Reimagining the body image

Abstract

This chapter considers a variety of criticisms and a number of applications in which the usefulness of the body image/body schema distinction is still apparent. The chapter suggests that one can find complexity in this distinction by exploring several theoretical and practical directions, for example, by developing a non-reductive neuroscientific explanation, by investigating various pathologies, by exploring deeper psychoanalytic aspects, and by analysing different forms of embodied performance. Each of these projects are complex ones and some of them involve social and cultural analyses, as reflected in recent work in feminist, race, and gender studies. More specifically, this chapter discusses body image and body-schematic processes in cases of expert performance.