In the Operating Room
In the Operating Room
Wilder Penfield’s Stimulation Reports and the Discovery of “Mind”
This chapter charts the transformation of Foerster's practice in the work of Wilder Penfield. Penfield came to study with Foerster in Breslau in 1928 and brought Foerster's epilepsy operation back to North America. There it formed the basis of Penfield's clinical work. In contrast to Foerster, Penfield re-tasked his operation technique in order to map the brain. I argue that the reemergence of the localization project after a thirty-year hiatus can be explained by Penfield's de-composition of the reflex. Like Schilder, Penfield tested both sides of the reflex arc separately, studying in turn sensory and motor responses. As such Penfield could sideline the systemic aspects of the reflex that had structured earlier investigations and made localization so unconvincing. And like Schilder, this encouraged Penfield to posit a self-transparent patient who could provide insight into sensory states. As this chapter shows, the self-transparency of Penfield's introspective patient increasingly became the focus of his research, as in the 1950s he concentrated his efforts on tracking down an ever-elusive “mind.” 168
Keywords: Wilder Penfield, homunculus, neurosurgery, Montreal Neurological Institute, Rockefeller Foundation, epilepsy, stimulation report, self-transparent subject, localization
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