The Body Image in Dreams

The body image is the picture of our own body as we perceive it and as we imagine it. It does not merely consist of perception in the common sense but it comprises elements of representations and thoughts. It is an immediate experience like the experience of any other object. However, it is the experience of a specific object with which one is acquainted from earliest childhood. It has a particular importance and vividness and carries with it a very great amount of memories of specific life situations. As an object experience it has a greater variety than any other object experience. It is inexhaustible in details and parts. It undergoes continuous changes. It is the object experience most persistent in time with which we are acquainted. It has, furthermore, parts which are not accessible to the perception of other individuals and some parts of the optic experience of this object are not accessible to the individual himself, at least not without a particular or artificial effort, (mirrors). This object body is furthermore characterized by the fact that for its perception perceptions of the bodies around it is almost indispensable.

It is astonishing how little attention the psychological literature gives to this object in general. The tendency prevails of taking it for granted that we have a body and that we know about it. The knowledge of one's own body and the perception of it have appeared to psychologists and philosophers alike as a simple and reliable datum. Psychologists and philosophers have even very often attempted to deduce from this supposedly immediate and simple experience all the