Both types of exposure might be effective and clinically useful. Negative exposure is emotionally hard but might be significantly more effective in increasing the perceived attractiveness of loathed body parts and in decreasing avoidance behavior.

Negative body experience is a core characteristic of eating disorders, and poses a serious risk factor for its development, maintenance and relapse. This underlines the importance of specific therapeutic attention to body experience. In the past ten years a body-oriented treatment protocol with the focus on positive body exposure, called 'Protocol Positive body experience' has been developed. The aim of this paper is to describe the scientific basis of the protocol and to give an impression of its content and structure, illustrated by clinical case vignettes. An important and innovative aspect of the protocol is to enhance not only aesthetic, but also functional and tactile body experience. The protocol enables bodyoriented therapists and psychomotor therapists to treat negative body experience in an evidence-based way and facilitates further research to validate the effect of positive body exposure.

Purpose Differentiating the concept of body satisfaction, especially the functional component, is important in clinical and research context. The aim of the present study is to contribute to further refinement of the concept by evaluating the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the Body Cathexis Scale (BCS). Differences in body satisfaction between clinical and non-clinical respondents are also explored. Method Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to investigate whether functional body satisfaction can be distinguished as a separate factor, using data from 238 adult female patients from a clinical sample and 1060 women from two non-clinical samples in the Netherlands. Univariate tests were used to identify differences between non-clinical and clinical samples. Results EFA identified functionality as one of three factors, which was confirmed by CFA. CFA showed the best fit for a three-factor model, where functionality, non-weight, and weight were identified as separate factors in both populations. Internal consistency was good and correlations between factors were low. Women in the non-clinical sample scored significantly higher on the BCS than women with eating disorders on all three subscales, with high effect sizes. Conclusions The three factors of the BCS may be used as subscales, enabling researchers and practitioners to use one scale to measure different aspects of body satisfaction, including body functionality. Use of the BCS may help to achieve a more complete understanding of how people evaluate body satisfaction and contribute to further research on the effectiveness of interventions focussing on body functionality. Level of evidence Cross-sectional descriptive study, Level V.