Friday Lunch Seminar (English)
December 27, 2024　　
12:15 〜 13:00 (JST)
at CiNet Conference Room in the CiNet bldg.

Talk Title：Hand to face: Body image development from a phenomenological perspective

Shogo Tanaka
Professor
School of Cultural and Social Studies
Tokai University

Host PI :  Tamami Nakano

Abstract:
In this talk, I will theoretically reconsider body image development in infants from a phenomenological perspective. As body image is defined as the mental picture formed of one’s whole body (APA 2015), our main question is how we obtain the very perspective to view our own body as a whole in constituting body image. First, focusing on the development of mirror self-recognition in the first two years of life, it is suggested that this perspective derives from that of others in embodied interactions with infants. I then trace the process whereby others’ perspectives appear in dyadic interactions between infants and caregivers. Since joint attention is established around 9 months, this dyadic interaction is transformed into a triadic relationship among the infant, caregiver, and object, which is experienced as “secondary intersubjectivity.” Infant body image is constituted gradually within this intersubjective context. Based on phenomenological descriptions, I propose that the hands are the first organ and the face the last organ to be incorporated into one’s body image. Accordingly, the constitution of body image is not a mere sensory task of integrating proprioceptive and visual images of the body, but a social task of internalizing others’ perspectives regarding one’s own body.