Sidney Marshall Jourard (1926-1974)
My main interest in Sidney Jourard is his use of the body-cathexis principle which is a forgotten key to understanding the relationship between a person and his or her body. Body-cathexis is a psychoanalytic principle signifying the investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea. This awareness may be of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. He explored the body-cathexis concept in the 1960s and then moved on to other interests. Other researchers used the concept for a time, but by the late 1960s it apparently became identified with body image and disappeared. Jourard’s research in the early 1950s may give him historical precedent over Seymour Fisher (1922-1996) in founding the study of body image. Jourard’s work sets the stage for more in-depth studies of the body image especially the investigation of body experience in relation to eating disorders beginning in the 1980s.
Body-cathexis was used as a tool to measure the degree of awareness a person directs toward their body parts. This makes it a useful tool in mapping the psychological energy a person devotes to their bodily existence. Jourard and others using the body-cathexis concept learned among other things that:
- Body parts and processes vary in importance to a person
- It relates to feelings of anxiety, security, and preoccupation with the body
- Body satisfaction is a function of the degree between the actual body shape and the desired ideal.
- Degree of acceptance or rejection of the body directly reflects attitudes toward the self
- It reflects parental attitudes toward the body
- Males feel more strongly about having a large body and females feel more strongly about being smaller
- Females prefer a smaller body size except for breasts
- Females invest more awareness into their body parts than do males
These findings and others give us the first building blocks for the foundations of Somatic Psychology.
Jourard was born in Mt. Dennis, Toronto, Canada on January 21, 1926 and was one of six children. He studied psychology and psychotherapy and, although an academician, he identified himself as a healer. He was educated at the University of Toronto, where he took his M.A. degree in 1948. He continued his studies at the University of Buffalo (now State University of New York at Buffalo), and obtained his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1953. Jourard taught at Emory University and the University of Alabama Medical College prior to joining the University of Florida in 1958 where he held the rank of Professor until his death in 1974.
Jourard spent one year in London working under the renown existential psychiatrist, Ronald Laing (1927-1989) (see Burston, 1998 for more on Laing). Jourard was former president of the Association of Humanistic Psychologists and a board member of the National Institute of Humanistic Psychology. He was involved in private practice of individual psychotherapy for twenty-five years; and for the last ten years of his life conducted encounter groups, experiential seminars, and workshops for a variety of humanistic growth centers including Esalen Institute, Kairos, Oasis, The Center of Man, and others in the United States, Canada and Europe. His early research was into the nature of body experience and the concept of body-cathexis and later body space and interpersonal self-disclosure. His experience as a client in psychotherapy led him to exploring the nature of personal self-disclosure which resulted in his well-known book, The Transparent Self (1971). He wrote one of the first books on the psychology of health: Healthy Personality: An Approach from the Viewpoints of Humanistic Psychology (1974). By all accounts from those who knew and worked with him, he was a remarkable human being.
Body-Cathexis
Body-Cathexis Scale Test
The scale is a complex measure of self-perception and contours of body image. To learn more about your body experience, think about some of these body areas and functions and rate them using this scale.
1 = Have strong feelings and wish change could somehow be made
2 = Don’t like but can put up with
3 = Have no particular feelings one way or the other
4 = Am satisfied
5 = Consider myself fortunate.
I have a great interest in the use of body image questionnaires to explore somatic experience and will be writing more about these subjects in the future. Please be sure to visit the CBE occasionally to stay on top of the latest developments.
Paul Shane, Ph.D., LMT
Director, Academic Content
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References
Burston, D. (1998). The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of R.D. Laing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jourard, S. (1971). The Transparent Self. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
————– (1974). Healthy Personality: An Approach from the Viewpoint of Humanistic Psychology. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Jourard, S. & Secord, P. (1955). Body-cathexis and personality. British Journal of Psychology 46(2), p. 130-138.
Webb, W. (1975). Contributions to the history of psychology: XXII. Sidney Marshall Jourard: 1926-1974. Psychological Reports 36, p. 533-534.