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The earliest developmental line of body image, which is commonly regarded as a key construct within psychoanalytic developmental psychology, cannot be simply traced either from observable infant data nor from psychoanalytic reconstruction. This article proposes a new approach, based on the maturational progression of the neurobiological substrata that underly the intrapsychic functioning that contributes to body image self experience. Thus, in the first part of the article, four parameters each on the psychobiological level and on the level of behavioral development are postulated as providing cues for gaining
Erwin Lemche, Ph.D., a trained psychotherapist and group psychoanalyst, is a research associate and instructor at the Developmental Psychology Unit of the Freie Universität Berlin, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Psychology, and Sports Sciences. His current research interests lie in developmental psychobiology, emotional regulation, and narrative development, a topic on which he is conducting his present research project.
This is a revised version of an original paper presented at the 4th International Self Psychology Symposium at Dreieich, Germany, June 15, 1995. Earlier drafts of this paper have been read and commented upon by Drs. Joseph D. Lichtenberg, Robert N. Emde, and Peter Kutter, and the author wishes to express his appreciation for their encouragement. Final preparation of the manuscript was supported by a postdoctoral research grant from the Koehler Foundation, Munich.
knowledge about body image development. By means of data comparison across the eight parameters it becomes possible to discern several phases of the earliest body image development. Such a model of phases in body image development is proposed and outlined in the second part of the article. Postnatally, the author assumes five ontogenetic phases of body image constitution, an Extension-Phase, the Cohesion-phase, the Comparation-phase, the Expansion-phase, and the Introspection-phase. The earliest developmental line of body image development is described as progressing from a centeredness on autonomic regulatory processes through establishment and widening of body image boundaries to cognitive differentiation of the inner space of the body image.