Body Perception and Symptom Localization

Abstract

The hypothesis was tested that individuals whose body-awareness pattern concentrates more on the exterior than the interior experience relatively more exterior than interior symptoms when ill. One hundred healthy young college students were used as subjects. The hypothesis was tested by correlating a Rorschach measure of differential body awareness obtained by utilizing the barrier (Fisher and Cleveland) minus the body-interior (Cassell) score with a subject's symptom pattern. The latter was obtained by use of a self-administered medical history questionnaire concerning the subjects* symptoms during illnesses for 2 years preceding the study. From the questionnaire an index of symptom localization was derived by totaling external symptoms (e.g., itching, generalized muscle pain) and subtracting the total number of internal symptoms (e.g., heartburn, pain inside the chest). A. direct relation was found between the body-awareness measure and the symptom index.MX. ix OF us experience illness in a highly personal and idiosyncratic fashion. This study proposes to investigate the relationship between an individual's system of attitudes to his body and this experience. It is based upon the assumption that in this system spatial relations are of paramount importance. It is assumed that every individual develops a psychologic model to demarcate his own body from other physical objects in space. This model in its most primitive form is perceived as a container-like

Victims’ Status at International and Hybrid Criminal Courts: Victims’ Status as Witnesses, Victim Participants/Civil Parties and Reparations Claimants

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

“…This was proposed partly to substantiate the first hypothesis by demonstrating that high barrier subjects did not have a generalized facility in tachistoscopic recognition of body themes. T h e second comparison was to be made by deriving for each subject a score based upon his barrier minus body interior awareness index (Cassell, 1965). In this regard the experimental design proposed to classify subjects as having accentuated internal awareness on the basis of low barrier minus body interior awareness scores.…”

Perceptual Manifestations of Experimentally Enhanced Body Boundary Experience

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