the problem underlying the transplants was mainly related to the conception of the time that the heart (organ) was actually "the seat of feelings and motives", what was later called "the symbolic heart". The change of understanding is documented in our literature and took place in 1988 (dx86-22 Heart - understanding clarified (1988): it-1 1057-1058)
Until then and especially in the early years of transplant surgery the position was of a general disgust towards this kind of surgery and by extension towards any form of organ transplantation.
w71 3/1 pp. 133-139 How Is Your Heart? 5 Where and what is
your heart? You may say, What heart are you talking about? You know you
have a heart in your chest, one that is pumping blood throughout your
entire body, serving every single cell with that stream of life. But do
you have another “heart” in your head, a “figurative heart”? Is it part
of your brain or is it that abstract capacity of the brain that we call
the “mind”? No! The brain, in which the mind resides, is one thing and
the heart in our thorax, with its power of motivation, is another thing.
g70 10/22 pp. 29-31 Watching the World
Personality Change
◆ According to a report that appeared on United Press International of August 18, 1970, the daughter of Philip Blaiberg said that he had experienced a complete personality change after undergoing a heart-transplant operation. Blaiberg
was one of the first to receive a transplanted heart. His daughter
observed: “I don’t know if it was the drugs or just the transplant, but
he was a different man.”
