Body Schema and Body Image: New

Directions Yochai Ataria

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/body-schema-and-body-image-new-directions-yochai
-ataria/
Body Schema and Body Image
 Body Schema and
Body Image
New Directions
Edited by

YO C HA I ATA R IA
Tel-​Hai College, Israel

SHO G O TA NA KA
Tokai University, Japan

SHAU N G A L L AG H E R
University of Memphis, USA, and University of Wollongong, Australia

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Oxford University Press 2021
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020952987
ISBN 978–​0–​19–​885172–​1
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780198851721.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Oxford University Press makes no representation, express or implied, that the
drug dosages in this book are correct. Readers must therefore always check
the product information and clinical procedures with the most up-​to-​date
published product information and data sheets provided by the manufacturers
and the most recent codes of conduct and safety regulations. The authors and
the publishers do not accept responsibility or legal liability for any errors in the
text or for the misuse or misapplication of material in this work. Except where
otherwise stated, drug dosages and recommendations are for the non-​pregnant
adult who is not breast-​feeding
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 Contents

Acknowledgement vii
About the Editors ix
Contributors xi
Introduction xiii

PA RT I : T H E O R E T IC A L C L A R I F IC AT IO N :
B O DY S C H E M A A N D B O DY I M AG E
1. What is the body schema? 3
Frédérique de Vignemont, Victor Pitron, and Adrian J. T. Alsmith
2. The space of the body schema: putting the schema in movement 18
David Morris
3. Body schema dynamics in Merleau-​Ponty 33
Jan Halák
4. A radical phenomenology of the body: subjectivity and sensations
in body image and body schema 52
Helena De Preester
5. Body schema and body image in motor learning: refining
Merleau-​Ponty’s notion of body schema 69
Shogo Tanaka
6. Reimagining the body image 85
Shaun Gallagher
7. The body in the German neurology of the early twentieth century 99
Andreas Kalckert

PA RT I I : B R A I N , B O DY, A N D SE L F
8. Plasticity and tool use in the body schema 117
Daniele Romano and Angelo Maravita
9. Triadic body representations in the human cerebral cortex and
peripheral nerves 133
Noriaki Kanayama and Kentaro Hiromitsu
10. Body models in humans, animals, and robots: mechanisms and plasticity 152
Matej Hoffmann
vi Contents
11. From implicit to explicit body awareness in the first two years of life 181
Philippe Rochat and Sara Valencia Botto
12. Cross-​referenced body and action for the unified self: empirical,
developmental, and clinical perspectives 194
Shu Imaizumi, Tomohisa Asai, and Michiko Miyazaki
13. Growing up a self: on the relation between body image and
the experience of the interoceptive body 210
Rosie Drysdale and Manos Tsakiris

PA RT I I I : D I S O R D E R S , A N OM A L I E S , A N D T H E R A P I E S
14. The embodied and social self: insights on body image and body
schema from neurological conditions 229
Jonathan Cole
15. Unilateral body neglect: schemas versus images? 244
Laurence Havé, Anne-​Emmanuelle Priot, Laure Pisella, Gilles Rode,
and Yves Rossetti
16. Neural underpinnings of body image and body schema disturbances 267
Jasmine Ho and Bigna Lenggenhager
17. Body schema and body image disturbances in individuals
with multiple sclerosis 285
Britt Normann
18. Body schema and pain 301
Katsunori Miyahara
19. Feeling of a presence and anomalous body perception 316
Masayuki Hara, Olaf Blanke, and Noriaki Kanayama
20. The body image–​body schema/​ownership–​agency model
for pathologies: four case studies 328
Aviya Ben David and Yochai Ataria

Index 349
 Acknowledgement

We thank Noam Tiran for his help with this volume’s preparation.
 About the Editors

Yochai Ataria is an associate professor at Tel-​Hai College, Israel. He conducted his

post-​doctoral research in the Neurobiology Department at the Weizmann Institute
of Science. He is the author of the following books: The Structural Trauma of Western
Culture (2017); Body Disownership in Complex Post-​Traumatic Stress Disorder (2018);
The Mathematics of Trauma [Hebrew] (2014); Not in our Brain [Hebrew] (2019); Levi
and Ka-​Tsetnik (2021); and Consciousness in Flesh (in press). In addition, he co-​edited
the following volumes: Interdisciplinary Handbook of Culture and Trauma (2016); Jean
Améry: Beyond the Minds Limits (2019); Kafka: New Perspectives [Hebrew] (2013); The
End of the Human Era [Hebrew] (2016); 2001: A Space Odyssey—​50th Anniversary
[Hebrew] (2019).

Shogo Tanaka is a professor of psychology and philosophy at Tokai University in Japan.

He received his PhD in philosophical psychology from Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Dr Tanaka is primarily interested in phenomenology and psychology and, more spe-
cifically, in clarifying the theoretical foundations of psychology from the perspective
of embodiment, being inspired by the ideas of Maurice Merleau-​Ponty. The topics
of his published papers encompass a broad range of issues, including body schema,
body image, skill acquisition, embodied self, social cognition, theory of mind,
and intercorporeality. From 2013 to 2014, and from 2016 to 2017, he stayed at the
Department of Psychiatry of the University of Heidelberg in Germany as a visiting
scholar, where he worked on phenomenology, psychology, and psychopathology. His
recent publications include: ‘Intercorporeality and Aida’ (Theory & Psychology, 27,
337–​353), ‘What is it like to be disconnected from the body?’ (Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 25, 239–​262), and other articles.

Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy
at the University of Memphis, USA, and Professorial Fellow at the School of Liberal
Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia. He was a Humboldt Foundation Anneliese
Maier Research Fellow (2012–​18). His publications include: Action and Interaction
(2020); Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind (2017); The Neurophenomenology
of Awe and Wonder (2015); Phenomenology (2012); The Phenomenological Mind (with
Dan Zahavi, 2012); and How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005). He is also editor-​in-​chief
of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
 Contributors

Adrian J. T. Alsmith, Philosophy department, King’s College, London, UK

Tomohisa Asai, Senior Researcher, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Advanced
Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Seika, Japan
Yochai Ataria, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Tel-​Hai College, Israel
Olaf Blanke, Professor, Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics & Brain-
Mind Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland
Sara Valencia Botto, Lecturer and Researcher in Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Jonathan Cole, Clinical Neurophysiologist and Consultant, Poole and Salisbury Hospitals, UK
Aviya Ben David, Research Assistant, Department of Psychology, Tel-​Hai College, Israel
Rosie Drysdale, Postgraduate Research Student, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway
University of London, London, UK
Shaun Gallagher, Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy, University of
Memphis, USA, and Professorial Fellow, School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia
Jan Halák, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University
Olomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic
Masayuki Hara, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama
University, Saitama, Japan
Laurence Havé, ImpAct/​Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, and Hôpital
d’Instruction des Armées Desgenettes, Lyon, France
Kentaro Hiromitsu, JSPS Research Fellow, Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities
and Sociology, The University of Tokyo; Project Researcher, Department of Psychology, Graduate
School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo; and Visiting Researcher, Department
of Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Mechanisms Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications
Research Institute International (ATR), Kyoto, Japan
Jasmine Ho, PhD Student and Member of the Cognitive Neuropsychology Research Group,
Department of Psychology, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Matej Hoffmann, Assistant Professor, Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering,
Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
Shu Imaizumi, Assistant Professor, Institute for Education and Human Development, Ochanomizu
University, Tokyo, Japan
Andreas Kalckert, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Cognitive
Neuroscience and Philosophy, Institute for Bioscience, University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden
Noriaki Kanayama, Scientist, Human Informatics and Interaction Research Institute, National
Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, and Lecturer, Center for
Brain, Mind and KANSEI Sciences Research, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan
xii Contributors
Bigna Lenggenhager, Professor and Head of the Cognitive Neuropsychology Research Group,
University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Angelo Maravita, Professor of Psychobiology and Head of Psychology Department, University of
Milano-​Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Katsunori Miyahara, Specially Appointed Lecturer, Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence,
and Neuroscience (CHAIN), Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
Michiko Miyazaki, Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Information Studies, Otsuma Women’s
University, Tokyo, Japan
David Morris, Professor of Philosophy, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Britt Normann, Professor in Health Sciences, Nord University, Bodø, and Clinical Specialist in
Neurological Physiotherapy and Researcher, Nordland Hospital Trust, Bodø, Norway
Laure Pisella, ImpAct/​Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, France
Victor Pitron, Psychiatrist, Pitié-​Salpêtrière Hospital, and PhD Student, the Jean Nicod Institute,
Paris, France
Helena De Preester, Professor of Philososophy, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal
Conservatory, School of Arts, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Ghent, and Visiting research
professor, Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium
Anne-​Emmanuelle Priot, ImpAct/​Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, and
Institut de Recherche Biomédicale des Armées (IRBA), Brétigny-​sur-​Orge, France
Philippe Rochat, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Emory Infant and Child Lab, Emory
University, Atlanta, USA
Gilles Rode, ImpAct/​Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, and Service de
médecine physique et réadaptation, Hôpital Henry-​Gabrielle, Hospices Civils de Lyon, France
Daniele Romano, Researcher, Psychology Department, University of Milano-​Bicocca, Milan, Italy;
Department of History, Society and Human Studies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
Yves Rossetti, ImpAct/​Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, and Plate-​forme
Mouvement et Handicap, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, France
Shogo Tanaka, Professor of Psychology and Philosophy, Tokai University, Tokyo, Japan
Manos Tsakiris, Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of
London, London, UK
Frédérique de Vignemont, Jean Nicod Institute, CNRS - EHESS - ENS, PSL University, Paris, France
 Introduction
Yochai Ataria, Shogo Tanaka, and Shaun Gallagher

According to the famous saying, ‘We feel well as long as we do not feel our body’. Indeed,
under normal circumstances, we largely forget our body. As long as we continue to
function smoothly in the world, our body remains in the background. By contrast,
stress, stares, injuries, disabilities, certain cultural prejudices, and the like can shift the
body into the foreground.
Not only do we forget our bodies in our everyday existence, but philosophers seem
to have ignored the question of the body for too long. Even today, philosophical dis-
cussions of the body often approach it as a thing to be examined from a scientific
viewpoint—​the body-​as-​object rather than the body-​as-​subject.
There remain many outstanding questions concerning the nature and the history of
the body. However, today, in the age of neuroscience, one of the most pressing ques-
tions seems to concern whether the body is in the brain, that is, can all bodily processes
relating to perceptual and motoric functions be reduced to neuronal representations?
A neuroscientific explanation of phantom limbs appears to suggest that our body
can be reduced to maps in the brain or that the body, as we experience it, is itself a
phantom produced by neural processes. Philosophers from Descartes (1637/​1996)
to Dennett (1991) have considered matrix-​like scenarios involving an illusory body
generated by an evil demon or a brain in a vat. Yet if we accept the notion that the
body can be reduced to the homunculus, and the world is nothing more than a rep-
resentation in our brain, how can we know for sure that we are not dreaming at this
very moment?
If the phantom limb phenomenon forces us to ask whether our body can be re-
duced to neural maps in our brain, various psychopathologies, such as anorexia and
body dysmorphic disorder, remind us that the body (which, of course, includes the
brain) is never divorced from social contexts—​from the very outset, we are thrown
into a shared world. Essentially, not only is the image of our body shaped by social
context, but rather, it has also been demonstrated that the body-​schematic sensori-
motor loop is shaped by social context (Durt, Tewes, & Fuchs, 2017). Indeed our
body is the target of a gaze or the subject of others’ judgement as well as our own
(Merleau-​Ponty, 2012, p. 170):

Man does not ordinarily show his body, and, when he does, it is either nervously or
with the intention to fascinate. It seems to him that the alien gaze that glances over
his body steals it from him or, on the contrary, that the exhibition of his body will

Yochai Ataria, Shogo Tanaka, and Shaun Gallagher, Introduction In: Body Schema and Body Image. Edited by: Yochai Ataria, Shogo Tanaka,
and Shaun Gallagher, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780198851721.001.0001
xiv Introduction
disarm and deliver the other person over to him, and in this case the other person
will be reduced to slavery. Thus, modesty and immodesty take place in a dialectic of
self and other that is the dialectic of master and slave. Insofar as I have a body, I can
be reduced to an object beneath the gaze of another person and no longer count
for him as a person. Or again, to the contrary, I can become his master and gaze
upon him in turn. But this mastery is a dead end, since, at the moment my value is
recognized by the other’s desire, the other person is no longer the person by whom
I wanted to be recognized: he is now a fascinated being, without freedom, and who
as such no longer counts for me. To say that I have a body is thus a way of saying that
I can be seen as an object and that I seek to be seen as a subject, that another person
can be my master or my slave, such that modesty and immodesty express the dia-
lectic of the plurality of consciousnesses and that they in fact have a metaphysical
signification.

Our bodies can be objects of desire, shame, or even disgust. Yet we are objectified
not only by others, but also by ourselves; indeed, as the popularity of plastic surgery
indicates, many of us are never really satisfied with our bodies. The body is the locus of
the drama.
Frantz Fanon, a black psychiatrist and philosopher raised in the French colony of
Martinique and the author of Black Skin, White Masks (2008), adds a critical perspec-
tive when depicting his experience as a black man among whites. Fanon’s description
allows us to understand how the other’s gaze in a racist social world permeates our
bodily experience, in particular the idea that social distortions can impinge on the body
schema (p. 83):

And then the occasion arose when I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An unfamiliar
weight burdened me. The real world challenged my claims. In the white world
the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema.
Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third person conscious-
ness. The body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. I know that
if I want to smoke, I shall have to reach out my right arm and take the pack of cig-
arettes lying at the other end of the table. The matches, however, are in the drawer
on the left, and I shall have to lean back slightly. And all these movements are made
not out of habit but out of implicit knowledge. A slow composition of my self as a
body in the middle of a spatial and temporal world—​such seems to be the schema.
It does not impose itself on me; it is, rather, a definitive structuring of the self and
of the world—​definitive because it creates a real dialectic between my body and the
world . . .

While reading Fanon’s description, it becomes clear that the question of the body
cannot be examined independently of our situatedness in the world and our most basic
sense of subjectivity. Merleau-​Ponty also highlights this close link between worldly
situation and the body (2012, p. 431).
 Introduction xv
If the subject is in a situation, or even if the subject is nothing other than a possibility
of situations, this is because he only achieves his ipseity by actually being a body and
by entering into the world through this body. If I find, while reflecting upon the es-
sence of the body, that it is tied to the essence of the world, this is because my existence
as subjectivity is identical with my existence as a body and with the existence of the
world, and because, ultimately, the subject that I am, understood concretely, is insep-
arable from this particular body and from this particular world. The ontological world
and body that we uncover at the core of the subject are not the world and the body as
ideas; rather, they are the world itself condensed into a comprehensive hold and the
body itself as a knowing-​body.

Note, however, that even if we embrace a radical embodied approach, emphasizing

its coupling with the physical, social, and cultural environment, it would, of course,
be a mistake to reject the role that the brain plays in the lived and bodily experience
of subjectivity. Indeed, scholars have repeatedly demonstrated that there are complex
dynamic links between neuronal plasticity (and sometimes localized brain damage),
bodily function and dysfunction, and changes in the experience of self and the world.
This volume will not solve the mystery of the body. Instead, we will examine herein
the question of the body by focusing on two concepts: body image and body schema.
We can tentatively define body image as a ‘system of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs
pertaining to one’s own body’ and body schema as a ‘system of sensory-​motor cap-
acities that function without awareness or the necessity of perceptual monitoring’. It
has been further suggested that a double dissociation exists between body schema and
body image, although, essentially, ‘body image and body schema refer to two different
but closely related systems’ (Gallagher, 2005, p. 24). That said, the goal of this volume
is not merely to explore each one of these concepts, but also to improve our under-
standing of the complex relationship between them.
We hope to demonstrate that the concepts of body image and body schema enable
us to build new bridges and generate innovative theories. Let us begin by locating the
body image/​body schema problem in the broader context of the body-​in-​the-​brain
versus the body-​in-​the-​world debate.

Body-​in-​the-​brain versus body-​in-​the-​world

Following Merleau-​Ponty, those who ascribe to the body-​in-​the-​world approach re-

ject the very notion of bodily representations, as Morris comments (Chapter 2, p. 28),
‘Why would you ever think of neurons as doing anything like abstractly representing
positions to control, when they are clearly achieving control by virtue of being distrib-
uted over, moving around in, and working within, the very body and tentacles that are
movingly touching things?’. In his 1953 lectures, Merleau-​Ponty (2011) claimed that
the body schema operates in the background; it does not involve a perceptual moni-
toring of the body. To grasp this notion, it is helpful to think about body schema in
xvi Introduction
terms of figure and ground—​in our daily life, while operating fluently in the world,
the body schema remains in the background as part of the pre-​noetic structure of
perception. However, it is far from being some kind of passive system; instead, we
may think about body schema in terms of what Husserl called the ‘I can’. Essentially,
body schema should be described in terms of knowing-​how, a pragmatic kind of
knowledge that allows our environment to become ready-​to-​hand. Continuing this
line of thought, there is no need for a central system controlling the body (or better
put: A body) within a Newtonian space, because the body itself (as a distributed
sensory-​motor system) is pragmatically oriented in space: ‘Our body is not primarily
in space, but is rather of space’ (Merleau-​Ponty, 2012, p. 149). Thus, according to this
approach, the body image plays a secondary role with respect to motor control, al-
though, as Tanaka suggests (Chapter 5), it may come to the fore when learning new
movements or skills.
By contrast, those who ascribe to the body-​in-​the-​brain approach concentrate on
the role played by the brain in the body’s interactions with the surrounding environ-
ment and with others. As the body interacts with the world, afferent signals constantly
flow from peripheral nerves to the brain and efferent signals are sent from the brain to
control the body’s muscles and joints. The findings of both sensory and motor homun-
culi (or body maps) are the most classic expressions of the body-​in-​the-​brain approach
(Penfield & Rasmussen, 1950), demonstrating the relative independence of neural rep-
resentation of the body from the physical body itself. Penfield shows that direct elec-
trical stimulations to the somatosensory cortex cause subjective experiences of touch.
This becomes even clearer when considering particular symptoms, such as phantom
limbs, amputees’ experience of ‘a tingling feeling and a definite shape that resembles the
somatosensory experience of the real limb before amputation’ (Melzack, 1990, p. 88).
Thus, phantom sensations seem to correlate with neural activation in the somatosen-
sory cortex. This body-​in-​the-​brain view tends to replace the body that we live and
experience with the complex neural representation of the body. In its most extreme ver-
sion, this view enables neuroscientists to claim that ‘your own body is a phantom, one
that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience’ (Ramachandran
& Blakeslee, 1998, p. 58). Although this approach acknowledges the sensory-​motor ac-
tivities of our body in the physical dimension, they are mostly considered in terms of
internal computational models within the brain. According to this approach, the body
schema is not a system that holistically incorporates the physical body acting in the
world, but rather the sensory-​motor representation mapped within the brain.
By emphasizing both the situatedness of the body as well as the role of the brain in re-
lation to the lived body, we hope that this volume will take us another step toward a ma-
ture dialogue between the body-​in-​the-​brain approach, which should not be without
a body, on the one hand, and the body-​in-​the-​world approach, which should not be
without a brain, on the other.
Having located the body image/​body schema debate in terms of a broader set of
questions, it is time to dive into the very heart of the discussion. Given the importance
of the case of deafferentation to our understanding of body schema and body image, as
 Introduction xvii
well as the double dissociation between body image and body schema, let us begin by
presenting the case of Ian Waterman.

Cases of deafferentation

Ian Waterman, sometimes referred to as IW in the scientific literature, became deaffer-

ented from the neck down at the age of 19. As a result of peripheral neuronopathy, he
lost his sense of touch and proprioception below the neck, and initially he was unable
to control his movements. After a lengthy rehabilitation, IW learnt how to do so mainly
via visual and cognitive efforts (Cole, 1995).
Based on this finding, it has been suggested that IW’s body schema has been re-
placed by an enhanced body image, that is, a conscious visual awareness of his body
(Gallagher, 2005, p. 52):

[I]‌f he [IW] is denied access to a visual awareness of his body’s position in the percep-
tual field, or denied the ability to think about his body, then, without the framework
of the body image, the virtual body schema ceases to function—​it cannot stand on its
own . . . IW has substituted a virtual body schema—​a set of cognitively driven motor
processes. This virtual schema seems to function only within the framework of a body
image that is consciously and continually maintained.

Frédérique de Vignemont (2018) believes that one of the most important questions
concerning deafferentation is ‘whether more than thirty years later bodily control
still requires the same effort’ (p. 148). Considering the case of Ginette Lizotte (GL),
de Vignemont suggests an alternative explanation for this relative success with regard
to movement among deafferented subjects ‘[who] can move in a relatively impressive
manner’. Given this observation, she asks: ‘But in what sense is the body schema de-
fective in these patients?’ de Vignemont argues that the body schema ‘is at least partially
preserved in deafferentation’ (p. 147). In order to support this notion, she re-​examines
the role that vision plays in body-​schematic processes: ‘The role of vision for the body
schema is thus not unusual . . . it is merely more drastically important in the case of
deafferented patients [who] . . . consciously exploit their body schema, as in conscious
motor imagery.’ Furthermore, she argues that ‘although based on different weighting of
information’, the body schema of deafferented patients relies ‘more on vision than be-
fore, but for all that, it is not “missing” ’ (p. 149).
Gallagher (2005) also explores the role of vision in body-​schematic processes: ‘Visual
sense is also a source of information vital to posture and movement.’ Thus, visual pro-
prioception and visual kinaesthesis ‘are more directly related to the body schema and
involve the tacit processing of visual information about the body’s movement in rela-
tion to the environment’. To be clearer, what we see in our daily life ‘automatically gets
translated into a proprioceptive sense of how to move’. This notion echoes Merleau-​
Ponty’s ideas (1968, p. 134):
xviii Introduction
every vision takes place somewhere in the tactile space. There is double and crossed
situating of the visible in the tangible and of the tangible in the visible; the two maps
are complete, and yet they do not merge into one. The two parts are total parts and yet
are not superposable.

Gallagher (2005) further stresses that although visual perception of the environ-
ment is important for body-​schematic processes, in daily life, the ‘direct visual per-
ception of one’s own body . . . does not play a major role in motor and postural control’,
and yet, ‘for IW it is the primary source of information about his body’ (p. 45). Indeed,
IW ‘depends heavily on visual perception of his limbs and visual proprioception in
order to control his movement’. He also argues that although usually there is ‘inter-
modal communication between proprioception and vision’, vision is nevertheless ‘not
designed to take the place of somatic proprioception’. Essentially, in the case of IW,
this intermodal communication is seriously disturbed. Gallagher (2005) concludes
by saying that in IW’s case, some realignment toward visual and cognitive control of
movement has taken place.1
de Vignemont (2018) stresses that while spending time with GL she almost ‘forgot
that there was anything abnormal besides her wheelchair . . . She could cut her meat
while having a normal discussion at lunch and even gesture with her knife and fork
like everybody else, or so it seemed’.2 Note, however, that unlike GL, IW can walk.
In that sense, GL’s situation is more similar to IW’s experience while driving, which
he appears to find easier than walking: ‘The car seems to be an extension of the body
schema’ (Gallagher & Cole, 1995, p. 386). Essentially, while driving, IW does not need
to control his full body with his vision. Likewise, his hands are always in sight. As a re-
sult the observer can develop a feeling that IW is driving on ‘automatic pilot’. However,
IW himself testifies that while driving he needs to think about how he holds the wheel
and how much force he must invest in order to move the wheel one way or the other
(and so on).
This ambiguity concerning the role of vision for body schema in deafferented
subjects may reflect a long-​standing confusion concerning body schema and body
image. Gallagher stresses that the concepts of body image and body schema have been
unclear from the very outset. Likewise, de Vignemont (2018) believes that ‘there is a
lack of precise understanding of the functional role of the body schema as opposed to
the body image and without clear definitional criteria . . . they cannot play any explana-
tory role’. This lack of clarity and precision has motivated occasional calls to abandon
the concepts. Perhaps, as de Vignemont herself suggests, ‘we should simply decide that

1 Indeed, some experimental evidence suggests that IW’s use of vision for motor control activates the ventral

visual pathway in the brain (the visual stream that underpins object recognition) rather than the dorsal visual
pathway that typically serves the motor system (Athwal et al., 1999).
2 It has been suggested (Cole, 2016; Forget & Lamarre, 1987) that GL is ataxic, meaning that she cannot drink

from a cup normally; she chews her food by counting because she cannot feel much of her mouth; she cannot put
her hand into a pocket or bring her hand to her mouth easily.
 Introduction xix
we are better off without them’ (p. 152). Others concur, from Conrad in his 1933 book
(Das Körperschema. Eine kritische Studie und der Versuch einer Revision) to Berlucchi
and Aglioti (2010) more recently. With this in mind, let us investigate the source of this
confusion.

The source of conceptual confusion

Throughout the twentieth century, pivotal scholars regarded Head and Holmes’ (1911)
paper as definitive in the study of body schema and body image. Given the important
role of this study, some clarifications are necessary:

(1) Head and Holmes introduced the concept of body schema to explain the cog-
nitive and somatosensory deficits of patients with cerebral lesions. They con-
sidered body schema an implicit frame for the entire body, referred to when
recognizing the present posture or locating body parts.
(2) Head and Holmes argue that ‘postural recognition is not constantly in the cen-
tral field of attention’. Thus, they suggest that ‘every recognizable change enters
into consciousness already charged with its relation to something that has gone
before, just as on a taximeter the distance is presented to us already transformed
into shillings and pence’ (pp. 186–​187). Basically, body schema is an implicit
function underpinning our postural and motor control, and it rarely comes to
our conscious attention.
(3) Head and Holmes claim that ‘image, whether it be visual or motor, is not the
fundamental standard against which all postural changes are measured’ (p. 187).
Thus, visual images of the body are distinguished from body schema.

Many philosophers and neuroscientists have relied heavily on Jacques Paillard’s in-
terpretation of Head and Holmes’ study (Paillard, 2005, p. 103; citing Head & Holmes
1911,3 p. 212):

These authors suggested the distinction between a postural schema considered as

‘a combined standard against which all subsequent changes of posture are meas-
ured . . . before the change of posture enters consciousness . . . ’ and a body image as an
‘internal representation in the conscious experience of visual, tactile and motor infor-
mation of corporal origin’.

Reading Paillard’s citation carefully, it is important to note that Head and Holmes
(1911) never use the term ‘body image’ per se; likewise, they employ the concept of
representation only in reference to the image: ‘The assumption of an imagined posture

3 Referring to the 1911 paper.

xx Introduction
may be accompanied by representations of movement equivalent to the pictures of
those who visualize strongly’ (1911, p. 187). In any case, Head and Holmes do not pre-
cisely define body image but do distinguish images of the body from what they define
as schemata of the body.
Many believe that Paul Schilder (1886–​1940) was at least partly responsible for the
current confusion between body schema and body image (see Kalckert, Chapter 7).
In his German book, published in 1923, entitled Body Schema (Das Körperschema),
Schilder defines body schema as a ‘spatial image that one has from yourself ’ (p. 2; em-
phasis added [translated by Kalckert, p. 126]). In his English-​language book The Image
and Appearance of the Human Body, published in 1935, Schilder defines the body
image as the ‘picture of our own body which we form in our mind’ (p. 11). Yet on other
occasions, Schilder mixes up his terminology: ‘We mean the body schema when we
talk about the image of the own body, which is alive within us. It includes optical, kin-
aesthetic, and tactile elements, but it is not the sum of those, these achieve their true
meaning only by its relationship to this body schema’ (Hartmann & Schilder, 1927,
p. 666; emphasis added). In further cases, Schilder’s statements are even more con-
fusing: ‘The image we have of our body, or, as it is also called the body schema or pos-
tural model of the body, is partially based on sensations and partially on representations
and thoughts’ (Schilder, 1934, p. 314).
While reading Schilder’s definitions, one might suspect that he fails to properly dis-
tinguish between body schema and body image. However, we would like to offer a
different perspective on Schilder’s work. Aside from the issue of conceptual distinc-
tions, there is a question concerning how the brain, the body, and the world, including
the social environment, are entangled in our everyday life. It seems that Schilder’s work
succeeds, at least to some degree, in demonstrating how our bodily existence is inte-
grated with the social environment during our daily life. Notwithstanding the double
dissociation between body schema and body image, in everyday life, these two sys-
tems work together. In a sense, although his classification of body schema and body
image is unclear, Schilder’ analysis remains faithful to our bodily experiences in the
lifeworld.
Another source of confusion is the erroneous first translation of Merleau-​Ponty’s
Phenomenology of Perception. As Donald A. Landes, the translator of the new edition
(2012), stresses (p. xlix):

Merleau-​Ponty’s use of the term le schéma corporel introduces both historical and con-
ceptual difficulties. Merleau-​Ponty specifically rejects the interpretation of le schéma
corporel as a representation or image . . . Rather than following Schilder by writing
image in French—​or rather than adopting Lhermitte’s phrase l’image de notre corps
(‘the image of our body’)—​Merleau-​Ponty maintains schéma.

Having understood the root of this confusion, let us examine the concept of double
dissociation between body schema and body image more thoroughly.
 Introduction xxi

Double dissociation

Based on an analysis of various pathological cases, both Paillard (1999) and Gallagher
(2005) discern a double dissociation between body image on the one hand and body
schema on the other: ‘It is possible . . . to find cases in which a subject has an intact
body image but a dysfunctional body schema, and vice versa’ (Gallagher 2005, p. 24).
For example, in some cases of unilateral personal neglect, a neuropsychological con-
dition involving a deficit in attention to, and awareness of, one side of the body fol-
lowing damage to the contralateral cortex, we can detect evidence of an intact body
schema (including controlled movement) together with the impairment of body
image for the neglected side. In one such case, the patient pays no attention to the left
side of her body and fails to dress that side, although there is no motor weakness on
that side; for instance, she uses her left hand to dress her right side (Denny-​Brown,
Meyer, & Horenstein, 1952). As we saw in the case of IW, other examples indicate the
opposite, that is, body schema deficit with an intact body image.
de Vignemont (2018) raises some doubts regarding the existence of a clear-​cut
double dissociation between body schema and body image. For instance, while the case
of unilateral neglect is referenced to show the presence of body schema and the absence
of body image, patients suffering from unilateral neglect are able to attend to the right
side of their body. According to de Vignemont, this indicates that the body image is not
completely absent, even if there is a deficit. Based on these observations, she argues that
double dissociation in a strict sense does not exist: ‘Most bodily disorders do not lead to
straightforward diagnosis in terms of either body image deficit or body schema deficit.
These deficits of body schema and body image are often intermingled and clear cases
of specific disruptions rarely found’ (p. 150; for further debate, see Havé, Priot, Pisella,
Rode, & Rossetti, Chapter 15).
Keeping this in mind, Gallagher (Chapter 6) stresses that we need to distinguish be-
tween conceptual ambiguity on the one hand and ambiguity in the phenomena them-
selves on the other; ambiguity at the level of the phenomena is not an argument against
the existence of dissociation between body schema and body image.
In a wider context, it seems that from the very outset, this ambiguity concerns the na-
ture of the relationship between the perceived body and the acting body, in particular
how these perspectives are interrelated in action. When we act in a habitual manner, we
often do so without explicitly perceiving our own bodies, whereas we may need to ex-
plicitly focus on our bodies when asked to execute a novel action.
The same kind of tension can be found between the body-​as-​subject and the body-​
as-​object. Rather than avoiding it, Merleau-​Ponty (1964, p. 162) encourages us to main-
tain what seems to be a structural ambiguity:

The enigma is that my body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks at all
things can also look at itself and recognize, in what it sees, the ‘other side’ of its power
xxii Introduction
of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible and sensitive for
itself.

According to Merleau-​Ponty, this tension is necessary for our existence: ‘There

is a human body when, between the seeing and the seen, between touching and the
touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand, a blending of some
sort takes place.’ If, however, this sensing–​sensed structure collapses, the very essence
of being human will lose its meaning. Moreover, should this subject–​object structure
collapse, meaning that we can no longer touch and be touched at the same time, this
signals not merely the end of the human body but in fact the end of humanity: ‘Such a
body would not reflect itself; it would be an almost adamantine body, not really flesh,
not really the body of a human being (pp. 163–​164).

The structure of this volume

This volume is divided into three parts. The first, ‘Theoretical clarification: body schema
and body image’, defines these concepts and explores the possible relations between
these systems. The second part, ‘Brain, body, and self ’, attempts to understand how the
body is represented in the brain and how this representation is developed into a sense
of self. The third part, ‘Disorders, anomalies, and therapies’, explores the role of body
schema and body image in different kinds of pathologies from phenomenological, cog-
nitive, and neural perspectives.
The book opens with a chapter by Frédérique de Vignemont, Victor Pitron, and
Adrian Alsmith, ‘What is the body schema?’ According to the authors, the body schema
can be defined as a representation of the body for action. However, they ask: what does
this statement really mean? Namely, what is the uniqeness of the body schema? Is it the
type of information that it represents, or perhaps the function of the representation? In
the second chapter ‘The space of the body schema’, David Morris focuses on the body
schema as well, albeit adopting a non-​representational approach. Given their repre-
sentational approach, a fundamental problem encountered by de Vignemont, Pitron,
and Alsmith concerns what seems to be our close interaction with the world in our
everyday life, the sense of affordances, situatedness, and moods. While the orthodox
neurocognitive approach to body representation leaves the world too far away, for
Morris, this does not constitute a problem because he regards body schema itself as of
space. Note that the role which Morris’ theoretical approach accords to body schema
leaves little room for body image.
In the third chapter ‘Body schema dynamics in Merleau-​Ponty’, Jan Halák explores
the interaction between body schema and body image, drawing on the notes made by
Merleau-​Ponty (2011) for his 1953 lectures known as The Sensible World and the World
of Expression. Halák describes the relations between the two in terms of figure (body
image) and ground (body schema). Like Morris, Halák also supports a strong em-
bodied non-​representational approach; yet he nevertheless leaves a place in his theory
 Introduction xxiii
for the body image. Note that both Morris and Halák reject the concept of body image–​
body schema double dissociation.
Interestingly, de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith, on the one hand, and Halák
and Morris, on the other, would agree that body schema should be treated in terms
of affordances. Yet, whereas the former adopt a strong representational approach, the
latter argue that according to Merleau-​Ponty, there is no need for representations,
seemingly making many of the problems dealt with by de Vignemont, Pitron, and
Alsmith non-​issues. For instance, while de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith focus on
local representations of body parts, Merleau-​Ponty considers the body a holistic system
from the outset. Note, however, that if we choose to adopt the holistic approach, we may
find it difficult to explain the strong link between localized brain damage and the dys-
function of body parts, and more generally different kinds of neuropathologies. Clearly
the approach advanced by de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith facilitates this sort of
explanation.
In the fourth chapter ‘A radical phenomenology of the body’, Helena De Preester
recognizes these problems and seeks to develop a theory that considers the strengths
and weaknesses of both sides, that is, combining the body-​in-​the-​brain approach with
the body-​in-​the-​world approach. To do so, she embraces Michel Henry’s radical phe-
nomenology of the body. De Preester confronts what seems to be one of the most chal-
lenging problems faced by the representational approach—​explaining the unity of
the moving body. As we saw, de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith are fully aware that
embracing their own approach raises the following question: How does one experience
and act with one’s body as an integrated whole rather than a collection of parts? De Preester
tries to avoid this problem. She argues that the definition of body schema offered by
Gallagher and Cole (1995) fails to solve this puzzle, and that as long as the body schema
remains embedded in proprioception, the problem of the unity of the moving body re-
mains unsolved. From this perspective, the Merleau-​Pontyian approach, as presented
by both Morris and Halák, is not sufficiently radical. By divorcing proprioception from
body schema, Henry’s work allows her to confront this issue. According to Henry, body
schema is responsible for unity of the transcendent body. The origin of this unity lies in
the subjective body, which, in turn, is characterized by movement in the sense of ori-
ginal, immediate knowledge of movement. De Preester tries to bridge between Henry’s
radical phenomenology of the body and current cognitive sciences by suggesting that,
at least to some extent, we can think about the subjective body in terms of offline long-​
term body representations.
In the fifth chapter ‘Body schema and body image in motor learning’, Shogo Tanaka
endeavours to provide a detailed account of the nature of relations between body
schema and body image and to take the body schema–​body image distinction a step fur-
ther. Tanaka argues that motor learning demands a close dialogue between body image
and body schema. Indeed, although the authors of the previous chapters in this volume
ascribe to opposing philosophical approaches (body-​in-​the-​brain versus body-​in-​the-​
world), they share a belief in the primacy of body schema over body image. Thus, they
all agree that compared with the body schema body image plays a minor role in our
xxiv Introduction
daily lives. Merleau-​Ponty seems to support this approach: ‘Ordinary experience shows
that, in imitating others, in learning to walk, in becoming familiar with an environment,
what occurs cannot be explained by the notion that there is first an intellectual act of
“knowing” rules, maps, or words and then a move to use them’ (1964, p. 96). Bearing
this in mind, Tanaka suggests that body image nonetheless plays a fundamental role in
most processes of motor learning; hence, any theory that seeks to explain what it is like
to be-​in-​the-​world should provide a detailed account of how body image is involved in
our everyday activities.
In the sixth chapter ‘Reimagining the body image’, Gallagher accepts the co-​
construction model (Pitron & de Vignemont, 2017), which posits a functional dis-
tinction, yet strong interaction, between body schema and body image. Indeed, if one
replaces the word ‘representation’ in the following sentence with ‘systems’, it seems that
de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith would agree to some extent with Gallagher: ‘The
two types of body representations [systems] are thus functionally distinct, but their con-
struction is partly based on their interactions, which allow them to minimize discrep-
ancies between them as much as possible.’ In his chapter, Gallagher tries to respond to
several objections that have been voiced against the body image–​body schema distinc-
tion over the years. The main objection is as follows: ‘We should not take body schema
and body image to be disconnected systems, even if they are distinguishable.’ Indeed,
by reading the different chapters in the first part of this volume, it is difficult to find any
theoretical support for a strict or absolute double dissociation approach. Gallagher ad-
mits that he relies heavily on rare cases such as IW, yet he believes that: (a) the fact that
IW’s case is rare is not an argument against the body image–​body schema double dis-
sociation; and (b) even if we accept that the figure-​ground concepts describe the body
image–​body schema dialogue quite accurately in our everyday life, this does not under-
mine the possibility of double dissociation.
Reading the first part of this volume, the following question arises: Does the cur-
rent debate derive from our inability to define body schema and body image properly?
Accordingly, it is appropriate to close the first part with a historical perspective on the
current debate. In his chapter ‘The body in the German neurology of the early twen-
tieth century’, Andreas Kalckert examines the history of German neurology in the
early twentieth century, demonstrating that from the very outset, the concepts of body
schema and body image were not well defined. Kalckert closes his chapter with the
following observation: ‘Fortunately or unfortunately, these discussions resemble strik-
ingly the discussions we have today. We face unclear definitions, different interpret-
ations, now and a hundred years ago’ (Chapter 7, p. 112).
In the second part, ‘Brain, body, and self ’, we consider both body schema and
body image from the perspectives of related research fields, such as cognitive neuro-
science, experimental psychology, developmental science, phenomenology, and ro-
botics. Tool use is clearly one of the most important issues for our understanding of
body schema. Therefore, it is natural to open the second part of this volume with a
chapter by Daniele Romano and Angelo Maravita concerning the question of ‘Plasticity
and tool use in the body schema’. Romano and Maravita explore the process via which
 Introduction xxv
tools become embodied. In general, when we learn to use a new tool, we develop a
new way of interacting with the surrounding space. This malleable relationship be-
tween our body and the surrounding environment is reflected in the plastic nature of
our brain. Within our brain, changes related to tool use are not limited to spatial pro-
cessing but are also linked to sensory-​motor information processing which in turn has
the potential to transform how we are embedded within the environment. Romano and
Maravita’s findings seem to fit perfectly with how Merleau-​Ponty (1964, p. 178) regards
body schema: ‘Our organs are no longer instruments; on the contrary, our instruments
are detachable organs.’ Indeed, our body lives as a system of knowing-​how within the
surrounding space and its sensory-​motor capacity and flexibly extend into this space
through tool use. Thus, body schema is itself of space.
In the second chapter ‘Triadic body representations in the human cerebral cortex and
peripheral nerves’, Noriaki Kanayama and Kentaro Hiromitsu explore how both body
schema and body image are represented in the brain. They reconsider how the entire
neural system, including peripheral nerves, constitutes body representation. Drawing
on Schwoebel and Coslett (2005), they reject the traditional dyadic taxonomy of body
schema and body image. Instead, they present a triadic taxonomy of body schema
(sensory-​motor representation of the body), body structural description (topological
representation of body parts and whole), and body semantics (lexical meanings of body
parts). Kanayama and Hiromitsu further propose that the neural basis of the new tri-
adic taxonomy lies in three information streams in the visual cortical areas: the ven-
tral stream corresponding to body semantics, the ventro-​dorsal stream corresponding
to body structural description, and the dorso-​dorsal stream corresponding to body
schema. Their proposal preserves the concept of traditional body schema, but the con-
cept of body image is now categorized into the topological-​perceptual aspect and the
lexical-​conceptual aspect. Here we notice that their proposal partially corresponds to
the taxonomy of the body image originally presented by Gallagher (2005), that is, body
percept, body affect, and body concept. Kanayama and Hiromitsu’s recategorization of
body image seems to focus on the difference between body percept and body concept.
Concerning the taxonomy of body representations, Matej Hoffmann tackles the
problem in a comprehensive manner from the perspective of robotics. In his chapter
‘Body models in humans, animals, and robots’, Hoffmann asks: How is the physical body
represented in animals, humans, and robots in terms of information processing? He pro-
poses to classify body representations by locating them on axes such as fixed versus
plastic; amodal versus modal; explicit versus implicit; centralized versus distributed;
and so on. Hoffmann argues that the human body is more centrally controlled in terms
of movement than invertebrates, such as the octopus, which have greater freedom in
peripheral movements. However, the same condition alters the human capacity for
conscious and dexterous manipulation of objects in a detailed manner, as is evident in
tool use. Although Hoffmann focuses on the fixed and amodal nature of body models
in robots, by contrast, this shows the plasticity and multimodality of human body rep-
resentations in the organic brain. According to Hoffmann, it is possible to say that hu-
mans inevitably represent the body in the brain, that is, the central nervous system
xxvi Introduction
that controls peripheral movements, but at the same time, this enables humans to con-
duct explicit and well-​controlled bodily interactions with the environment. Within
neurological-​anatomical conditions of the human body, we find the origin that consti-
tutes both body schema and body image. On the one hand, we obtain the capacity for
well-​controlled dexterous actions toward the environment, and on the other hand, we
also gain the capacity to consciously experience our own body by perceiving it expli-
citly. Curiously, even in a purely representational approach, the body must be as both
subject and object: ‘The body catches itself from the outside in the process of exercising
a knowledge function; it attempts to touch itself touching, it begins “a sort of reflec-
tion” ’ (Merleau-​Ponty, 2012, p. 95).
The human capacity to experience the body in an explicit manner initiates the possi-
bility of being as a self. In the fourth chapter ‘From implicit to explicit body awareness
in the first two years of life’, Philippe Rochat and Sara Valencia Botto explore the de-
velopmental trajectory between body schema and body image. Rochat and Botto dis-
cern the crucial difference between body schema and body image in the implicit versus
explicit axes of body awareness, attempting to find a developmental process from the
former to the latter. Unlike the previous two chapters, Rochat and Botto emphasize
the importance of the social environments in which infants manifest primordial self-​
consciousness through social emotions such as embarrassment, shame, and pride. In
the developmental contours, we first develop our embodied interactions with the sur-
rounding environment as manifestations of body schema, underpinning an implicit
body awareness separate from the outer environment. Subsequently, internalizing the
other’s evaluative gaze through embodied, as well as social, interactions, we become
conscious of our own body as body image, which can be defined as a primitive sense of
self. Note that according to their view, our sense of self is social from the very beginning.
In contrast to this emphasis on the social, in the fifth chapter ‘Cross-​referenced body
and action for the unified self ’, Shu Imaizumi, Tomohisa Asai, and Michiko Miyazaki
explore the origin of the sense of self within an individual’s bodily experiences.
According to their own experiments using the paradigm of the rubber hand illusion,
they depict a cross-​referential relation between ownership and agency—​the sense of
ownership of a fake hand induces movement of a real hand, and the movement of a
fake hand is accompanied by the sense of ownership. They further explore the idea that
the ownership–​agency interaction underpins self-​representation in cases of infants and
adults who have undergone limb amputation. The former develop a sense of self by
matching the proprioceptively perceived body and the visually perceived body, whereas
the latter experience the loss and restoration of bodily self-​representation through the
use of prostheses.
Whereas Imaizumi, Asai, and Miyazaki emphasize the role of movement in inte-
grating multimodal representations of the body, in the last chapter in Part II ‘Growing
up a self ’, Rosie Drysdale and Manos Tsakiris attempt to shed light on the sense of self
in its relation to interoceptive, as well as exteroceptive, body awareness. Although the
sensory interplay between interoception and exteroception is not yet fully understood,
by collecting scarce evidence in developmental science, they present a framework
 Introduction xxvii
according to which we develop the sense of self from the inside-​out. Drysdale and
Tsakiris discern the social origins of interoceptive sensitivity, arguing that ‘a mother’s
physiological regulation during pregnancy is consequential for the foetus and its sur-
vival’ (Chapter 13, p. 218). As we saw, Rochat and Botto emphasize the social origin
of the sense of self, yet it seems that the sense of self in this case means explicit self-​
consciousness. In contrast, Imaizumi, Asai, and Miyazaki explore the sense of self that
is basically implicit and constituted by the senses of agency and body ownership, which,
in their view, are not necessarily social. Drysdale and Tsakiris further trace our sense
of self to the fundamental interoceptive sensitivity, for which they find social origins.
If so, they argue, then even in the process of forming the minimal and implicit sense of
self, the infant’s embodied social interactions with the caregiver are foundational. Their
view suggests two things: (a) we need to explicate the problem of self not only in terms
of body image, but also in terms of body schema; and (b) the sociality of body schema
and the minimal sense of self should be further examined in future research.
The third part ‘Disorders, anomalies, and therapies’ begins with Jonathan Cole’s
chapter ‘The embodied and social self ’. Cole returns to IW’s case, demonstrating: (a)
how conscious control at the body image level may only partially replace the deaffer-
ented body schema; and (b) in what sense body schema and body image can be con-
sidered, at least conceptually, two different systems. Cole develops these notions further
for the social sphere, arguing that others’ responses to one’s body are crucial in devel-
oping our body image and sense of self.
In the second chapter ‘Unilateral body neglect’, Yves Rossetti and Laurence Havé
demonstrate that body image disorders in neglect are not always accompanied by body
schema disorders. They argue that even if a clear definition of these two concepts can be
articulated, the clinical reality is far more complex, both (a) in terms of the existence of
a continuum between these two extremities of bodily manifestations of unilateral neg-
lect, and (b) in terms of the dialectic relationship between the two systems. In the third
chapter ‘Neural underpinnings of body image and body schema disturbances’, Jasmine
Ho and Bigna Lenggenhager continue this line of thought. Based on neural alterations
in various body-​related brain regions, they suggest that body schema and body image
are mutually dependent; hence it is problematic to make a clear categorization of most
disorders in terms of body schema and body image. It seems that both Rossetti and
Havé, as well as Ho and Lenggenhager, argue against the notion of double dissociation
between body schema and body image. To be more accurate, they accept the concep-
tual distinction and, to some extent, agree that body schema and body image can be
traced to neuronal mechanisms, yet they reject Paillard’s strong dichotomic approach
to body schema and body image.
The current debate should not, however, prevent us from discerning that the con-
cepts of body schema and body image can be useful in various applications. Indeed, in
her chapter ‘Body schema and body image disturbances in individuals with multiple
sclerosis’, Britt Normann shows that the concepts of body schema and body image can
deepen our understanding of individuals suffering from multiple sclerosis. Normann
demonstrates that embracing these concepts can improve our ability to treat patients. It
xxviii Introduction
seems that Cole, Rossetti and Laurence, and Ho and Lenggenhager agree on this point
at least: the concepts of body schema and body image allow us not only to improve
our understanding of subjective experience in various conditions, including disabilities
and disorders, but also to understand these phenomena in a way that has clinical rele-
vance for both therapists and patients.
In the fifth chapter ‘Body schema and pain’, Katsunori Miyahara challenges the con-
temporary theories of pain, which are rooted, according to Miyahara, in the Cartesian
tradition. Embracing the concepts of body schema and body image, he claims, enables
us to (a) get closer to the subjective experience of pain and (b) build a more consistent
theory of pain, which is also more loyal to our subjective experience. Pain, Miyahara
maintains, should be understood in terms of affordances, knowing-​how, and the
‘I-​can’/‘I cannot’.
The sixth chapter ‘Feeling of a presence and anomalous body perception’, written
by Masayuki Hara, Olaf Blanke, and Noriaki Kanayama, focuses on the phenomenon
known as ‘feeling of a presence’ (FoP)—​a strange sensation that another person is
nearby when, in fact, no other person is present. Hara, Blanke, and Kanayama trace
this phenomenon back to the phenomenology of Karl Jaspers regarding his notion of
leibhaftige Bewusstheit, which refers to the subjective feeling of another’s presence as
sometimes reported by patients suffering from schizophrenia. By comparing this with
other related research from the field of cognitive neuroscience, such as TMS study con-
cerning out-​of-​body experiences, they conclude that the temporo-​parietal junction
(TPJ) plays a key role in experiencing the FoP. They argue that whereas sensing the
presence of another person when there is no one there derives from one’s own disturbed
body image, the sense of another’s agency results from a disturbed body schema.
In the last chapter of part three ‘The body image–​body schema/​ownership–​agency
model for pathologies’, Aviya Ben David and Yochai Ataria present a model based on
the conceptual gap between body schema and body image, revealing how different
kinds of conditions, including body integrity identity disorder, schizophrenia, anor-
exia nervosa, and post-​traumatic stress disorder, can be explained as part of a unified
model. This model demonstrates the explanatory power of the double dissociation be-
tween body schema and body image. More specifically, it reveals how the sensorimotor
dimension, on the one hand, and the social sphere, on the other, are at work in our
everyday lives and in cases of different disabilities.

References
Athwal, B. S., Cole, J. D., Wolpert, D. M., Frith, C., & Frackowiak, R. S. J. (1999). The role of proprio-
ceptive feedback during movement: a PET study of a deafferented subject. NeuroImage, 9, 509.
Berlucchi, G. & Aglioti, S. M. (2010). The body in the brain revisited. Experimental Brain Research,
200(1), 25–​35. doi:10.1007/​s00221-​009-​1970-​7
Cole, J. (1995). Pride and a Daily Marathon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cole, J. (2016). Losing Touch: A Man Without his Body. Oxford University Press.
Conrad, K. (1933). Das Körperschema. Eine kritische Studie und der Versuch einer Revision.
Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 147, 346–​369.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sunny Boy
at the seashore
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Sunny Boy at the seashore

Author: Ramy Allison White

Illustrator: Charles L. Wrenn

Release date: October 3, 2023 [eBook #71793]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1920

Credits: Bob Taylor, David Edwards and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Books project.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUNNY BOY

AT THE SEASHORE ***
“Ralph!” gasped Sunny Boy. “Look! My boat’s untied!”
(See Page 190)
 SUNNY BOY
AT THE SEASHORE

BY
RAMY ALLISON WHITE
Author of
“Sunny Boy in the Country,” “Sunny
Boy at the Seashore,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLES L. WRENN

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 Copyright, 1920
By
Barse & Co.

Sunny Boy at the Seashore

Printed in the United States of America

 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE

I An Unexpected Ride 9
II Ending a Busy Day 23
III Getting Ready 38
IV Helping Here and There 50
V Sunny Boy’s Surprise 65
VI On the Way 78
VII A Day with Daddy 91
VIII Making New Friends 104
IX The Fort Builders 116
X The Marshmallow Roast 131
XI Sunny Boy to the Rescue 142
XII Sunny Boy Is Naughty 154
XIII Curly Is Found 169
XIV Lost on the Ocean 181
XV A Happy Ending 199
 ILLUSTRATIONS

“Ralph!” gasped Sunny Boy. “Look! My boat’s untied!” Frontispiece

PAGE

Upstairs Sunny Boy found his toys exactly as he had

55
left them
Sunny Boy crawled carefully through the doorway of the
119
fort
Sunny Boy’s horse went up and down—in time to the
161
music
SUNNY BOY AT THE
SEASHORE
 CHAPTER I
AN UNEXPECTED RIDE

“O H, Ruth! Oh, Nelson! O-hoo!” Sunny Boy puckered up his

mouth and tried his best to whistle, but he couldn’t quite
manage it.
“Ru-th! Nelson!” he shouted again. “Come on over! I want to tell
you something!”
Then up the steps from the laundry in the basement of their house,
where they had been hunting string for a kite, came Nelson and Ruth
Baker, who lived next door.
Sunny Boy stood in the gateway his father had cut in the fence
between the two yards and danced up and down impatiently.
“Hurry up!” he urged them. “Listen! We’re going to the seashore
day after to-morrow! Mother said so.”
Nelson sat down comfortably on the grass. He was rather a fat
boy.
“We’re going to the mountains to visit my grandmother, next
week,” he said. “But you just got back from being away.”
And indeed Sunny Boy and his mother had returned the night
before from a long visit with Sunny’s Grandpa Horton who lived on a
beautiful farm.
Little Ruth Baker, who was only four years old, beamed cheerfully
at Sunny Boy.
“We went to the seashore while you were gone,” she informed
him. “The water was very wet. I went paddling, but Nelson wore a
bathing suit.”
“I’ve a bathing suit, too,” announced Sunny Boy. “The brook at
Grandpa’s was too cold, so I didn’t wear it. But I’m going to learn to
swim down at Nestle Cove. Daddy’s going to teach me.”
Nelson looked up from straightening out the tangle of string.
“Did you sleep on the train going to your grandpa’s?” he asked.
“We have to stay two nights, an’ eat and sleep an’ everything on the
train before we get to my grandma’s.”
Sunny Boy, stretched full length in his express wagon, kicked his
heels excitedly.
“We ate on the train,” he said eagerly. “But—what you think?—
we’re going to Nestle Cove in Daddy’s new automobile!”
“I saw it out in front yesterday,” Nelson volunteered. “It’s a nice big
one. I’ll bet I could most run one!”
“P’haps,” admitted Sunny Boy doubtfully. “Anyway, you have to be
grown-up before they let you—Daddy said so. Mother’s going, an’
Harriet, an’ Aunt Bessie and Miss Mart’son.” Sunny Boy meant Miss
Martinson, a school teacher and Aunt Bessie’s best friend, but his
tongue had a trick of skipping letters when he pronounced long
words. “And Aunt Bessie has a house with a big porch, and she says
I can sleep in a hammock like a sailor if I want to. An’ I’m going to
make a fish pond in the sand.”
“Look out you don’t get scared by a crab,” Nelson advised him.
“Ruth did. She screamed and screamed. I went fishing with my
daddy on a great long pier, but we didn’t catch anything.”
“I saved all the pebbles,” Ruth began hopefully.
“I went fishing in the brook.” Sunny Boy was forgetting that it isn’t
polite to interrupt another.
“I got so sunburned it all peeled off, and then—” Nelson was eager
to tell his experiences, too.
“My goodness, children, how you do chatter!” Mrs. Baker opened
the gate in the fence and beckoned smilingly to her youngsters.
“Hello, Sunny dear. Glad to be home again? Ruth, Mother needs you
now to try on the new frock, and, Nelson, you’ll have to go to the
store for me. Come right away, dears—you’ll see Sunny again before
he goes away.”
Nelson gathered up his string obediently and trotted through the
gate. Ruth slipped her hand into her mother’s and followed him. Left
alone, Sunny Boy wiggled to a more comfortable position in his
wagon and gave himself up to pleasant thoughts of the coming trip.
“Look here, Sunny Boy, your brains will be absolutely baked!” Aunt
Bessie descended on him from the back porch. “My dear child, this
yard is the warmest place in the city in the morning. Your mother
asked me to see what you were doing. Why don’t you go out in front
and play where it is shady?”
“With you?” asked Sunny Boy happily.
Aunt Bessie sat down on one end of the wagon which tipped
perilously, and hugged him.
“No, lambie, not with me,” she answered. “I must run home and
help Harriet pack another box, and then I am to meet Betty
Martinson and buy a porch swing. After that, let’s see—after that I
have to give a little girl a music lesson. But when we get to the
seashore I’ll play with you.”
“All right,” agreed Sunny Boy sensibly. “But couldn’t you stay a
minute, Auntie?”
“Not half a minute, honey.” Aunt Bessie rose and smoothed out
her pretty blue linen frock. “You run along now and don’t go far away,
because it will be lunch time before you know it.”
A big black ant crawled across the cement walk at Sunny’s feet.
“I wonder what Jimmie is doing now?” said Sunny Boy aloud,
remembering how careful Jimmie always was not to step on the
tiniest ant.
Jimmie was the nineteen year old boy who helped Grandpa
Horton farm in summer and who went to an agricultural college in
winter. Sunny Boy and he had grown to be great friends during the
month Sunny and his mother had spent at Brookside, which was the
name of the farm where Grandpa and Grandma Horton lived.
 Sunny Boy was named for his grandfather, “Arthur Bradford
Horton,” as you may have read in my first book about him called,
“Sunny Boy in the Country.” His father and mother called him “Sunny
Boy” because he was usually such a cheerful laddie. Even when he
got into scrapes—and in the month he spent at the farm he lost his
grandfather’s Liberty Bonds and had a horse run away with him—the
troubles were somehow straightened out for him and left him smiling
again.
Now he and his mother had left Brookside and dear Grandpa and
Grandma Horton, and with Daddy Horton had come back to their city
home to get ready for a visit to the seashore. Aunt Bessie, who was
Mrs. Horton’s sister, and her friend Miss Martinson had rented a
bungalow at Nestle Cove, and they wanted Sunny Boy and his
mother to come and stay with them.
The sun was blazing down into the back yard, and it really was
very hot. Sunny Boy took his wagon down the laundry steps into the
house, stopping for a moment to get a drink of water at the sink, on
through the front basement hall and up the steps out into the street.
“Well, well, you back?” The postman, on the steps of the Bakers’
house, smiled at him. “Have a nice time?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sunny Boy, with satisfaction. “An’ day after to-
morrow Daddy’s going to take us in the auto to Nestle Cove.”
“Well, you are having a fine summer,” replied the postman heartily.
“Don’t get so tanned that, when you come back, I might take you for
a little chocolate boy, will you?”
“Oh, no,” Sunny assured him. “I don’t mean to.”
Whistling pleasantly, the postman went on up the street, and
Sunny Boy, pushing his wagon idly back and forth by the tongue,
thought that when he grew up he would be a postman too.
“But I don’t know whether I’d like to be a postman in the city where
I’d see a lot of people and know such a lot of children, or be one in
the country, like the postman that comes to Brookside farm, and ride
around all day in a buggy. That would be fun. I could know children
in the country, too. There was an awful lot of Hatch children, seven of
them.”
Sunny Boy was thinking of the children of the tenant who lived on
Grandpa’s farm, and with whom he played while he was visiting at
Brookside.
“’Lo!” called the girl across the street, sweeping the pavement.
“Hello!” responded Sunny politely.
She had red hair and that reminded him of Araminta, the little girl
at Grandpa Horton’s house. He wished Araminta lived in the city
where he could see her every day. Sunny Boy, you will perceive, had
what his Aunt Bessie called a “wishing fit” this summer morning.
“Out of my way, kid!” A thin, freckle-faced boy with the lightest hair
and eyebrows Sunny Boy had ever seen leaped from the laundry
wagon that drew up to the curb. “Haven’t any time to fool this
morning. This 266 Glenn Avenue? Yep? Well, hustle now and don’t
keep me waiting for those shirts to be done up. Rush order, too, it is.”
Sunny Boy had a dim idea that this boy was poking fun at him, and
he frowned a little. But Mrs. Horton had heard through the screen
door, and she came, bringing the package of shirts.
“Are you sure they will be returned to-morrow?” she asked
anxiously. “We leave early Thursday morning.”
“Oh, they’ll be ready in plenty of time,” said the boy reassuringly.
“Don’t you worry—the Star Laundry never breaks its word; we can’t
afford to.”
He ran down the walk, tossed the package into the back of the
wagon, and hurried across the street to another house.
Mrs. Horton laughed.
“What a very important young man!” she said. “Well, Sunny Boy,
are you having a good time? Where are Ruth and Nelson?”
“They had to go in,” answered Sunny Boy. “Mother, could I get an
ice-cream cone?”
 “Not before lunch, dear,” decided Mrs. Horton. “Now I have to
finish the mending. Keep out of the sun, won’t you? It’s one of the
warmest days we’ve had.”
She closed the screen door and Sunny returned to his express
wagon.
“I could tie it on back,” he said aloud.
The laundry wagon was still standing where the freckle-faced boy
had left it, and the horse was slowly but surely going to sleep, “right
in his tracks,” as Harriet would have said had she been there to see.
His head kept nodding lower and lower, and Sunny Boy privately
decided that the only thing that kept it from hitting the asphalt was
the big round collar the horse wore.
Sunny Boy got up from the step and walked down to the wagon,
dragging his express cart behind him. He had often seen other boys
tie their toy wagons on behind real wagons, and he knew exactly
how it was done.
“I’ll just pretend,” he told himself, glancing up at the windows of the
house uneasily. “I won’t really go for a ride.”
There was no one to see him knot the rope firmly and make the
express cart fast to the laundry wagon. He climbed in and had a
blissfully thrilling moment making believe that he was part of an
express train.
“I’ll be the baggage car,” he thought. “Toot! Toot!”
Then from across the street came whirling the breezy laundry-
wagon boy. This time he had no parcel, but leaped into his seat and
took up the reins without going round to the back of his wagon.
“Gid-ap, Lazy-Bones!” he cried to the sleepy horse. “What do you
think this is—a cab-stand? Gid-ap!”
And Sunny Boy and his wagon moved gently off down the street.
He could easily have tumbled out, but that would mean to lose his
wagon. And the laundry boy was whistling so shrilly through his teeth
that there was no hope of being able to make him hear, even if he
called out. Besides, Sunny Boy thought that he might very likely be
cross and scold about small boys hitching to his wagon.
“I—I—don’t believe Mother would like it,” said poor Sunny Boy
forlornly, as the horse broke into a gentle trot.
 CHAPTER II
ENDING A BUSY DAY

“I KNOW my mother wouldn’t like it,” said Sunny Boy.

The laundry wagon horse was galloping now, urged on by the
freckle-faced boy who was singing loudly as the light wagon swayed
from side to side. Sunny Boy looked very little and frightened trailing
on in his wagon behind.
A big brown dog bounced out at him and barked madly.
“Go ’way!” cried Sunny, for the dog reminded him of the fairy-tale
wolf with very white teeth and such a red mouth. “Go ’way, old dog!”
Slish! the laundry wagon swerved to avoid another wagon, and
Sunny Boy nearly tumbled out. An old gentleman stood on the
sidewalk and brandished his cane at him.
“Hi, you!” he called, “don’t you know you’re likely to be killed? Why
don’t the policemen—”
Sunny Boy couldn’t hear the rest of what he said, but, looking
back, he saw the old gentleman still standing on the walk shaking his
cane angrily.
Sunny Boy was more than willing to let go, but he didn’t see how
he could. They were nearing the end of the street now, and the
houses were fewer with more ground between.
“Look behind!” an ice-man delivering ice called to the laundry boy,
at the same time pointing to the back of the wagon.
The laundry boy may have looked, but of course he couldn’t see
Sunny’s wagon from where he sat, and he apparently had no
intention of stopping his horse to see if any one was stealing a
“hitch.” Instead he brought the whip down smartly, and the horse
leaped forward with a sudden jerk that made Sunny’s neck snap.
 “My land!” poor Sunny gasped.
It was an expression he had learned from the red-haired Araminta.
Goodness knows what might have happened if they had had to
turn a corner, or if the rope hadn’t broken. But break it did, and
Sunny Boy and the laundry wagon parted company just as they
came opposite to a vacant lot. Sunny’s wagon shot off to one side
and, as there was no pavement and no curbing, the wagon kept
going until it brought up in a clump of elderberry bushes.
“Hurt you, kid?” and a man who had seen him came running
across the street. “That’s a mighty dangerous way to play, and the
littler you are the worse it is. I suppose you’ve seen the big boys do
it. Take my advice and leave wagons alone after this.”
As he talked, he lifted Sunny and the express wagon out of the
bushes, brushed Sunny Boy off neatly. He now stood smiling down
at him so good-naturedly that it was impossible to keep from smiling
back.
“I thought you was scolding,” said Sunny Boy, in whose
experience people never smiled when they scolded.
Sunny Boy suddenly remembered that Aunt Bessie always made
big round eyes and a round mouth and held up her hands whenever
he said “you was,” and that his mother always looked at him and
shook her head just the very least possible bit. But never mind; it
was too late to go back and say it differently now, and besides he
must hurry on and explain to this nice man who was smiling down at
him.
“It didn’t hurt me, but one wheel’s bent,” he said.
“That’s where it skidded across the street,” explained the man,
bending down to examine the wagon. “Not worth mentioning, though.
I’m thankful it wasn’t your leg that was bent. Now don’t you think
you’d better call it a day and go home?”
Sunny was willing enough to go home, though he didn’t know what
the man meant by calling it a day.
 “I mean that one such adventure’s enough for a morning,” smiled
the new friend, as he saw that Sunny Boy looked puzzled.
Sunny agreed to this, and they shook hands gravely and the man
went on down the street and Sunny and his express wagon headed
for home.
He found his mother getting lunch, and she was very glad to see
him because, as she said, she was lonesome.
“We’ll have to hurry,” she greeted him when he had put the
express wagon in the back yard and found her in the kitchen. “Daddy
is coming home at half-past one to help get us ready to go. Have you
washed your hands, dear? Well, then you and I will have our bread
and milk right here on the kitchen table.”
Sunny Boy enjoyed this. Mrs. Horton spread a little white cloth at
one end of the table and they had bread and milk and cold boiled
eggs and four chocolate cookies—two apiece—just like a picnic. The
kitchen was the only room in the house that seemed natural to
Sunny, anyway. The house had been shut all the time they were
staying at Grandpa Horton’s, and as they were only going to be
home two days before going to the seashore Mrs. Horton said it was
not worth while to unwrap or unpack anything.
“Now we’ll wash the dishes,” declared Mother, when they had
finished their lunch. “Then I’ll go upstairs and darn socks while you
watch at the window for Daddy. Poor Daddy! No one mended his
socks for him while we were gone.”
Sunny Boy helped Mother carry the milk and the butter back to the
ice-box, and dried the dishes as she washed them. Then he ran
down into the yard and hung up the scalded tea towels for her.
“Daddy says little boys can help most as much as little girls,” said
Sunny seriously, watching Mother put the glass pitcher on the high
shelf that he hadn’t been able to reach. “When Harriet isn’t here, do I
help, Mother?”
“Precious,” Mother assured him, giving him a bear hug, “you help
me every minute of the day, whether Harriet is here or not. And when
you’re a man I won’t be any more proud of you than I am right now.”