Body image or body schema is differentiated from the idea of body percept. The author uses Smythie's definition of the perceived body as 'the spatially extended field present in direct consciousness whose head surrounds the observing self and the rest of which is extended in perceptual space below the observing self'. It is postulated that 'any weakening in the structure of the perceived body would be accompanied by a weakening of the relationship between perceived visual and tactual space'. This postulate was tested on fifty normals, twenty-four schizophrenics, six leucotomized schizophrenics, ten patients with organic mental syndromes, and sixteen with disturbed bodily percepts. By an experimental