Artificial limbs; their human owners.

S OF CURRENT LITERATURE 66 DIGEST OF MAJOR ACTIVITIES OF THE ARTIFICIAL LIMB PROGRAM 68 P R O S T H E T I C S R E S E A R C H B O A R D NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL 2101 Constitution Ave. Washington 25, D. C. Artificial Limbs is a publication of the Prosthetics Research Board, National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council, issued twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn, in partial fulfillment of Veterans Administration Contract VAm-21223. Copyright 1957 by the National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council. Quoting and reprinting are freely permitted, providing appropriate credit is given. The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and are not necessarily those of the Prosthetics Research Board. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 55-7710. Editorial Board: Eugene F. Murphy, Prosthetic and Sensory Aids Service, Veterans Administration, New York City, Chairman; Howard D. Eberhart, Department of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley; Veme T. Inman, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco; Fred Leonard, Army Prosthetics Research Laboratory, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D. C; Craig L. Taylor, Department of Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles. IN ALL areas of medicine and engineering where psychological factors are important, consideration of matters of the mind comes late. Physical problems are so obvious, urgent, and definable—mental problems so frequently cryptic, postponable, and unclear. But it usually develops that, soon after some control has been achieved over the immediate physical problems, the psychological problems obtrude themselves and call persistently for solution. Thus, in the field of amputations and artificial limbs, the primary effort has to date been directed quite naturally toward the achievement of physical restoration of function. Proportionately little thought has been directed toward the understanding and handling of the psychological problems which, in the amputee, the markedly altered adjustment situation creates. Although mechanics and the biomechanics of the amputee have many important identical principles, there is a whole area of needed activity of a quite different order. The psychological problems of the amputee are, of course, not merely problems of the physically disabled person himself. The new situations that are created with loss of limb are clearly social-psychological in character—situations where not only the manifold attitudes of the patient, both implicit and explicit, toward the loss and the replacement are important but also where the attitudes of family and associates toward him and his difficulty are equally significant. Hence, any full psychological study of the problem of physical handicap must involve three aspects: the attitudes of the disabled person toward the changes created in him by his new situation, as it affects his previous concepts of himself and the image he has of his body; the attitudes of others, especially significant others, toward his differentness; and, finally, the interaction of these two in the social context in which it occurs. In a recent evaluation of studies in this general area, Roger Barker and associates deplore the inadequacy and rarity of satisfactory investigations. Whatever the importance of adjustment problems, not only in the amputee but in all persons suffering a misfortune, it is only when problems become prominent and when social obligations are keenly felt that there appears a 1 Chief, Laboratory of Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md. Artificial Limbs—Their Human Owners