Schizophrenia Research Trends

26Reiko Koide and Akira Tamaokaround and the less powerful their imagined body becomes and that the more they depressed,the less powerful their gastrointestinal function becomes in their body images. The results ofthe comparisons of means of each BIQ item also demonstrated that the variety of functionalbody image items differentiated depressive from non-depressive patients in the schizophrenicsample. The concern on bodily function proved to be prominent in schizophrenic depressivepatients.These observations may suggest that these depression-related body images inschizophrenia have characteristics, which lead to the anticipation of the serious corporealdeterioration of becoming immovable. This close linkage between depression and undesirablefunctional body images in schizophrenic patients would be connected with the self-mutilationor higher risk of self-harm observed in schizophrenia.PART III. STUDIES USING RORSCHACHTEST: SUBSIDIARY FINDINGSStudy 4. A Unique Rorschach Response Observed in SchizophrenicPatientsIntroductionAlthough recognized as closely linked with psychopathology, distortion of body imagehas seldom been studied in schizophrenia. The major cause of the neglect of this concept ismethodological, i.e., the difficulty in developing assessment techniques. In this section, a newfinding concerning body image of schizophrenia, as observed in their Rorschach responses, isreported.In the attempts to detect body image aberration in the studies using the BIQ, we foundthat responses that evoke images of a mass of flesh are often seen in schizophrenic Rorschachresponses. This was first noticed in the response of a schizophrenic patient (Case A of thisstudy) as “This looks like a mass of flesh of some kind of animal, though I cannot specifywhich,” to Card VI. This response followed to the failure to construct the response “a gorilla”in Card IV, in which she could not identify its legs, arms, or head. According to thisRorschach sequence, a process is assumed to exist in schizophrenic thought that the theirbodies are becoming a mere mass of flesh, as if they were being vivisected though still alive,which forms a core of fear of schizophrenic patients. Difficulty in identifying legs, arms, andhead of perceived animals or human beings also proved to be a process of perceiving “a massof flesh.”Starting with these observations, an attempt was made to explore similar responses inschizophrenics’ Rorschach responses, and it was found that these responses are quitecommon in schizophrenic patients. We call the characteristics revealed in these responses asbody image “becoming a mass of flesh” and present the hypothesis that this might form acore characteristic of body image of schizophrenia.Responses such as “mass of flesh”, or “muscles in the shoulder of a man,” are typicalmass of flesh responses because the image of a mass of flesh is clearly verbalized in theseresponses. Responses such as “a rat without legs” or “a girl, but I cannot see her hands” are