Thomas Starzl: A Case History

Abstract

Case histories constitute a tested psychoanalytical technique for exploring experiential tensions, contradictions and ambivalences in a detailed manner. In this chapter, the memoirs of transplant surgeon Thomas Starzl are analysed. Starzl devoted his career to one particular partial object, the human liver. For Starzl, this organ stood out from the rest of the body as a surgical challenge par excellence: an enormous and silent reddish-brown organ that proved remarkably hostile to surgeons. The title of his memoirs (“The puzzle people”) echoes the idea that in the future, heart, liver and pancreas may really become replaceable, refurbishing the human body as an aggregate of replaceable parts. The acquisition of new parts requires that the rest of the body will have to change before the gift can be accepted. Indeed, even surgeons are profoundly changed by the impact of their experiences.