Representations and Bodily Awareness

Abstract

Disorders in experiencing our own body suggest that body representations are constitutive to bodily awareness. In this article, I address the distinction between two types of representations, namely body maps and body images, as determined by the neuroscientist Damasio. He considers both types of representations as patterns formed at two different levels – first at the neural level, and then at the mental one. The first level forms the basis of bodily self-awareness (self), whereas only at the second level can we talk of self-consciousness in a full sense, i.e. as the term “I” is used in everyday life, when we mean ourselves.