Ermusheva Anastasia A.

Relevance. Categorization, being one of the main cognitive processes, is involved in the perception and comprehension of objects with meaning, depending on the personal significance. Exceptional subjectivity of bodily experience makes it important to explore its structuring and mediating with sign through the analysis of bodily sensations categorisation in patients with complaints of pathological bodily sensations. 

Objective: description of specific characteristic features of categorization of bodily sensations in patients with excoriation disorder with impulsive actions.

Methods and Sample. 15 patients with excoriation disorder with impulsive actions (mean age 47±17 years) and 50 patients with depression with somatic symptoms (mean age 42±13 years) took part in the study. They were asked to perform psychosemantic test “Choice of intraceptive sensations descriptors” for describing all bodily sensations and health-related bodily sensations. 

Results. Patients with excoriation disorder with impulsive actions, when categorizing all bodily sensations and health-related bodily sensations, chose descriptors of actions with the skin and descriptors of negative emotional states. Significant differences were found in the choice of descriptors of emotional states. Their number was less in patients with excoriation disorder with impulsive actions in comparison with patients with depression with somatic symptoms who demonstrated a variety of choices of descriptors of different classes in response to both instructions of the test.

Conclusion. Bodily sensations categorisation study allowed to discuss the features of bodily experience in general and health-related bodily experience. In excoriation disorder with impulsive actions the bodily sensations categorisation was characterized by an attribution of actions with skin and emotions to bodily experience. The characteristics of bodily sensations choices in patients from different groups allowed to associate features of bodily sensations categorisation with clinical symptoms of these mental disorders.