The name under which the physician David Jonas published Irritation and Counter-Irritation (1962) — the book McLuhan drew on just after finishing Understanding Media for the concept of self-amputation, the numbing amputation of a sense that follows any technological extension. Cameron treats him as the buried source behind McLuhan's "numb": all of Jonas's other books appeared under "David Jonas," and he and his wife went on to publish works reading human life as an "evolution out of the earth."
Across the dialogues
The source of self-amputation — the physician behind Irritation and Counter-Irritation, published as "David Jonas" elsewhere, whose "evolution out of the earth" books sit behind McLuhan's numbness
Cameron identifies the author McLuhan cites as "Adolphe Jonas" — the source, after Understanding Media, of the "irritation and counter-irritation" that becomes McLuhan's self-amputation — as the physician David Jonas, under which name "all of his other books were published"; why Irritation and Counter-Irritation used a different name, Cameron "does not know."
"McLuhan calls him Adolphe Jonas... all of his other books were published under the name David Jonas."
Connections
His Irritation and Counter-Irritation is the book McLuhan drew on just after Understanding Media for the concept of self-amputation.