total anaesthesia

   Also known as generalized anaesthesia and systematized anaesthesia. All three terms are indebted to the Greek noun anaisthèsia,which means numbness. They are used to denote a generalized loss or impairment of sensitivity to stimuli in the somatosensory modality, the adjective 'generalized' referring here to the whole body. Individuals with total anaesthesia are typically insensitive to painful stimuli (i.e. analgesic) but also to tactile, thermal, and other stimuli capable of affecting the somatosensory modality. Total anaesthesia is associated primarily with " dissociative states following extreme stress, suggestion or hypnosis. It has also been described in association with " ecstasy, " trance, rapture, somnambulism, conversion, and " psychosis. Because of the apparent failure to register any external stimuli affecting the somatosensory modality, total anaesthesia has been designated as atypeof" negative hallucination (i.e. a failure to perceive an object or stimulus actually present within one's range of perception). The term total anaesthesia is used in opposition to the term localized anaesthesia. It should not be confused with "acenesthesia, which is characterized by a total loss of awareness of physical existence. Neither should it be confused with Cotard's syndrome, which is characterized by the delusional conviction (rather than the perceptual experience) that one's body has ceased to exist.

   References

   Braude, S.E. (2004). Memory: The nature and significance of dissociation.In: The philosophy of psychiatry. A companion. Edited by Radden, J. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Janet, P. (1911). L'état mental des hystériques. Deuxième édition. Paris: Félix Alcan.