Exploring the Effect of Perceived Parental Responses to Interoceptive Experiences on The Relational Aspects of Self-Concept

Abstract

As early as 1890, William James noted a distinction between the bodily self and the narrative self. Modern research largely agrees with this notion, finding that the bodily aspects of the sense of self precede the emergence of more sophisticated and abstract forms of self-concept. Interoception is the processing of one’s internal bodily signals, and emerging evidence suggests that the development of interoception is essential for both the bodily and narrative selves. However, few studies have looked into whether interindividual differences in the development of interoception would have implications for the relational aspects of one’s self-concept. Past research has highlighted the impact of perceived parenting styles on individuals’ self-concepts. For example, positive parenting styles tend to lead to closeness to parents and thus greater inclusion of parents in the self-concept. Conversely, negative parenting styles can lead to problems in individuation-separation and dependency and fear of engulfment by parents. The present study will focus on a specific domain of parenting, that is, parental responses to children’s interoceptive experiences (i.e., interoceptive mirroring). We hypothesize that negative mirroring may lead to either a higher degree of self-concept integration between self and parent (due to dependency) or, on the contrary, a lower degree of integration (due to fear of engulfment and/or the lack of closeness).