Casebow

July 2011

Welcome to Wikipedia. We welcome and appreciate your contributions, including your edits to Psychotherapy, but we cannot accept original research. Original research also encompasses combining published sources in a way to imply something that none of them explicitly say. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. Thank you. Biker Biker (talk) 07:24, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The relevant citation in terms of F.M. Alexander statement is Alexander,F.M. (1996) Man's Supreme Inheritance, Conscious Guidance and Control in Relation to Civilization London: Mouritz p145 There Alexander in reference to his own work writes 'that this practical and now means visionary or untried psycho-therapy will in time supersede the tentative and restricted methods of somato-therapy,...'. This sums up Alexander's wider distinction of his work from somato-therapy and his wider claim and argument for the necessity of the development of Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, which is the aim and end of applying the Alexander Technique. Detailed arguments for this can be found in all of his four books but in particular his second book: F.M. Alexander (1997) Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, London: STAT Books. If you read the book you will find in detail Alexander's argument that we are psycho-physical beings and that because of changes in the way human beings now live, we are in need of re-education to raise our standards of functioning. John Dewey pxxx of Man's Supreme Inheritance writes of Alexander's method as 'a completed 'psycho-analysis'. Man's Supreme Inheritance was Alexander's first book and the first edition was published in 1910,the Dewey comment was in a letter he published in 1918 and that was included in later editions. Both demonstrate how Alexander originally placed and saw his work as a psycho-therapy, which it is if you understand the etymology of psyche in terms of breath, and his emphasis on the need for re-education of breathing. The edit though did not seek to add Alexander Technique to the list of psychotherapies only to remove it from the list of bodywork which it definitely is not. As far as I know, there is not textual evidence for classifying Alexander Technique as a bodywork either from within Alexander's writings or from the teacher's who he trained to succeed him. I would be interested if you could cite support for the claim that it is bodywork, that is consistent with what Alexander actually wrote and taught. To maintain that Alexander Technique is bodywork is simply factually wrong. Casebow (talk) 08:30, 28 July 2011 (UTC)