Training guide dogs of the blind with the “phantom man” method: Historic background and semiotic footing

Abstract

This article discusses the basic preconditions to bring about meaning change in animals using the “phantom man” method of training guide dogs as an example. In this method, the body plan of the dog is extended with a special cart imitating a human being. By incorporating the cart into the animal's bodily self, the dog is brought to discover in the environment those objects that are meaningful for the blind person but not for the dog in its everyday dog world. The method was developed in the 1930s and 1940s by the biologist Jakob von Uexküll and his colleague Emanuel Sarris and is used by some Central European guide dog schools and trainers even today. The motivation for developing the method was tightly bound with the core premises of Jakob von Uexküll's Umwelt theory as well as the empirical research on dogs done at the Insitut für Umweltforschung in Hamburg. For modern discussions of zoosemiotics the “phantom man” method offers a rich and revealing source to analyze how one species can be brought to use the meanings of another species. The Umwelt change of the animal as induced by this training method is here divided into three phases. Each phase is examined in conjunction with a corresponding theoretical problematics: the transition of a prior object to a constitutive part of the subject, one subject operating in multiple Umwelten, and the formation of a shared interspecies Umwelt.