Purloined Organs: Psychoanalysis of Transplant Organs as Objects of Desire

1. Introduction: organ recycling and embodiment 2. The body as an aggregate of replaceable parts 3. An ontological struggle: integrity versus fragmentation 4. The real, the imaginary and the symbolic: Lacan's understanding of embodiment 5. Love and the idealisation of the body 6. Cannibalism and the partial object 7. Another analogy: the catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart 8. Types of discourse 9. Commodification of organs as objects of desire 10. A Lacanian assessment of organ transplantation 11. Alfred Adler's concept of inferiority 12. Thomas Starzl: a case history 13. The transplant organ as an extimate object 14. Separation and desire 15. Bios and techne 16. Revealing intrusions / intruding revelations 17. An oblique perspective: organ transplant cinema 18. Procuring the gift 19. The toxicity of the purloined implant 20. Crank 2: High voltage, or the purloined organ 21. Depth ethics and the oblique perspective 22. Encore: Middlesex and the re-makeable body