Reading Alexander: Some Historical Context
Alexander was basically a
19th century and early 20th century man. He was raised in a century when British sea
power allowed it to control countries and territories across the globe. This
control enabled Britain to create a global system of commerce, and build an
empire. “The sun never sets on the
British Empire” was literally true. This
trade had an early start: the East India
Company was chartered in 1600.
What fueled British
expansion, as well as the colonial ambitions of other nations? I think to understand this expansion, and
Alexander’s ideas about “conscious control” and the power of rational thought,
one has to go back to the Enlightenment, also called The Age of Reason. This movement, which occurred basically
between 1688 and 1789 in France, Germany and England, was initially response to
new political, social and cultural ideas from different civilizations around the globe. As David Graeber and David Wengrow elaborate in their book The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity, a significan
t impact on Enlightenment thinkers was the critique of European societies made by Indigenous Americans who believed that their values of freedom and personal liberty, mutual aid, religion and flexibity in political systems was clearly superior to anything Europe had to offer.
Enlightenment thinkers believed in improving society through reasoned debate and rational thought. Ideas of the
Enlightenment inspired leaders of the American Revolution and French
Revolution.
A century earlier, in the
mid-1500s, the Scientific Revolution was beginning. In part This was a response to authority,
particularly the authority of the Church, which explained natural phenomena
using the Bible. While Roger Bacon, who
died at the end of the 13th century, was the first person to write
that one could use empiricism—the actual observation of the natural world—to
reveal natural laws, the beginning of the Scientific Revolution is usually
attributed to the work of scientists (at the time called natural philosophers)
such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler.
Clearly the idea of using empiricism fit easily into Enlightenment
ideals.
The third important
influence that helped shape the modern world was the Industrial Revolution,
which began in the mid-18th century.
Britain was the first country to adopt its principles, and invented much
of its machinery. By this time, Britain
also had the sea power and control of colonies and territories from which it
could extract raw materials.
Whether he was aware of it
or not, Alexander was clearly immersed in the sea of these ideas. We can clearly see the Enlightenment
influence when he writes about reason, conscious control, and a plane of
conscious control that one can reach by using reason. Instinct, subconscious thought and, one
assumes, emotion, were to be dominated.
We must also remember that
although scientists believed that they could observe nature objectively, and
reveal natural laws from their observations, they were doing those observations
using their own unconscious biases, including the 2,000 year old tradition of the objectivist paradigm. As
an example, many scientists tried to categorize the “races of man” from the
primitive to the most advanced, believing that these divisions were real
categories that existed in the world and that evolution created these “natural”
divisions. Eugenics was another idea
that drew support from the ostensibly scientific discoveries about
humanity. The term eugenics was
originally coined by Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, who, after reading On the Origin of Species, believed it
supported the idea that the “fittest” survive and the “weakest” naturally die
out. Unfortunately, he (and others) saw
many “weak” members in society, and supporters of eugenics believed humanity
could best be improved by “selective parenthood,” where only the fittest and
best exemplars would have children, thus creating a genetically superior group
of people.
The practice of eugenics
led to many abuses, especially in the United States, which had a sustained
program of sterilizing the “unfit,” a category that included people with
disabilities, people deemed mentally ill and, generally, people who were poor
and not white. Hitler admired the
eugenics movement, and used the practices developed in the United States as a
template for his Final Solution.
When you read Alexander’s
books, keep this historical context in mind.
We all live in a society and culture and are influenced by its mores,
whether we believe we are or not. Both
as a person, and a teacher of the Alexander Technique, we must continuously and
honestly examine what beliefs and biases underlie our actions, including the
biases in how we were trained.
Reading
Alexander
Many people, Alexander
Technique teachers included, believe that while Alexander was a genius, he was
also a rather poor writer. It could not have helped his reputation when in the
Introduction to the only excerpts of his writings available at the time in the
United States, Ed Maisel pronounces that Alexander's books are "devoid of
grace, style or shape," and are "the earnest patching together of
observation and experience by a unique authority who had never received any
real instruction in the mechanics of writing." (p. xvi.)
I have often read, and heard commented, similar opinions, and I think they stem
largely from frustration at not being able to immediately or easily understand
what Alexander wrote, and perhaps also a repugnance at some of his obviously
racist statements.
We do, however, know that Alexander’s
life encompassed the last 30 years or so of the 19th century, and
the first half of the 20th (1869—1955). We also know that two of his favorite authors
were Shakespeare and Herbert Spencer.
One can assume he was also well-read in the King James Version of the
Bible. These texts are not “easy”
reads. One has to pay attention to fully
understand them.
Alexander writes in a
similar style. In addition, he was
trying to describe new ideas about psycho-physical unity, about how we
function, how we interfere with that functioning, and what the results of that
interference are. He also wanted to
place his ideas into the philosophical context of evolution, both how we evolved
to our current state, how we could evolve to a plane of conscious control, and
why that is important. The full title of Man’s Supreme Inheritance: Conscious Guidance and Control in Relation to
Human Evolution in Civilization, makes this idea abundantly clear.
So, with that background,
what can we do to help us understand his writings?
Reading
Alexander: Some Tips
To read Alexander's long
sentences with understanding, you have to be willing to go a bit slowly, figure
out the subject and verb, see the different clauses and figure out their
subjects and verbs, and hold them all in relation to one another until you get
to the end of the sentence.
Here is an example, the
first sentence from the second chapter of The
Use of the Self, "Use and Functioning in Relation to Reaction:"
"The reader who
reviews the experiences that I have tried to set down in the previous chapter
will notice that at a certain point in my investigation I came to realize that
my reaction to a particular stimulus was constantly the opposite of that which
I desired, and that in my search for the cause of this, I discovered that my
sensory appreciation (feeling) of the use of my mechanism was so untrustworthy
that it led me to react by means of a use of myself which felt right, but was,
in fact, too often wrong for my purpose" (p. 49).
Here it is, deconstructed
(beginning on the next page). Read the
bold parts first, then go back and read it all together, then reread the whole
paragraph as quoted above.
The reader who reviews the
experiences
that I
have tried to set down in the previous chapter
will
notice that
at a certain point in my investigation
I came to realize that
my reaction
to a
particular stimulus
was constantly the
opposite of that which I desired
and that
in my search for the
cause of this,
I discovered that my sensory appreciation (feeling)
of the use of my mechanisms
was so untrustworthy that it led me to
react by means of a use
of
myself which felt right,
but was,
in fact, too often
wrong for my purpose.
What did you notice, as
you did this experiment of reading the quote three times? What did you notice about how I took it
apart? Basically, we are looking for
subjects (who did what); verbs (what they did); and results of those
actions. Words like “that,” “but,” and
“and” mark new clauses (that) or a new idea (and) or different idea (but).
It also helps to read
aloud to another person. If we read something aloud so that it makes sense to
another person, we will go more slowly, and do some of the same analysis while
reading so that the inflections we use make the material understandable. And while you are reading, notice the words
he uses. Words have meaning; relax your
neck is an imperative, an order to do something, and very different from “let
your neck relax.” What we say reveals
how we understand teaching; see if you can understand what Alexander believes
that one must do to teach.
As you read his books, notice when he uses italics. Anything in italics is important! (We will see in The Use of the Self, Chapter 1, that he
also uses italics to step back from the chronological narrative).
One last tip: Reading the chapters in Freedom to Change by Frank Pierce Jones where he writes about each
of these books will be very helpful for historical context, and some background
about what Alexander and his brother, A.R. Alexander, were doing at the time.
How
to Use This Book (and Have Fun Reading F.M. Alexander)
There are two types of questions in this book. The first type are what I call
Study Questions. They were originally written for the students in classes at
The Performance School, who wanted some guide to make their way through
Alexander's writings. Questions that pointed to the important ideas in each
section seemed to be the best way to give them a structure within which to
study. With the Study Questions, I have tried to figure out what Alexander
thought were the important points, analyzing the structure and language he used
to do so, always keeping in mind the whole of the book, chapter, paragraph and
sentence from which the question came. I
also include questions that that I hope will encourage students to go beyond
the simple: “What did Alexander say
about this?” to include questions about why he may have thought or believed
what he seemed to be saying in a particular paragraph; how what he writes
reveals his beliefs about the world in general and how it is arranged; and what
his teaching model is.
The second type of question is what I have called Thought Questions. Not every chapter has these questions. They are questions that tend to refer to a
section or possibly a chapter as a whole, and will often refer to ideas that were
current when Alexander was writing and research that has been done in fields such
as cognitive science, linguistics, biology and psychology since Alexander
wrote. They are intended to stimulate
people's thinking on various topics, to question the ideas that Alexander
offers.
I offer these questions
because I believe that we need to discuss, ponder and work with Alexander's
ideas to better know and understand what he believed. Whether we agree with him or not,
understanding what he believed will make it much easier to understand what we
believe about the Technique and how to teach it.
The editions I used for the Study Guide are: Man’s Supreme Inheritance, Constructive Conscious Control of the
Individual and Universal Constant in
Living, Mouritz editions; The Use of
the Self, Orion or Gollancz. (The page numbers are conveniently the same).
Finally, while my
original reason for writing these questions was to help my own students, I
found that they helped me as well in understanding Alexander and his ideas. I
hope they will also encourage you in your study of the principles that
Alexander himself spent his lifetime teaching and studying.
Acknowledgements
In some ways the genesis of this book extends to my first contact with the Alexander
Technique when I took a workshop offered by Marjorie Barstow at Southern
Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. That experience made the decision to go
to Lincoln, Nebraska the following summer and study with Marj very easy.
It was Marj's teaching and emphasis on thinking, however, which helped me see
that this work is not "body work," and that understanding the
principles underlying the work was most important. There is no better way to do
that, I believe, than by reading and studying the writings F.M. Alexander,
preferably with other people, so that you can have the benefit of their work
and ideas, and by making experiments to put those principles into practice.
Alexander's ideas were debated and discussed at length during the summer
workshops in Lincoln, and because a number of us returned each year, we were
able to have the benefit not only of studying these ideas with new people, but
seeing how our understanding of them had increased and changed over time. I am
greatly indebted to all my friends for this opportunity. I am also indebted to my colleagues at The
Performance School in Seattle. Their continuing study and questioning always
encourages me to persevere.
Lastly, many, many thanks to David Mills, for whom discussion is always an
adventure.
Works Cited
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Francis Galton".
Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 Feb. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Galton.
Spencer, J. Brookes ,
Osler, Margaret J. and Brush, Stephen G.. "Scientific Revolution." Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 Nov. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/science/Scientific-Revolution
Darwin, Charles. On the
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. 1859
Graeber, David and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity
Maisel, Ed (ed). The
Resurrection of the Body. Delta, 1969.
Manjeshwar, Shanjana. America’s
Forgotten History of Forced Sterilization – Berkeley Political Review 4 November 2020.
Snyder, Laura J. The
Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four
Remarkable Friends Who Transformed Science and Changed the World. Crown
Publishing, 2011.
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