EMBODIED AND EXBODIED MIND: WHAT IN BETWEEN WHEN BODY IMAGE AND BODY SCHEMA (DE)-CONNECT?

Authors

  • Alberto Zatti Department of Human and Social Sciences, Università degli Studi di Bergamo
  • Nicoletta Riva Department of Human and Social Sciences, Università degli Studi di Bergamo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61841/76kr1q12

Keywords:

Embodied mind, Body image, Body schema, Picture test, Erotic Capital

Abstract

When social and clinical psychology “work together,” cultural-based disturbs, like eating disorder behaviour, can be seen in a new light. Self-image is a perception product based on icon memory, imagination, sensory stimulus, social context expectations, self-beliefs about social context adequacy, etc. Still, it is also based on self-representation, like dress, fashion, maquillage, etc.

A different discourse can be done for what psychology intends for body schema. Body gesture, movement, and action result from very complex different neural systems cooperation, combining sensory and motor brain centres. Training to build neuro-motor schemas requires a very long time and effort, as in each human art like dance, sports, playing drama, art crafts competencies, etc.

 What if one’s body image and body schema are unbalanced? If the social body image pressure will bring one’s total mimesis with it or to an original, personal interpretation is here attributed to the “exboding” capacity, coming from a “sufficient” balance between body schema and body image.

Some anorexia nervosa patients are frequently engaged in intense physical activities. In our interpretation, their conscious control of the body comes from the social colonisation of embodied images that produce a disequilibrium between body image and body schema. Thus, a sort of “body-image” liberation could be possible if a deep awareness of our body schema is reached.

 The central hypothesis of this work is that the embodiment processes, primarily dependent on cultural pressure, have to be seen in unstable equilibrium with exbodiment experiences, which can be considered as the expression of body schema originated by personal sensory-motor history (see References 1; 2; 3). To evaluate the possible separation between the two, a new picture questionnaire has been elaborated.

 Dysmorphic "confusion" is widely spreading in contemporary Western societies, particularly among adolescents (4; 5). The perception of how we are seen by others (body image) is one of the core issues in social trends, education, and psychopathology (6).

 On the other hand, what one implicitly knows of his/her somatic body (body schema) represents the psychological antecedent basis implied in social interaction (2).

This article attempts to give a quantitative dimension to the two sides of the body, the structural, implicit one (body-schema) and the public, partly self-controlled one (body-image).

References

Adams, F. (2010). Embodied cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(4), 619-628. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-010-9175-x

Bernardi, N., Marino, B., Maravita, A., Castelnuovo, G., Tebano, R., & Bricolo, E. (2013). Grasping in wonderland: altering the visual size of the body recalibrates the body schema. Experimental Brain Research, 226(4), 585-594. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3467-7

Csordas, T. J. (2001). Embodiment and experience: the existential Ground of culture and Self / edited by Thomas J. Csordas. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.

de Bruin, L., & Michael, J. (2017). Prediction error minimization: Implications for Embodied Cognition and the Extended Mind Hypothesis. Brain and Cognition, 112, 58-63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2016.01.009

de Preester H, Knockaert V. (2005), Body Image and Body Schema, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, Philadelphia.

Diamond, N. (2013). Between Skins: The Body in Psychoanalysis, Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell.

Farr R. M., Moscovici S., Rappresentazioni Sociali, II Mulino, Bologna, 1989.

Froese, T., Ziemke, T. (2009). "Enactive Artificial Intelligence: Investigating the Systemic Organization of Life and Mind." Artificial Intelligence 173.3 (2009): 466-500. Web.

Gadsby, S. (2017). Distorted body representations in anorexia nervosa. Consciousness and Cognition, 51, 17-33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2017.02.015

Gallagher S., Zahavi D. (2012). The Phenomenological Mind. 2nd ed. London; New York: Routledge.

Hakim, Catherine (2011). Erotic Capital: The Power of Attraction in the Boardroom and the Bedroom. Basic Books, London.

Howe, C. Q., Beau Lotto, R., & Purves, D. (2006). Comparison of Bayesian and empirical ranking approaches to visual perception. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 241(4), 866-875. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2006.01.017

Lakoff G. and Johnson M. (1982), Metaphor We Live by. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press.

Lewin, K. (1939). Field Theory and Experiment in Social Psychology: Concepts and Methods. The American journal of sociology, 44(6), 868-896. https://doi.org/10.1086/218177

Lindblom, J. (2015). Embodied social cognition / Jessica Lindblom. Chan : Springer.

Lopez, C., Schreyer, H.-M., Preuss, N., & Mast, F. W. (2012). Vestibular stimulation modifies the body schema. Neuropsychologia, 50(8), 1830-1837.

Mead, George Herbert (1934), Mind, self and Society; edited by Charles W. Morris, annotated ed. by Daniel R. Huebner and Hans Joas, 2015.

Ondobaka, S., Kilner, J., & Friston, K. (2017). The role of interoceptive inference in theory of mind. Brain and Cognition, 112, 64-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2015.08.002

Pitron, V., Alsmith, A., & de Vignemont, F. (2018). How do the body schema and the body image interact? Consciousness and Cognition, 65, 352-358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2018.08.007

Seth, A. K. (2013). Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(11), 565-573. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.09.007

Seth, A. K., & Tsakiris, M. (2018). Being a Beast Machine: The Somatic Basis of Selfhood. Trends in cognitive sciences, 22(11), 969. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.08.008

Stern, E. (2015). Embodied cognition: A grasp on human thinking. Nature, 524(7564), 158-159. https://doi.org/10.1038/524158a

Stewart J., Gapenne O. and Di Paolo E.A. (2010). Enaction. Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, MIT Press, Boston.

Varela F.J., Rosch E. and Thompson E. (1992), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Cambridge, MIT Press.

Zamariola, G., Vlemincx, E., Corneille, O., & Luminet, O. (2018). Relationship between interoceptive accuracy, interoceptive sensibility, and alexithymia. Personality and Individual Differences, 125(C), 14-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.12.024

Zatti, A. and Zarbo C. , Embodied and exbodied mind in clinical psychology. A proposal for a psycho-social interpretation of mental disorders, Frontiers in Psychology, HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY ARTICLE published: 03 March 2015 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00236

Published

2024-01-24

How to Cite

Zatti, A., & Riva, N. (2024). EMBODIED AND EXBODIED MIND: WHAT IN BETWEEN WHEN BODY IMAGE AND BODY SCHEMA (DE)-CONNECT?. Journal of Advance Research in Social Science and Humanities (ISSN 2208-2387), 10(1), 21-31. https://doi.org/10.61841/76kr1q12