Body Image and Body Experience Disturbances in Schizophrenia: an Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Body Self as a Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Disturbances in body experience are described as key schizophrenia symptoms and early disease predictors. In case studies, different disorders relating to body experience are presented, but only a few empirical studies have aimed to distinguish the characteristics of body experience in schizophrenia, and these have been selected arbitrarily and without reference to cohesive theoretical model. To integrate this fragmentary approach, we propose a body self (BS) model, composed of: functions; representations (e.g., body image); and sense of body identity. The aim of the study was to determine whether the BS differentiates schizophrenic patients from healthy controls, and to investigate the relations between aspects of BS and a history of illness and clinical characteristics. The Body Self Questionnaire and the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale were administered to 63 schizophrenic patients and 63 healthy subjects. The difference was found in the functions of the body-self (perceiving, interpreting, and regulating body experience), in the sense of body identity, and in one of three aspects of body image explored (e.g., acceptance of biological sex). Disturbances in BS were related to positive symptoms and to the number of hospitalizations for other diseases. Together, the results demonstrate that schizophrenia is more body experience than body image disorder, since the negative emotional attitude towards the body and acceptance of fitness were not distinctive for schizophrenia. The link between the disturbances in BS and the number of nonpsychiatric hospitalizations suggests that misinterpretation of body experiences in schizophrenia can promote a search for medical attention.

Restoring the body: changes in body self in the course of a focusing and arts-based therapy program for female interpersonal trauma survivors

“…To our knowledge, no studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of experiential and arts-based interventions that have focused on the broadly defined and multidimensional experience of an individual's own body. As a theoretical basis for exploring changes in body image and body experience in the therapeutic process, the tridimensional model of body self as developed by Sakson-Obada (2010;Sakson-Obada, Chudzikiewicz, Pankowski, & Jarema, 2017) was chosen for this study. According to Sakson-Obada, the body self comprises: 1) function (perception, interpretation, regulation); 2) representations (representation of sensations, bodily states, body image); and 3) body identity.…”

“…This means that the ability to feel, understand, and regulate body experience (the functional aspect of the body self), together with adequate representations of the body, constitutes the basis for such aspects of body identity as a: a) primordial sense of being alive; b) sense of continuity of the body in time and space; c) sense of unity in the body; and d) sense of a physical boundary. The optimal relationship between body and mind is not the object of consciousness, which means that the aspects of body identity as listed above constitute "tacit experience" (Sakson-Obada, 2010;Sakson-Obada et al, 2017).…”

“…Body-Self Questionnaire. The Body-Self Questionnaire (BSQ) is a self-report method that is based on Sakson-Obada's model of body self (Sakson-Obada, 2009;Sakson-Obada et al, 2017). This model includes three aspects of body self: (1) function (experiencing sensations, interpreting them with regard to emotions and physiological needs, and regulating them);…”

“…The respondent rates the statements using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not true at all) to 5 (very true): the higher the score, the greater the number of body-self disturbances. Data from previous studies using this tool indicate its good diagnostic validity as it has allowed prediction of disturbances of body self in different psychological disorders (Pyrgiel, 2014;Kubiak & Sakson-Obada, 2016;Sakson-Obada et al, 2017).…”

Searching for predictors of sense of quality of health: A study using neural networks on a sample of perimenopausal women

“…Within the concept of the body self, which is derived from the psychodynamic paradigm, additionally comprises attitude toward the body (body image), comfort with closeness with others, and body protection, issues pertaining to the development, structure and way of defining the body self, as well as its importance for human personality, can be defined using Krueger’s description [37–40].…”