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Psychosomatic Medicine 18:304-309 (1956)
© 1956 American Psychosomatic Society

Relationship of Body Image to Site of Cancer

SEYMOUR FISHER Ph.D.1 and SIDNEY E. CLEVELAND Ph.D.1

1 VA Hospital, Houston, Texas

Two body-image scores derived from the Rorschach test were used to evaluate the body-image fantasies of 59 patients with body-exterior cancer and of 30 patients with body-interior cancer.

Formal scores and impressionistic sorting procedures both indicate that to a statistically significant degree the patient with body-exterior cancer has a greater tendency to conceive of his body as enclosed by an impenetrable boundary than does the patient with interior cancer.

It was shown by means of a control group that the Rorschach body-image indices are not merely resultants of the pain and other sensations associated with the cancer symptoms. On the contrary, the differences in body-image scores between the body-exterior cancer group and the body-interior cancer group seem to reflect basic differences in personality orientation. Apparently, then, personality variables may play a significant role in the total complex of factors that determine the site of development of cancer in an individual.

Submitted on June 6, 1955




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