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The term body image has appealed to clinicians, theorists, and the general public for many years, particularly since Paul Schilder (1950) brought psychoanalytic thought to bear on the topic. Most early thinking about the body image, including Schilder's, was based on evidence derived solely from clinical experience and informal observation. However, the methodology of mid-century American psychology was dominated by the epistemology of logical positivism. Within that philosophical framework, early theories about the body image were vulnerable to criticism for their lack of support from—or sometimes even for their advocates’ reluctance to appeal to—empirical validation. These theories seemed unduly speculative to investigators who were committed to quantification and traditional experimental research designs.
Once the interests of such investigators became aroused, however, their eagerness to study the body image empirically created a rapid proliferation of research on all aspects of body experience. Many early investigators were stimulated by Karen Machover's (1949) classic proposal that personality is projected into an individual's drawings of the human figure. Establishing the validity of these drawings as revelations of body images was difficult because so many other factors, such as artistic skill or training, enter into their production. But it was also difficult because no one knew exactly what a body image is.
As with the concept of intelligence, everyone seems to agree that such a thing as the body image exists, but no one is able to define the term satisfactorily. Early tests of intelligence could be developed because a specific indicator, success in school, was identified. Most people were willing to accept academic performance as a criterion for evaluating intelligence tests.