I can best show you how important to our topic are the intuitions gained so far, by again confronting you with a tangible example: Suppose that someone awakens from deep sleep or morbid unconsciousness. His organ of consciousness is functioning again, enabling him to recognize the outside world and note the normal occurrence of a ‘behavioural loop’ [Ed]. Consciousness of the outside world had been lost to the sleeper, or rather had not functioned during the time when consciousness was lost. After it returns, how does the person who has lost consciousness behave? We observe that he corrects the uncomfortable position that he had adopted, and feels his body, in order to convince himself of its integrity, and we note that his interest is apparently directed towards his own body. Consciousness of corporeality [W] has returned; and we should now examine this process more closely.

Some of these projection fields are already known to us in broad terms, localized to specific sites in the cerebral cortex. There is no doubt that cortical regions demonstrated by Munk—which he called arm region, leg region, head region, ear region, and trunk and neck regions—are important central projection fields of those body parts. Human pathology provides irrefutable evidence that such experimental results apply to the human brain, even if we still await precise delineation of corresponding regions in humans. Also, in my view there can no longer be any doubt that each region represents the total sensibility and motility of the designated body part, the arm region, which thus constitutes the central projection field for sensibility and motility or, in other words, the entire nervous system of the arm. Here we face a relationship calling for our full attention: All these body regions are covered by the tactile organ—the skin—and corresponding central projection fields also contain representations of these sensory surfaces. On the other hand, representation of the body will not give us complete ‘awareness of corporeality’ [W] if central projection fields of the special senses are ignored, since the olfactory mucosa, the retina, the auditory organ, and the lingual and pharyngeal mucosa serving taste, although mediating specific sensory functions, at the same time themselves constitute most important parts of our body. We must therefore put to one side awareness of the physicality of these [Ed] sense organs, even if a special projection is not detectable (as for example for the olfactory and taste mucosa via certain trigeminal branches) at their already familiar central projection fields. Therefore, in the cerebral cortex, we are often made conscious of both the outside world and of our own physicality. Here we meet more complex relationships, forcing us again to resort to basic operations of simple sensation.

What we have so far learned for familiar sensation, and which provides material for us to construct our awareness of the external world, can also be described as the sensory content of stimuli. However, we know that any sensation has yet another quality, which we have ignored so far, generally identified as the ‘feeling tone’ [Ed] of the sensation as opposed to its sensory content. This ‘feeling tone’ [Ed] of sensation, as I hope to show, is particularly closely related to consciousness of corporeality in that it has a different coloration depending on the site of the applied stimulus, and thus to some extent emits a ‘local sign’ [Ed] for consciousness—a sign indicating which part of the body has been affected by the sensory stimulus. Stimuli linked to strong feeling tone are closely related to motor responses which appear to serve protective functions for the body. We usually pay no attention to these organ sensations [W], which pass us by, our attention being directed to the sensory content of the stimuli. However, slightly stronger stimuli reach our awareness to such an extent that we ignore the sensory content and focus instead on the organ sensation of the affected body part. Already, however, appropriate defensive movements have taken place. A few examples illustrate this: Imagine that your arm is unexpectedly touched in a crush of people; depending on the type of touch, you immediately consider whether the touch came from a person or an object. But if you receive a solid blow, such that the assault is painful, you immediately pull your arm back and try to protect it from further injury. Your attention is directed to the afflicted part of the body. The same response applies to loud noises: Everyone recoils when a shot is fired unexpectedly close to their ear, and nobody remains in the immediate vicinity as an express train rushes past, even though they know that there is no real danger. Here too the ‘racket’ [Ed] is the essential component eliciting the powerful organ sensation and involuntary rebound. A simpler protective reaction, namely closing the eyes, is seen on exposure to bright light, especially immediately following complete darkness; and in those situations pain can also be felt. When the eye initially focuses on a point source of light, using mechanisms of movement already discussed in the context of visual processing, this also is an example of organ stimulation. All such examples of movement, some simple, some complex, must be considered under Meynert’s idea of defensive or offensive movements, and we remember that their origins are innate functional reflexes. I recall Pflüger’s famous experiment where a decapitated frog could produce not only protective movements, but even adaptive modification of them, such that, in the attempt to wipe off an area of skin dabbed with acid immediately after its leg on the stimulated side had been amputated, recruited the other leg to assist. Such modifications may be acquired by each individual; they involve at least those regions of grey matter to which only reflex activity can be ascribed; they are doubtless functional as innate reflexes; and they serve protective functions even amongst humans, as in lower animals with predominantly spinal organization. Within this organization the lowest vertebrate can show more than simple reflex movements in that, like the decapitated frog, it has a capacity to make appropriate adaptations. However, where a large cerebral hemisphere is present, as in mammals, and more so in humans, we see similar mechanisms of movement transferred to central projection fields of the cerebral cortex (as shown experimentally by Munk for eye movements). In both cases appropriate modification of the movement is observed, depending on the part of the body affected. This demonstrates that organ stimuli have the immediate aim of protecting the body.