AbstractThe consequences of facial paralysis on interpersonal understanding and self-other balance are presented within the parameters of Wittgenstein¡¦s thinking. Wittgenstein highlights the ability to imitate and mimic what one perceives in the expression of another person as indispensable for understanding self-other relations. What is perceived through the other¡¦s face or body becomes a constituent of one¡¦s own state, and a potential stance for oneself. The loss of facial expression and the ability to imitate facially the bodily expressed attitudes of other persons may result in profound changes in the way a person is perceived by others and in a subsequent interpersonal distancing and loss of relatedness. These experiences reveal not merely the importance of perceiving feelings and the capacity for identifying with others for the maintenance of human relationships, but also the extent to which adults with facial paralysis may have difficulty in engaging in a shared form of life with others. These limitations are partial rather than absolute, however, and people with facial paralysis may yet learn to co-ordinate the self-other balance through their other channels of expression; through prosody of voice, gesture, clothes, enriched vocabulary, and so on. Simon van Rysewyk's blog is: |