Remarks on the Psychophysiology of the Skin

Human beings know very little about the inside of their bodies but they seem to know their surface, their skin, and they seem to have a clear perception of it. They do not only feel.it as a living part of their selves, but there are sensations streaming from the skin continually and the eye observes the skin in a rather objective way. Indeed, according to the investigations of Wechsler and myself,(1) children between the ages of four and five can name the skin and have a rather clear conception of it at the time when they conceive as inside of their bodies merely the food they have just taken in. But still two of the children examined answered to the question, “What is under the skin?” with “me.” Seemingly the skin appeared to them merely a protective and shrouding of the real body. But here investigations of Hartmann and myself (2) give further help. When adult persons close their eyes they know very little about the surface of their bodies. There is only a distinct feeling on those parts of the skin which are tense over bones. In other places of the body the surface of the skin is experienced as vague and indistinct, with unsharp borderlines connected with vague sensations of temperature. And even when we touch an object we experience the object and its surface and this is followed by an empty space, and after that follows the mass of the body and the skin is not in the immediate field of perception. It is as if the body would lie under the skin. Only if we touch the skin very slightly is there a real sensation on the skin, but this again seems to be outside of ourselves. In pathological cases patients may demonstrate the same principle in an exaggerated way. A sixteen-year-old girl with a severe chorea minor complained about a thin rubber membrane which was extended over her body. She complained that this was not her real skin and said that she could recover only when this skin was removed. But even the optic perception does not give us a definite experience conc