Image, Body, Identity
- Details
All the perceptions and feelings that are coming from our body, even beyond our full awareness, contribute to forming the ideas we have about ourselves, our beliefs, our projects.
Ever since we were kids, and we picked up and cradled, washed, fed, we are constantly influenced by the attitudes that others have toward our bodies and which determine, together with the aesthetic standards and ideals of perfection imposed by society, the values positive or negative through which characterize and define your body.
Our body "takes into account" all the experiences we have and, for this reason, bodily experience is the key element in the construction of our personal identity. The identity of the body is what makes us unique and unrepeatable as individuals, and what allows other " at first sight" not to confuse with anyone else.
In many disorders there may be a more or less severe impairment of one of the three components of body image that they build together a Plastic Integrative Scheme:
- the first component can be defined Cognitive and Affective, and refers to all of the thoughts and feelings that we have towards the body;
- another component is Perceptual, that is the set of sensory experiences ( self-perception and intro-perception ) that define the degree of accuracy with which we can define the body as a whole or in parts of it.
- The last component but not in order of importance, is commonly defined Behaviour, which consists of all those activities and "actions" that can make or avoid, depending on how we feel and perceive the body.