body

THE BODY

A person's body can assume various shapes, or forms. These are poses or postures. As precursors to a particular type of movement, action, e.g. locomotion, these can represent such actions.
Common postures and the movements they might lead to are:-

a.  STANDING NORMALLY----->WALKING, RUNNING ETC

b.  STANDING ON ONE LEG----->HOPPING

c.  ON ALL FOURS----->CRAWLING

d.

Of course the possible implication of the posture for any locomotion is dependent on the situation, e.g. if the person is lying prone, on the carpet, he will not move forward bodily very easily, but with the same posture in the swimming pool he might move bodily forwards quite well, if he can do the breaststroke, or the front crawl. Similary for a supine posture and the backstroke.

With some postures the suggestion of future bodily movement is not present, e.g.:-

e.   SITTING I (sitting on a chair)
f.   SITTING II (sitting on the floor)

When we add an object to the person, in a posture, the meaning, and what is to happen next, becomes more determined. For example if we add to, or combine with, the person-in-a-sitting-posture, a chair , (= an object-which-can-be-sat-on), we will usually have the situation of a person-sitting-in-a-chair. If however we have the situation of person in a standing posture, with a chair, we might get the situation of a person-carrying-a-chair, or standing-on-a-chair etc.

A particular person, e.g. their body, can represent another, e.g. another's body, and be a general symbol for people in general. So Jenny, could represent, not just Jenny, but girls in general, or children in general, or people in general etc, as we move further and further up in the class hierarchy.
So for example we have the classic joke where the behaviour is taken literally, rather than figuratively as was intended, as in one episode of Father Ted, where Father Ted points to his own face, and tells Dougal he has some shaving soap "there", on which Dougal replies, "No, Ted, you're fine!", or something similar. This type of symbolism is seen in the psychologist's behaviour in testing, e.g. in the D.D.S.T., where the adult tries to see if the child can e.g. stand on one foot, by doing it himself, by modelling the action. Such a method of communication we have called demonstration-imitation I.

Sometimes we rely on this type of process in our photo communication boards, where e.g. in an activity photo board in a public place such as the school gym, a photo of Jenny enjoying a blanket ride should be taken to represent any child engaged in this activity. The s.l.d. children are, in fact able to respond to the photos in this way, so that when Fred points to the photo of Jenny enjoying a blanket ride he is not asking that Jenny have the ride but that he does.
However, to avoid confusion, it is probably better, certainly at later stages, to restrict the meaning of specific individuals, and of photos of these, to these specific individuals only , and use schematic symbols to represent the general class
In the photo activity example mentioned above we did suggest the option of blanking out, or making fuzzy or blurred, or replacing with schematic faces, the specific image of the specific child's face in the activity photos in public places such as the school gym.

The possible dimensions of association leading from a particular individual, e.g. the specific girl pictured here include these:-

  
                                
                                
                                  face
                                  /       legs
                                 /         /
            |---any person's hand---fingers 
any person--|---any person's face
e.g. mother
    |       
    |                            face  
---------                        /      legs   
|   |    |                      /        /  
    |      |---any child's hand---fingers 
any child--|---any child's face 
    |
    |
|---------|                 face       legs
|   |     |                  /          /
    |                       /          /
any girl---|--any girl's hand---fingers
    |      |--any girl's face   
    |
-|----|--|
         |
         |                 face      legs 
         |                 /          /  
         |     |---S's hand----fingers    
      Sharon---|---S's face
               |---S's foot

The vertical lines represent relations of member and class inclusion, the horizontal ones represent relations of part and whole, and the diagonal lines represent remoter relationships of similarities of form and function, ('Freudian' symbolic relationships).
So we see here that a person's fingers can represent their legs, or the legs of another , as in the B.S.L. sign for 'walking', and that their hand can represent their face, or the face of another, e.g. their mother.

Notice that the structure of the material in this section, as indicated by the system of links, follows our usual system of organising behaviour in terms of plans. We always start with a person, and from there we can consider what objects the person gathers or collects, the 'equipment' or 'ingredients', in what ways he assembles and combines these, how he creates various events with these, and so on. This system is the basis for all the types of communication we discuss, t.r.a., picture communication etc. This is the longnitudinal, structure of events.
In addition we also have 'Freudian', vertical types of links as mentioned above.
This idea also applies to the section on the symbolic meaning of other objects. This also begins with a person, and we can then ask what objects he gets, as in the present article, and what he does with them, or, which in a sense is the same thing psychologically, where he goes. Starting with a specific person, we already might have information about what he might do, then, if we see he has selected an object (to be used), we have still more information, (the possibilities for what he might do are narrowed). Such narrowing is also provided by the fact he has gone to a particular place, (which can of course be explained by the presence of certain objects in that place, whether a person goes to an object, or the object is brought to him, or to the part of him which is to use the object, is psychologically identical, and only a matter of the size, weight and fixity of the object.
Or, starting from the specific person, we can consider the vertical links of class inclusion; while we may expect an individual person e.g. Samantha, a 13 year old s.l.d. girl, to do some particular thing, by virtue of her individual abilities, motives, interests etc. (her personality), we may not be able to be nearly as certain about what the general 13 year old girl may do, and even less sure about what a 30 year old man may do etc. based on the experience with that girl alone. A handicapped person's knowledge of another individual may be considered to be a sort of homespun psychology of individual differences, his knowledge of people-as-a-whole a homespun general psychology.

THE BODY and CLOTHES

Click on a part of the girl's body, or on an item of her clothing, to see a description of the psychological meaning of that body part or piece of clothing in this frame.
You can also drag clothes from their store places to drop on/dress the girl figure