Self-schema - The Body

The Body

The self's relationship with and understanding of the body is an important part of self-schema. Body schema is a general term that has multiple definitions in various disciplines. Generally, it refers to a person's concept of his or her own body, where it is in space, what it looks like, how it is functioning, etc.

Within psychology, an essential question that guides our understanding of the body-mind relationship is, should the mind be seen strictly as a subset of the body or vice versa? In other words, the mind is sometimes simplified to the brain; the brain is physical, and therefore the mind is purely physical. On the other hand, the body is sometimes simplified to be a creation of the mind: We do not actually access our body, only our mind's interpretation (perception) of the sensations we receive, and therefore our bodies are mental creations. Psychologists are not unified around one answer to this question.

Our body image is part of our self-schema. The body image includes the following:

• The perceptual experience of the body
• The conceptual experience of the body—what we have been told and believe about our body, including scientific information, hearsay, myth, etc.
• The emotional attitude towards the body

Our body schemata may transcend the realities of what our bodies actually are—or in other words, we may have a different mental picture of our bodies than what they physically are. This is evidenced when individuals who lose limbs have phantom limb sensations. Individuals who lose a limb may still feel like they have that limb. They may even feel in that limb sensations from other limbs.