DOPPELGANGER: Doubles in psychiatry, neurology and fiction.

In this extraordinarily wide ranging podcast, we talk about doubles from the point of view of psychopathology, neuroscience, and what they tell us about the nature of self. Our neuroscience discussion includes the work of Head, Schilder, Damasio (around the idea of body schema/representations in the brain and their implication - a kind of neural double) followed by a fascinating deviation into Melzak's exploration of the phantom limb and the 'neural matrix' that may underlie it. Our 'double in literature' chat ranges from Euripides over 2 millenia ago to Patrick McGrath's 1999 novel 'Spider' by way of a Scottish gothic tale from 1824. Femi gives an overview of Alfred Hitchcock's double-obsessed oeuvre before discussing the Wachowski brother's 'Matrix' (1999), a kind of thought experiment on the nature of the self, detached from the brain. We end with an 'out of hours' chat about clinical cases. Brainland was created as a platform for this type of terrific conversation.

Participants:

Oluwafemi (Femi) Oyebode, Honorary Prof of Psychiatry, University of Birmingham, UK https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/clinical-sciences/oyebode-femi

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and former neuropsychiatrist http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Femi's book 'Doppelganger': https://www.cambridgebookshop.co.uk/products/doppelganger?srsltid=AfmBOopUtJI3sepHVB0Vvakdh03zDbmDMPjwH2pfiErw9CJ2RkqX7Pin

Novels discussed:

James Hogg, Private memoires and confessions of a justified sinner ( ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Memoirs_and_Confessions_of_a_Justified_Sinner

Patrick McGrath's Spider (1990): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_(novel)

Frigyes Karinthy's A Journey Round my Skull (1937): https://archive.org/details/bwb_W8-BJJ-568

Penfield and Jaspers Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain:https://archive.org/details/epilepsyfunction0000penf

Paul Schilder's The image and the appearance of the human body. (1935) https://archive.org/details/schilder-paul.-the-image-and-appearance-of-the-human-body

Films discussed:

Alfred Hitchock's double obsession: https://indie-outlook.com/2014/06/06/our-mirrors-selves-the-hitchcock-double/

The Matrix (1999): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix

Brainland podcast on the novel and film Solaris: https://shows.acast.com/brainland/episodes/solaris

Musical extract: Prelude from Act 1 of Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

portrait sketch by KB

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