Approximately 95% of amputees report experiencing phantom limb sensations. Many say their phantom hand is clenched tightly in a painful fist and that they cannot unclench it. Because, after all, what is there to unclench?
One sympathizes. Don’t we all have that part of us deep inside which we can’t seem to reach. The neuroscientist V.S Ramachandran has helped sufferers from phantom limb syndrome in a way Patricia Churchland, the philosopher, once said was as astounding as if he’d cured the blind.
Ramachandran had his amputee patient make a fist with his remaining arm and rest it on a table where there was a box of mirrors that Ramachandran had arranged just so, such that the reflection of the patient’s remaining arm was where the phantom limb would have been. It looked to the patient as if he had two hands both making a fist. Ramachandran said, “Unclench your fist,” and the phantom fist unclenched, the pain disappeared. It is enough to make you cry tears of joy and of relief.