身体イメージと身体図式（body image and body schema)

身体イメージと身体図式の定義（Body image and body schema）

A body image is composed of a system of experiences, attitudes, and beliefs where the object of such intentional states is one’s own body.

Studies that involve body image frequently distinguish among three intentional elements.

(1)  A subject’s perceptual experience of his/her own body.

(2)  A subject’s conceptual understanding (including folk and/or scientific knowledge) of the body in general.

(3)  A subject’s emotional attitude toward his or her own body.

Conceptual and emotional aspects of body image are not doubt affected by various cultural and interpersonal factors, but in many respects their content originates in perceptual experience.

By contrast,

The concept of body schema include two aspects:

(1)  the close-to-automatic system of processes that constantly regulates posture and movement to serve intentional action,

(2)  our pre-reflective and non-objectifying body-awareness.

Body schema is a system of sensorimotor capacities and activations that function without the necessity of perceptual monitoring.

Body-schematic processes are responsible for motor control, and involve sensorimotor capacities, abilities, and habits that enable movement and the maintenance of posture.

Such processes are not perceptions, belief, or, feelings, but sensorimotor functions that continue to operate, and in many respects operate best, when the intentional object of perception is something other than one’s own body.

On the other hand, however, the body schema (and this reflects Merleau-Ponty’s usage of the term) also includes our pre-reflective, proprioceptive awareness of our bodily action.


Gallagher and Zahavi,(2008),The Phenomenological mind,(pp.145-146)