Anosognosic self-denial is organic, not psychological in origin

Evidence

This disavowal of illness is not due to psychological causes but entirely to brain damage. Nor can the resulting disruption of self-image be explained in terms of a narcissistic disorder. The transformation of identity emerges from a sudden, isolated event, unrelated to other events that constitute an individual life story. — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 1193

Categorization

• XREF: Core move against Freudian/Lacanian orthodoxy: denial without a repressed content, identity change not woven into life narrative — the crux of Malabou’s whole debate with psychoanalysis. — connects to: Anosognosia is the inability to recognize one’s own illness — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 1184; Sincerity can be an active ingredient of self-deception rather than its opposite — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1405; Psychiatric validity depends on consensus because no lesions anchor disorders — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 719
• DEEPTHINKING: Identity transformation caused by a lesion is ‘an unrelated event’ — nothing in the patient’s psychic history explains or assimilates it. This is Malabou’s anti-biographical thesis: destruction that is not meaningful.

Broader Connections

• Sincerity can be an active ingredient of self-deception rather than its opposite #complicates (0.75) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1405