The Ninth Street Center Infrequently Asked Questions

Can psychological problems have physical solutions?

Recently a friend asked me to evaluate the Alexander Technique and gave me Body Awareness in Action by Frank Pierce Jones to read. And recently I saw "Splendor in the Grass" again. Both made me think about how we seem to try over and over again to make simple-minded "self-improvement" techniques, especially those involving physical therapy, help us grow as human beings or answer deep questions about human nature.

I liked the Jones book. He seems a truly scientific researcher who is not magical in his thinking and who is well-educated in traditional areas of medicine. He presents Alexander as a sincere discoverer of a useful if poorly understood technique, and I was impressed that Dewey thought highly of the man. My problem with the Alexander Technique is simply that it seems to have nothing to say about those larger dimensions of psychological growth with which I am accustomed to thinking about and dealing with. It's human development "writ small" — about on the level of those high school guidance counselors that used to make my skin crawl.

According to Jones, Alexander

"discovered a method (a 'means-whereby') for expanding consciousness to take in inhibition as well as excitation ('not-doing' as well as 'doing') and thus obtain a better integration of the reflex and voluntary elements in a response pattern. The procedure makes any movement or activity smoother and easier, and is strongly reinforcing.... The technique changed the underlying feeling tone of a movement, producing a kinesthetic effect of lightness that was pleasurable and rewarding and served as the distinguishing hallmark of nonhabitual responses." (p.2)

Many of Alexander's goals sound like things which healthy children learn all by themselves when left alone; I think I learned to play the violin this way, for example. As to the image "body awareness in action", it has a legitimate ring but how important can it be if what you get out of it is mostly a certain lightness in your gait? I don't object to neologisms like "the means-whereby" or "end-gaining", but in this case they add nothing in the way of a theoretical foundation that would make these claims testable.

Simply put, the theory of the Alexander Technique is very vague for me. Most of its few psychological assertions — more like asides, really — are superficial and can't be taken literally. "You find that you like other people more when you become more relaxed about yourself" (p.12), says Jones, failing to add that dim lights and loud music have a similar effect. We are warned against "emotional gusts" which show themselves in "prejudices, jealousy, greed, envy, hatred and the like" (p.83). Civilization, we are reminded, is having a degenerative effect on the human organism. The Rousseauian assumptions behind this snap judgment are a bit odious to me, frankly.

The Alexander Technique specifically fails to address the kinds of psychological issues which expose civilization's delusions about itself, for example those which all of us face as we're "growing up" and finding out which of society's conventions we're prepared to accept and which are too noxious.

As an example of a treatment of teenage psychology — whose problems are a microcosm of the basic quandaries of civilization — I would recommend a movie like "Splendor in the Grass", a succinct and telling picture of why there are generation gaps and why some people grow and others can't. It presents two young people, Bud and Deenie, who are going through all of the symptoms classically attributed to "those difficult in-between years". They are in love. In particular, they are torn by the tremendous effect of a love/power polarization on their identities. Its effect is greater than anything they have ever experienced before, and none of the adults in their world has anything helpful to say about what they are going through.

As the movie starts we see them before their polarization produces an identity crisis. Inge goes to great length to depict "normal", successful and happy young people, each of whom comes from a two-parent home, does well in school, and has many friends. Bud is a star quarterback, and it's all he's ever wanted. Every night at dinner, Deenie's father says, "Always drink plenty of milk." It's all the wisdom they need.

When Deenie's distress about the intensity of her submissive feelings can no longer be hidden from her family, her mother tells her, "Just remember there's nothing wrong with you. You're just as normal as all those other girls. You're just run down." She tells Deenie to take long hot baths.

When Bud asks his family doctor what he should do about wanting to sleep with Deenie before marriage, the doctor gives him a heat lamp treatment and a vitamin shot. Bud tries to protect Deenie by staying away from her, and she becomes distraught. Bud asks the doctor what he can do to help her. The doctor says, "If you want to help Deenie, stay away from her." It's a prescription for her complete nervous breakdown.

She is sent to an insane asylum for several years. When she is freed, now engaged to another former inmate, she briefly visits Bud on his new farm and learns that he has married and started a family. He is unhappy but resigned to his fate. She, on the other hand, is hopeful about her future and seems to understand that someone who has made peace with the depressive implications of normalcy could never have been right for her.

If you want to address issues of human development, you have to go at least this far. You have to deal with what growing people are up against in this kind of world, you have to expose ignorance and immorality, say what is wrong with civilization, explain why people aren't happy.

I grew up in the same world that Bud and Deenie did. Like Inge, I have a bitter contempt for the cowardly and dishonest attempt which society's official bearers of truth and right make to obscure the genuine issues of human development. These defenders of the status quo love empty formulas like "Drink plenty of milk" and "Take vitamin shots". As a result, anyone with any creative rebelious or heretical tendencies usually spends years avoiding "sunlamps and exercise". To this day, I can't stand to be in the same room with "health nuts" who obscure the real obstacles which lie in the path of our creating a better world for all men. They would be the real enemies of humanity if it weren't for the fact that they behave at random, just as Socrates said his jurors could only do.

Apparently none of the social dilemmas which produce so much human misery had much interest to Frederick Alexander. He was a pleasant and endearing old gentleman in the tradition of A. S. Neill and Bertrand Russell, and as liberal as they in his views on the education of children. He seemed perfectly happy to hob-nob with the upper classes and charge big fees to help spare them from asking disturbing questions.

Because Alexander was not a creative person, then, does that mean that his theories are false? Certainly not, especially if his theories stay clear of psychological issues, which they seem to. I'm willing to remain non-judgemental about the importance of the Alexander Technique to dancers and athletes, for instance. Maybe it will be taught in the schools someday; I don't know. The question is who should take it seriously and why.

Does my evaluation mean I dissaprove of teaching the Alexander Technique? Again, no. I teach computer technology; why shouldn't people teach the Alexander Technique if they can get a good fee for it? But I doubt that people who come for Alexander lessons are going to have any serious interest in their own psychological growth. If you ask students of body mechanics to become fishers of men, you risk a great retribution.

Of all the "New Age" disciplines now available, I have found that 90% of them are designed to spare people the effort of seriously facing psychological issues. Most are stress-reduction regimes. As such I have no objection to them, but how many of them teach the difference between oppressive stress and harmonious stress, a distinction which is so important if we are to reach for higher goals? Aldous Huxley let the cat out of the bag when he said that there are only two known ways to transend the personality, Eastern mysticism and the Alexander Technique (p.78). It should go without saying that those who are serious about transcending their personality need have no further interest in personal growth.

If you observe an average mix of students at your average New Age center, you'll find that most of the extroverts are mistakenly searching for wisdom and most of the introverts for strength. Extroverts often become dependent on religious cults; introverts become enamored of the martial arts. It may be that the Alexander Technique is of martial art for introverts. Of course, the enjoyment of a motor skill, even one without practical use, harms no one. I am an extrovert yet I have developed a idolatrous love of children's books which provides innocent pleasure and for which I offer no apology. But we must not confuse the golden havens of play and fantasy for reality.

There are those who will point out that the fact that some people want to worry about how light they are on their feet while children are dying in Africa just goes to show how far we have yet to travel as a species. Learning to move "correctly" or to meditate for long periods — or to drink plenty of milk and win football games, for that matter — has nothing whatsoever to do with altering the course of human history. Only people who can take seriously the goal of social progress can place their personal development in a creative context.

Would I want to learn the Alexander Technique? It's true that I'm overweight, and I would like to do something about that. But I bathe daily, take vitamins, try not to pig out on greasy food, and find that my body performs about as well as I need it too. It does what I ask and lets me concentrate on the really important stuff without complaining that I'm using its various parts disproportionately. Ironically, many so-called students of physical culture seem unaware of the fact that evolution has crafted for us a body which is much more flexible in its requirements than we give it credit for. I'm not saying that nutrition and exercise aren't important, I'm simply saying that the Alexander Technique, even if beneficial in its own way, lies well outside the set of projects which I currently can find time for.

But what if the results of the Alexander Technique were so wonderful that they couldn't possibly be described in words, that if only I tried the lessons I would become incredibly more happy with my life? This hypothesis can be offered about every single physical regimen which has ever been invented. Since we can't try them all, we have to employ criteria by which to accept or reject them. The criterion I've developed is: Are the proponents of the regimen actually knowledgable about human nature and the psychological structures of contentment and happiness? Do they understand about social progress, do they talk about interpersonal love and power, about building a better world? Or do they alude to these ideas in an empty-headed way to gain converts while ignoring the deeper underlying problems that they and their patients have yet to face? I have yet to find a physical regimen, including the Alexander Technique, which claims any efficacy whatsoever concerning the psychological goals I have selected for my life.