The Testing of Reality from the Standpoint of the Body Self

Traditionally, the body self has been regarded as involved in reality testing principally in the determination of the distinction between the source of a stimulus being internal or external. The body has been closely related to instinctual drives, to urgency, and thus to conflicts that are crucial to normal and pathological development. However, the concept of the body self comprising all the psychic experiencing of body sensation, body functioning, and body image is broader than the body's connection to inner-outer reality testing and id pressures. The findings from childhood observations and from clinical research indicate that at each stage of the child's life, from earliest infancy on, the maturation and development of the body self becomes integrated with the whole group of psychic regulatory activities that contribute to the individual's sense of reality. The development of the body self at each period involves criteria by which some aspect of reality is tested. The subject of this paper has been the developmental pattern of experiences that contribute to the individual's sense of his body in particular and to the sense of reality of the self in general.