeed, Levi (1959) presents the following example: “If some Null Achtzehn vacillates, he will find no one to extend a helping hand; on the contrary, someone will knock him aside, because it is in no one’s interest that there be one more ‘mussulman’ dragging himself to work every day” (p. 101). The Muselmann is in a state of total and complete solitude: “they suffer and drag themselves along in an opaque intimate soli-tude, and in solitude they die or disappear, without leaving a trace in anyone’s memory” (Levi, 1959, p. 102).

In this new metaphysical stance, the Muselmann develops the feeling that everything around him is done for one purpose alone: to abuse him and bring about his painful death (Levi, 1993). Indeed, according to Amery (1980), from the Muselmann’s perspective terror, torture, and abuse are not side effects of the concentration camps but rather the main goal of these death factories, the very essence of the Nazi system (Levi, 1993). The Muselmänner exist to be abused by everybody—including, of course, the other prisoners. Essentially, the Muselmänner internalized this principle. It was burned into their bodies.

The Muselmann as an object is constantly tortured and abused. In the Muselmann’s state of mind anything in his close surroundings is manipulated and recreated in order to cause suffering. Consider the image of the Muselmann holding a piece of bread yet unable to eat it. Since from the Muselmann’s per-spective any kind of object is, by definition, hostile, accordingly, this piece of bread is also hostile. Thus even the piece of bread becomes a tool of abuse—holding the bread, the Muselmann realizes that it is useless, nothing more than a horrifying black joke. Although the only thing that can save the Muselmann is food, in this impossible physical condition the Muselmann cannot eat,3 and

3 It is important to remember that consumption of too much food resulted in the deaths of many survivors after their liberation. For survivors, and in particular Muselmänner, the issue of eating was very complicated. This is demonstrated by the description provided by Antelme’s wife, Marguerite Duras, of her husband’s body upon his arrival in Paris from Buchenwald: “The head was connected to the body by the neck, as is customary with heads.



therefore the piece of bread is merely another tool to inflict misery and pain. This image penetrates to the heart of the Muselmann phenomenon, revealing a state of total helplessness. The Muselmann is unable to take help even when it is available.

Indeed, the Muselmann’s sense of helplessness results from the process by which the Muselmann has profoundly internalized the concept that “What is, is. What we are, we are. And both are impossible” (Antelme, 1992, p. 65). Thus the Muselmann’s sense of helplessness is as radical as can be (Levi, 1993).

2.4 Being a Pure ObjectThe Muselmann’s unique state of mind, beyond apathy, finds expression in an entirely new dialogue with the body:

I would never have believed, for instance, that I could become a decrepit old man so quickly. Back home that takes time, fifty or sixty years at least; here three months was enough for my body to leave me washed up. I can safely say there is nothing more painful, nothing more disheartening than to track day after day, to record day after day, yet again how much of one has wasted away (Kertész, 2004)

The Muselmann makes mechanical movements without any reason, no longer controlling his own body; he is beaten without offering any kind of resistance:

at most they would beat me, and even then they could not truly do much harm, since for me it just won some time: at the first blow I would promptly stretch out on the ground and would feel nothing after that, since I would meanwhile drop off to sleep (Kertész, 2004).

Thus it may be possible to argue that the Muselmann becomes a pure object and loses the subjective dimension: “Head, face, chest—it was all the same:

But the neck was so slender that you could wrap one hand around it. It was so desiccated that we’d ask ourselves how life could have passed through it. A spoonful of clear soup could hardly get through; that alone would obstruct it. . . . Through the neck we’d see the verte-brae, the disks, the nerves, the flowing blood. The skin resembled cigarette paper. Something gurgled out of it, something dark green, something that pulsated: shit the likes of which we’d never seen. . . . Since we’d never encountered this phenomenon before, we sought explana-tions. We’d say that maybe his liver was being eaten up before our eyes. Maybe his body was being eaten up. How could we know this? How would we know this unknown thing that was included in his stomach and in his pain? We never got used to looking at it. We couldn’t.” (see Consonni, 2009, pp. 251–2).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236701406_Primo_Levi_Robert_Antelme_and_the_Body_of_the_Muselmann?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-e26eb356-a38b-4a4e-acec-68da35bd7382&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI4MTc0MzY1ODtBUzoyNzYwNjcxMjY2MDc4NzNAMTQ0MjgzMDk0MDcxMg==

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bone covered with skin, stone wrapped in skin” (Antelme, 1992, p. 122). Indeed, Kertész (2004) defines his body as a device: “These devices, at least in my case, caused a great deal of vexation” (also see Levi, 1993). This radical notion is sup-ported by several aspects of the condition, among them the following:

(1) Total numbness: Physically, as well as emotionally, the Muselmann suffers from total numbness. Indeed, the Muselmann’s senses are blunted and as a result the Muselmann has lost the ability to be touched. Essentially, as Slatman (2005) argues, the double structure of touching/touched (what Merleau-Ponty [1968] calls the ‘reversibility’ implicit in self-touch—when touching oneself, one is also being touched) is a prerequisite for feeling alive, and when this structure collapses one ceases to feel alive. Even when touching his own body, the Muselmann lacks the experience of being touched and thus the double structure breaks down altogether (for further discussion see: Ataria, in press).

(2) Lack of awareness: The Muselmann’s level of awareness drops, in some cases, to zero. This, in turn, is reflected in the collapse of the intention-ality of consciousness. Thus it appears that the Muselmann cannot be described as being conscious of something. Given the severity of this phenomenon, as the description above suggests, the Muselmann drops into a state of unconsciousness even while being beaten.

(3) Loss of identity: In the camps the Muselmann has no name, only a number. Interestingly, when looking at the mirror, Antelme describes the follow-ing experience: “I saw a face appear. I’d forgotten about that” (Antelme, 1992, pp. 51–52). Thus the Muselmann becomes faceless,4 a nobody. As time goes by, the Muselmann’s previous life fades away: “I forget, every day I forget a little more, one gets father away, one drifts” (Antelme, 1992, p. 108). The Muselmann’s identity collapses altogether, the Muselmann loses a sense of self, and becomes a pure ‘it’.

(4) Loss of the time dimension: Along with this fading of the past, according to Antelme (1992), in agreement with Levi (1993), memories become a threat; the transfer from memories of one’s previous life as a human being to the present is too difficult and even dangerous, leading to an unbear-able despair. In addition, it goes without saying that the Muselmann has no future dimension—“But who can seriously think about tomorrow?”

4 “They crowd my memory with their faceless presences, and if I could enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image which is familiar to me: an emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a thought is to be seen” (Levi, 1959, p. 103).



asks Levi (1959, p. 156). Antelme adds that in the concentration camps one simply could not “use the future tense” (1992, p. 95). While starving to death, the futural dimension is reduced to the next, so-called, meal. However, as was already noted, the Muselmann holds a piece of bread yet is unable to eat it, making it very clear that the Muselmann has no future; in Levi’s (1959) words, “Do you know how one says ‘never’ in camp slang? ‘Morgen früh’ tomorrow morning” (p. 156). Furthermore, unable to eat, the Muselmann’s sense of present also collapses—indeed if existence, meaning, and time in the camp are all reduced to the piece of bread, then the Muselmann, unable to eat that piece of bread, is outside time.

It seems that the Muselmann is reduced to a body as pure object. One Auschwitz survivor, Liliana Segre, gives the following description, which supports this con-cept: “we were no longer human beings in the regular sense of the word. Not even animals, but bodies in stages of decomposition that dragged themselves along on two legs” (Segre, quoted by Consonni, 2009, p. 247). Nevertheless, when considering this possibility a fundamental difficulty arises. Both Husserl (1989) and Merleau-Ponty (1965) describe the body as being both a subject (a lived body or Leib) and an object (body-as-object or Körper) at the same time, since the body can feel itself feeling (Husserl, 1989). Having said that, as already noted, in the case of the Muselmann this twofold structure of revers-ibility (touching/touched) collapses.

We may then argue that the Muselmann has lost the subjective dimension of embodiment and has become a pure body-as-object (Körper),5 one that does not touch and is not touched. As such, the Muselmann has no bodily experi-ences, which are critical for the sense of ownership (de Vignemont, 2010). As a pure body-as-object, the Muselmann becomes totally detached from his living body: “my flesh is disappearing, I am losing my wrappings, my body is getting away from me” (Antelme, 1992, p. 138). Similarly, Kertész (2004) describes his experience in the following manner:

[M]y body was here, I had precise cognizance of everything about it, it was just that I myself somehow no longer inhabited it. I had no difficulty in perceiving that this entity, and other similar entities to its side and above it, was lying there, on the wagon’s jolting flooring, on cold straw so dampened by all sorts of dubious fluids that my paper bandage had long

5 We suggest that the Muselmann represents the most radical example of disownership towards the body; accordingly we use this term (pure body-as-object). There is, however, a need for further empirical study to investigate a continuous spectrum in which the sense of “the body-as-object” becomes stronger over time.

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since frayed, peeled, and become detached, while the shirt and prison trousers in which I had been dressed for the journey were pasted to my naked wounds.

The Muselmann’s sense of body ownership, the sense of this body being my body (Gallagher, 2000), decreases, possibly falling to zero.

Losing any sense of body-as-subject and being reduced to a body-as-object, along with the accompanying loss of the sense of body ownership—as reflected in Antelme’s description, “you discover that you can let go of yourself to an extent you never imagined possible before” (1992, p. 87)—generates a new kind of attitude towards the body: an attitude of disownership toward the body, an active distancing of oneself from the body. The notion that this is an active attitude (an active sense of disownership) is critical: the Muselmann’s body becomes the enemy, exactly like the figure of the perpetrator. Hence, in order to deal with this impossible situation, the Muselmann must reject the body in an active way. The paradox is that this active rejection can only be car-ried out by maintaining a complete apathy towards the body.

3 Disownership toward the Body

3.1 DisownershipDisownership of a body part (as in xenomelia or somatoparaphrenia) is the feel-ing that a body part is alien (de Vignemont, 2011). According to de Vignemont (2010; 2007), there are three different kinds of body disownership: (1) expe-riencing a limb as alien, yet still believing that the limb belongs to you, as in the case of Anarchic Hand Syndrome (Della Sala, Marchetti, & Spinnler, 1994); (2) experiencing a limb as alien and also believing that the limb does not belong to you; the limb may seem to belong to someone else, for example somato-paraphrenia (Vallar & Ronchi, 2009); and (3) experiencing a limb as part of the body, but nevertheless believing that the limb does not belong to you, e.g., Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) (First, 2005). In these cases disowner-ship is defined narrowly, on the level of limbs and not that of the entire body.

In cases of torture and severe trauma, however, it is possible that an experi-ential dissociation from one’s whole body can be realized. This is thought to be a defense mechanism (see, for example, Keleman, 1989). Ataria (2014a; 2014b; 2015b) has suggested, however, that in cases of severe and prolonged trauma (as in the torture experienced by the Muselman) we should, at least theoreti-cally, consider the possibility that the dissociative defense mechanism (DDM) can collapse. In this case, there is a change in the quality of the disownership experienced toward the entire body.



3.2 The Dissociative Defence MechanismIt is well known that during severe trauma, DDMs can be activated (Foa & Hearst-Ikeda, 1996; Herman, 1992; Janet, 1904; Morgan, et al., 2001; Nijenhuis, Vanderlinden, & Spinhoven, 1998; Spiegel, 1997; van der Hart, Nijenhuis, Steele, & Brown, 2004; van der Hart, van Dijke, van Son, & Steele, 2000). With this in mind, based on several empirical studies, Ataria and colleagues constructed a simple model that clarifies how the DDM enables the subject to function, even if in a very limited fashion, during trauma (Ataria, 2014a; Ataria & Neria, 2013; Ataria & Somer, 2013).

According to this model, a tradeoff occurs between the sense of agency (SA) that one feels over one’s action (or over what one can do) and the sense of body ownership (SO), the sense that this is my body.6 SA and SO are considered two aspects of basic experiential self-awareness (Gallagher 2000). This trade-off model suggests that there exists a reciprocal relationship between SA and SO; by giving up, to some degree, the SO over his body, the subject gains SA in other areas (e.g., mental control or the ability to engage in imaginative distraction). Essentially, this trade-off between SA and SO enables the traumatized subject to maintain some limited sense of control during acute stress, even if he has less control over his own body. By maintaining some degree of SA, the subject maintains some aspect of an experiential self, even if the lack of SO for the body introduces a distortion of self.

One can find clear examples of this in descriptions offered by former pris-oners of war. One former prisoner of war, interviewed in Ataria (2010; Ataria & Neria, 2013), states that he maintained SA over one important area his life: “It was very important for me to apply discipline to my thoughts because the thing that most frightened me, apart from dying and being in pain, was losing my sanity. And so I applied strong discipline to my thoughts, I made sure that I would not go crazy” (D) (Ataria & Neria, 2013, p. 168). The captive, facing con-tinuing uncertainty and painful loss of control over his situation and his body, attempts to construct a framework, some space (or dimension) containing some certainty (Herman, 1992). This can at times be achieved by controlling an imagined world, the world of thoughts. On this note, another former prisoner comments: “You are in zero control, so what I did to cut myself off from this impossible reality was to start to delve into my thoughts” (L) (Ataria & Neria,

6 The distinction between SA and SO, which pertains to the very basic experiential aspect of self, was originally defined with respect to action, which could also include thinking under-stood as action (Gallagher 2000). SO can be modified in cases of somatoparaphrenia, for example, or in experiments on the rubber hand illusion (Tsakiris & Haggard, 2005). SA may be disrupted in schizophrenic delusions of control, or in Anarchic Hand Syndrome.

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2013, pp. 168–9). Likewise, a third former prisoner, H, confirms that thinking is an effective way to cut oneself off from the pain and uncertainty: “When there is darkness you don’t know what is in front of you and then you can’t be in control. In a situation like this the instinct is to close your eyes because you will feel better. . . . Imagination begins to play a very important role in keeping your sanity” (H) (Ataria & Neria, 2013, p. 169). By maintaining an active imagi-nation, the prisoner can lessen his feelings of loneliness, reduce the suffering of the harsh reality which he endures, preserve a degree of control, and stop him-self from slipping into insanity: “Imagination has an important role in keeping sane” (Y) (Ataria & Neria, 2013, p. 169). Using these techniques, some captives were able to achieve a sense of control, making the situation somewhat endur-able: “I think that all the time I was in a sort of control . . . that meditation, it did not take me to some kind of place, because I was also always aware of every-thing that was going on around me” (B) (Ataria & Neria, 2013, p. 169).

Thus it appears that during severe traumatic experiences, a strong SA, along with a weak or even completely absent SO, is the only available option that enables the subject to survive (Ataria, 2014a). Activating this kind of defence mechanism, however, takes a significant amount of energy (cognitive and otherwise). As the person weakens, physically and psychologically, the defence mechanism may start to fail. In this case, a new kind of dissociation or disown-ership emerges.

3.3 The Collapse of the Dissociative Defence MechanismWith this model in mind, we return to the Muselmann. Undoubtedly, the Muselmann suffers from the most inhuman condition one can imagine, and under these circumstances the possibility that the DDM will collapse is highly likely. At some point, the Muselmann’s SO drops to zero. However, given the Muselmann’s mechanical movements and inability/unwillingness to resist or engage in self defence (for example, in the case of beatings the Muselmann falls, and falls asleep) it appears that the Muselmann may also lose the SA. Becoming totally helpless, he relinquishes control over life.

Bearing in mind the trade-off model that demonstrates how dissociation functions as a defence mechanism during trauma, a decline of SO to zero on a hypothetical Likert scale, represents the lowest possible limit while the DDM is still properly activated. However, in extreme situations, including total isolation, extreme hunger, lack of sleep, severe and prolonged torture etc., the DDM can become dysfunctional. In these cases, both SO and SA drop to zero, and the sense of helplessness becomes unbearable. Indeed, at this point the subject’s sense of ownership over his body may move into a more negative range.



3.4 When the Body Becomes a Most Brutal EnemyIn the Muselmann’s eyes, all objects are designed to produce suffering and pain. It is indeed true that the concentration camps were intended to exploit the prisoner until death (Levi, 1993). Under these conditions, the Muselmänner, abused also by fellow prisoners (Levi, 1959) and completely helpless, feel that the only reason they remain alive is to be tortured. Too desperate and too exhausted even for suicide, the Muselmann has lost faith in the world and humanity (Levi, 1993; Amery, 1980; Antelme, 1992). From the Muselmann’s point of view, even a piece of bread, like any other object, is designed to pro-duce pain. Thus the Muselmann exists in a hostile world. However, given the transformation that the prisoner has undergone in the process of becoming a Muselmann, it is possible to suggest that the Muselmann’s own body is also part of this hostile world (the Muselmann’s body is an object within the world), in Kertész’s (2004) words: “me becoming a burden even to myself”.

As discussed above, the Muselmann is reduced to a pure body-as-object. Yet, since for the Muselmann all objects are part of the hostile world, when the Muselmann is reduced to a pure object, one’s own body is not only not one’s own, but becomes identified as an object designed, like any other in the camp, to inflict pain: an object which is in fact no longer one’s own body, but rather one’s most brutal enemy. Kertész (2004) describes this process as follows:

Every day there was something new to surprise me, some new blemish, some new unsightliness on this ever stranger, ever more foreign object that had once been my good friend: my body. I could no longer bear look-ing at it without a sense of being at war with myself.

The body thus appears as a tool (device) used by others to maximize pain and suffering. In effect, the Muselmann’s body belongs to the camp’s system of destruction.

The only possible alternative in this situation is to ignore one’s own body; indeed mere dissociation is no longer a realistic option. Thus what distinguishes the prisoner still struggling to survive from the Muselmann is the former’s abil-ity to dissociate in order to gain (even very limited) control, in contrast to the “drowned,” namely, one who develops an apathetic sense toward the body:

there comes to light the existence of two particularly well differenti-ated categories among men—the saved and the drowned. Other pairs of opposites (the good and the bad, the wise and the foolish, the cowards and the courageous, the unlucky and the fortunate) are considerably less distinct, they seem less essential (Levi, 1959, p. 100)

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3.5 The Shift from Disownership to ApathyOne problem with regard to the notion of disownership (toward one’s entire body) concerns the nature of the relationship between a passive loss of a sense of body ownership and the active sense of disownership. In particular, it is not clear that the sense of disownership is equivalent to a lack of sense of owner-ship (de Vignemont, 2011). An active disownership implies some degree of SA. For the Muselmann, however, one’s body is not a passive source of pain, or something that he can actively disown; rather it becomes an enemy against which one cannot win.

Principally, in the case of the Muselmann all of the following conditions are met: (1) the victim has no available resource (physical, cognitive, men-tal, or emotional) to handle the situation; (2) the victim has the feeling that any object in its surrounding, including the disowned body itself, is hostile; (3) phenomenologically, the victim experiences constant torture; (4) the victim suffers from an induced sense of helplessness, without support from others;7 (5) the victim accepts and internalizes the notion according to which he or she must be annihilated (see Amery, 1980), and in so doing, (6) the victim ceases to be an agent. The combination of the above (six) conditions (in particular number 5) transforms the Muselmann into a limit figure—in this situation the Muselmann is pushed into an apathetic relation to the body as a whole, and is unable to distinguish between self and non-self. In many cases, this inclines the subject towards suicide. Primo Levi,8 Amery and many others (including Paul Celan and Bruno Bettelheim to mention only a few names) committed suicide after liberation. Indeed, Amery writes about his feeling that he must finish the Nazis’ work.

In sum, we suggest that the transformation from camp inmate to Muselmann occurs when the dissociative mechanism of defense collapses, as is expressed in a shift from complete body disownership (or lack of sense of ownership) into an apathetic sense toward one’s body.

7 Marcel (2003) suggests in these kinds of cases, a progression from a loss of a sense of “reliable effectiveness” to a lack of incentive motivation, leading to a learned, or as we phrase it, an induced helplessness.

8 There are doubts surrounding this matter (see Diego Gambetta) yet three of Levi’s biogra-phers agree on the issue (Carole Angier, Myriam Anissimov and Ian Thomson). Indeed, Elie Wiesel, a noted writer and activist Holocaust survivor, said at the time, “Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years earlier”. Ataria (in press) tries to deal with the long term implications of disownership toward the entire body during trauma.



4 Concluding Remarks

An examination of the phenomenon of the Muselmann reveals that when living in inhuman conditions for extended periods, a camp inmate may very well develop a sense of disownership toward his/her own body, and that at the extreme this turns into a complete apathy towards the body.

Indeed, dissociation involving a loss of a sense of body ownership, is a criti-cal mechanism of defense that is activated during trauma (Ataria, 2014a; 2014b; 2015b). However, human deterioration to the point of lacking the necessary cognitive resources to organize this defense, leads the subject into an apathetic state—a somatic apathy—a loss of differentiation between self and non-self in the face of an enemy that one cannot fight.

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Ataria Y. and Gallagher S. 2015. Somatic