A man with left-sided weakness after a stroke is asked to lift his left arm. He does not attempt to, and when asked why, says nothing is wrong with his arm and that he simply doesn't feel like moving it right now. Before revealing the answer: is this somatoparaphrenia?
No, this is more consistent with anosognosia. He is denying that any deficit exists at all — claiming there is nothing wrong with the arm — rather than accepting that it is impaired while denying it belongs to him. Somatoparaphrenia specifically requires the patient to accept that the limb is affected but reject its ownership, often with a specific alternative explanation of whose limb it is. Here there is no such ownership dispute; the disturbance is in recognising the deficit itself, which is the hallmark of anosognosia rather than somatoparaphrenia.
References
- Casey, P. & Kelly, B. (2019). Fish's Clinical Psychopathology, 4th ed. Ch. 3, 'Disorders of Perception'.