A Projective Index of Body-Interior Awareness

Abstract

A new psychological instrument to scrutinize an individual's concept of the depth layers of his body image has been developed. It is a projective index of body-interior awareness based upon the classification of ink-blot percepts. The measure is composed of images whose content directly represents the body interior or openings into the body interior. A study was conducted with a population of college students (115 men and 70 women) to ascertain the relationship between the body-interior-awareness index and Fisher and Cleveland's index of body-boundary awareness. It was predicted that individuals with a high index of body-boundary awareness would have fewer interior percepts than those with indefinite body boundaries. This hypothesis was substantiated. It was also found that men had a higher index of body-interior awareness than women. It was hypothesized that this index reflects patterns of internal sensory awareness derived from underlying physiologic reactivity levels in the body interior.

A Tachistoscopic Index of Body Perception I Body Boundary and Body Interior Awareness

“…This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that men have accentuated awareness for the body interior. This was originally proposed when it was observed that men had higher body interior awareness indices than women (Cassell, 1964). This sex difference is also consistent with Ames' review of Rorschach percepts in children.…”

“…In a general way it is consistent with Fisher's recent finding that men define body awareness in terms of gastrointestinal percepts in contrast to women, who use the body boundary as a point of body reference. T h e parallel between the accentuated internal awareness in men and their diathesis to develop internal disease (e.g., peptic ulcer) has been previously noted (Cassell, 1964). Of course the sex difference in tachistoscopic recognition of internal organs may have been determined by a failure of the female group to report seeing these images because of their socially unacceptable quality.…”

“…It has been shown that high barrier as compared to low barrier individuals give more human percepts (Fisher and Cleveland, 1958) and fewer body interior percepts in the Rorschach (Cassell, 1964). It has been demonstrated that high barrier'subjects give body associations which indicate that they exceed low barrier subjects in the degree to which their awareness for the body boundary region (skin and muscle) exceeds their awareness for the body interior (stomach and heart), .…”

Desensitization Therapy for Body Image Anxiety

“…By contrast, certain patients may employ the mental mechanisms of denial and repression in mentally processing in consciousness anxiety-laden anatomical imagery (4,8,10). In viewing the somatic inkblots they avoid reference to highly suggestive anatomical content related to a symptomatic region.…”

Negatively Correlated External and Internal Symptom Clusters

“…In one instance, the subjects projected fewer images depicting the body interior in viewing ink blot stimuli. 6 In the other, they were observed to require longer to identify tachistoscopically presented illustrations of internal anatomy. 7 Both of these studies suggested the existence of an apparently nonrecognized process involving perceptual inhibition between the outer and inner body regions in this group of persons.…”