Homework answers / question archive / THDN – 114 Awareness Through Movement Final Paper Due on Tuesday, November 24th 1000 words minimum (2-3 pages) This paper is a reflection of your work, experience and process in this class throughout the semester

THDN – 114 Awareness Through Movement Final Paper Due on Tuesday, November 24th 1000 words minimum (2-3 pages) This paper is a reflection of your work, experience and process in this class throughout the semester

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THDN – 114 Awareness Through Movement Final Paper Due on Tuesday, November 24th 1000 words minimum (2-3 pages) This paper is a reflection of your work, experience and process in this class throughout the semester. This is personal writing, not an academic paper. Please be direct. I am interested in your honest answers, not in what you think I might want to hear! The grade will reflect how thoughtful and thorough the paper is, not whether or not you liked the class! Here is a list of questions as a guideline. Take them into account but by no means limit yourself to answering them. If you think back to the beginning of the semester and the first paper you wrote, has anything changed for you in regard to your body and your awareness? • How would you describe your experience in the class? • What are elements of the class you found useful? • What are elements you did not find useful? • Imagine you find yourself in a situation where you are very tense, nervous, anxious, etc. Are there elements from this class that you could use to help you? If so, what are they? What would you do? • What surprised you in the class? What are the readings that resonated with you and why? • What are the videos that somehow resonated with you and why? • If you were to continue the work what are the things that you would try to get out of it. • Please add anything else you want to say about your experience with this work EMBODIED WISDOM: The Collected Articles of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais Forward by David Zemach-Bersin, Eductional Director, The Feldenkrais Institute (Published by North Atlantic Press and Distributed by Random House, Due Fall 2010) I believe that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning. A brain without a body could not think … the muscles themselves are part and parcel of our higher functions. Moshe Feldenkrais Movement is life. Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself. Moshe Feldenkrais M innovative exercises and clinical applications that effectively demonstrated that—even when damaged—the brain has the ability to quickly change, and to learn new skills and recover lost functions. Today, a new paradigm is taking hold in neuroscience, psychology, and rehabilitation: the concept of brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity, which posits that throughout our entire life span, our brain has the capacity to modify its organization and responses through experience and learning. If Feldenkrais were alive, he would find today’s research supporting neuroplasticity a sweet validation. oshe Feldenkrais was one of the twentieth century’s most original and integrative thinkers. Along with such seminal figures as Ida Rolf, Heinrich Jacoby, F. M. Alexander, and Elsa Gindler, Feldenkrais is considered one of the founders of the field that is today called somatics. The pieces included in Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais were originally published in independent journals between 1964 and 1998. A testament to the prescience of Feldenkrais’s ideas is the fact that many of the concepts presented in this volume are as important, generative, and radical today as they were when they were first articulated. In these remarkable articles and interviews, Feldenkrais provides us with some of the most cogent and sophisticated arguments ever made for the biological and functional unity of the mind and body. In April 1973, when I first observed Dr. Feldenkrais working, it was clear that he believed in each person’s capacity to learn and change. Feldenkrais was teaching a month-long seminar in Berkeley, where I was a pre-med student at the University of California. After my regular courses, I would sneak into the classroom where he was teaching. What I saw there was extraordinary. During most of the twentieth century, the dominant medical and academic model of the brain was that our habits are fixed or hard-wired, that each area of the brain has specialized, pre-determined functions, and that every day of our adulthood, our brain loses both neurons and the ability to learn new skills. In books, articles, and lectures from 1949 to 1981, Moshe Feldenkrais strongly challenged this point of view, not simply the theory behind it, but in practice, by developing Edward would lie on a firm, padded table while Feldenkrais “worked” with him, gently moving him in mysterious ways, but clearly with great care, dexterity, intelligence, and deliberateness. Feldenkrais explained that he was using gentle, functionally oriented movement to help Edward’s nervous system learn to change the messages it was sending to his musculature. After a few weeks, Edward’s improvement was nothing short of miraculous. His speech became easy to understand, Each day, as part of his seminar, Feldenkrais would work for one hour with a middle-aged man named Edward, who had severe spastic cerebral palsy. On my first day observing, Edward’s speech was nearly impossible to understand, his arms were hyper-flexed and pulled up near his chest, his hands twisted inward, and he moved slowly with a halting, effortful gait. Since early childhood, Edward had received the best physical therapy and medical attention possible. Foreword to ‘Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Articles of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’ his arms rested by his sides, and his walking was much more comfortable and efficient. In short, his entire way of organizing himself had changed. I could not understand how this “healing” had occurred, yet I was incredibly excited and moved by what I had seen. By the end of the year, I would graduate from Berkeley, travel to Tel Aviv, Israel, and knock on Dr. Feldenkrais’s door, eager to understand how he had created the “transformation” that I had witnessed in Berkeley. The revolutionary concepts that served as the theoretical framework for Feldenkrais’s work with Edward are explored in Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais. These unique writings have relevance in domains as diverse as neuroscience and theater, psychology and dance, physical therapy and music, education and rehabilitation, and infant development and athletic performance. This volume presents Feldenkrais’s most concise and cohesive statements on the theory behind his work, written in a warm and conversational tone. In addition, you will find interviews in which Feldenkrais discusses the early history of judo in Europe, and the application of his ideas to acting, and a transcript of an illuminating conversation between Feldenkrais and noted Israeli scientist Aharon Katzir. Originally a scientist working at the cutting edge of physics, Feldenkrais was a well-read and wide-ranging thinker. In these articles and interviews he draws from insights in physics, biology, embryology, psychology, semantics, and neurology, and makes speculative leaps about the brain and learning that have been verified by contemporary neuroscience. You will find that Feldenkrais almost always lets you in on his thinking process, allowing you to share in his logic, which often leads to surprising conclusions. At times he takes a highly abstract or theoretical idea and turns it like a Rubik’s Cube in order to help us to see it from every possible angle. And, he nearly always shows us the everyday, concrete implications of the concept. Some might call his writing style Socratic or even Talmudic, and these may both be true, but it also represents Feldenkrais’s background as a rigorous scientist. This is especially in evidence when he asks us to join him in thinking with a hyper clarity as he deconstructs such common, everyday words or concepts as “consciousness” or “thinking” or “self-image” or “energy” or “fulfillment.” In these moments, we are treated to a classically educated, keen analytic mind, asking that we define our terms precisely, and demonstrating how this attention to specificity often leads us down paths we would not have otherwise explored. Common to every article and interview in this unique collection is Feldenkrais’s optimism about the capacity of each one of us—no matter our circumstances or limitations—to grow, change, improve, and become a more self-determined human being. This hopeful outlook is not so much strategic, as it is founded upon the strong evidence that of our brain’s one hundred billion neurons, we use only a very small percentage, leaving the rest available for learning new ways of moving, feeling, thinking, and acting. So, how did Feldenkrais, someone who had been a physicist for more than twenty years, come to develop the skills necessary to help Edward learn to move, speak, and function more easily? Great insights often emerge out of great struggle, and as it happened, Feldenkrais personally suffered from a debilitating problem for which medicine offered no solution. In his search for an answer to his own difficulties, Feldenkrais developed some of his most important ideas. M oshe Pinchas Feldenkrais, DSc, was born in 1904, in a small town in a part of Russia that is today the republic of Ukraine. He had been given the middle name Pinchas in honor of his great-great-great-grandfather, Pinchas of Korets, a famous rabbi and one of the leading disciples of Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the founder of Hassidism, commonly known as the Baal Shem Tov. When he was thirteen years old, fleeing anti-Semitism and pogroms, Feldenkrais traveled from Russia, by foot, to the British Mandate of Palestine. There he worked, studied, and developed an interest in self-defense techniques. In 1930, he moved to Paris to study engineering and physics at the Sorbonne. In addition to his academic work, Feldenkrais studied Japanese martial arts and was one of the first people from the West to receive a black belt in judo. His appreciation of judo was illuminated by his understanding of the physics of movement—how the laws of motion and gravity impact the mechanics of movement. In 1933, Feldenkrais began working on his doctoral degree and was part of a team of scientists at the Curie Institute conducting research and publishing early papers on nuclear fission with Nobel Prize laureate physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie. With the German invasion of Paris in 1940, Feldenkrais escaped to England, where he spent the war conducting military research for the British government. During Foreword to ‘Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Articles of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’ this time, due to knee injuries suffered over the years, Feldenkrais found himself unable to walk without great pain and difficulty. Modern arthroscopic surgery techniques had yet to be developed, and the top English surgeons whom Feldenkrais consulted offered him little hope of improvement through medical intervention. Feldenkrais decided to try to solve his problem by himself. With the rigor of a scientist, Feldenkrais began a study of functional anatomy, applied the laws of physics and motion to everyday human movement, and explored the process by which we originally acquire our most basic motor functions. He eventually came to a remarkable practical understanding: that learning is the primary ingredient in our formation. He thought that if he could understand how learning actually takes place, then he might be able to change old habit patterns and restore lost functions, such as his own ability to walk. This quest would change the direction of his professional life. Unlike most other mammals, we are born with a brain that is essentially tabula rasa (a clean slate); that is, apart from our most basic physiological functions and drives, we are not “wired-in” at birth. For nearly everything that we are eventually able to do as adults, we need a period of apprenticeship or learning. For example, most infants need ten to fourteen months before they can walk, and before walking is possible they must first learn to roll over, sit up, crawl, stand, and so on. From Feldenkrais’s point of view, every child has to independently, organically learn how to solve concrete physical problems such as gravity, stability and instability, momentum, equilibrium, and so forth. The functions that we identify as being uniquely “human” would not emerge if we were raised in a completely isolated environment. Unlike most other species, humans need more than simply air and sustenance. We require a human social world, one in which, over time, intention and successful action develop in correspondence to fulfilling meaningful goals in a context with others. Feldenkrais developed a point of view that gives primacy to the nervous system and movement. He makes the extremely bold proposal that it is through the medium of movement that the nervous system makes the distinctions that lead to preferences or choices for particular actions or behavioral patterns. The advantage of a largely unwired-in nervous system to a human being is that it enables tremendous flexibility in relation to behavioral options. In other words, we can learn to adapt to an unlimited number of cultural environments, languages, climates, and so on. By the same token, if we are not hard-wired for ideal movement or posture or behaviors, then we are vulnerable to making choices that may not be the best for us. Choices we make as children may not serve our long-term interests, resulting in neuromuscular ailments such as back and neck pain, neurotic inclinations, depression, and poor self-image. Feldenkrais began to understand that there is an inseparable relationship between our social-psychological development and our motor development. As children, our psychic-emotional patterns or behaviors and our growing movement repertoire are not only being learned concurrently, but they are realized in the moment, as an integrated whole, through the musculature. These insights are explored in Feldenkrais’s first two books, Body and Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation, and Learning and The Potent Self. In a perfectly matured body which has grown without great emotional disturbances, movements tend gradually to conform to the mechanical requirements of the surrounding world. The nervous system has evolved under the influence of these laws and is fitted to them. However, in our society we do, by the promise of great reward or intense punishment, so distort the even development of the system, that many acts become excluded or restricted. Moshe Feldenkrais, Body and Mature Behavior Believing that the adult brain has an abundance of potential for learning, Feldenkrais asked, what are the conditions in which a nervous system—or, rather, a person—can learn most easily, most successfully? In a bold original synthesis, Feldenkrais found the answer to this question in a little-known nineteenth-century discovery in psychophysics (the precursor to modern-day experimental psychology) known as the Weber-Fechner law, or The Law of Just Noticeable Difference. In general terms, the Weber-Fechner law states that there is a constant ratio between the magnitude of a stimulus (for example, sound, light, muscular work, and so on) and the change in that stimulus that is needed for a person to notice a difference. In practical terms, what Foreword to ‘Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Articles of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’ this means is that the greater the magnitude or intensity of a stimulus, the greater is the change needed in order for us to notice a difference; or conversely, as the intensity of the stimulus decreases, the order of change needed to notice a difference becomes smaller and smaller. Feldenkrais’s explanation of the Weber-Fechner law is clear and concrete: All of our senses are so built that we can distinguish minute differences when our senses are only slightly stimulated. If I were to carry a heavy load on my back, I could not tell if a box of matches were added to the load, nor would I become aware of it being removed. What is, in fact, the weight that must be added or removed to make one aware that some change of effort has occurred? For muscular effort or our kinesthetic sense, that weight is about one-fortieth of the basic effort for very good nervous systems. On carrying four hundred pounds, we can tell at once when ten pounds are added or removed from the load. On carrying forty pounds, we can tell a change of one pound. And everybody can tell with closed eyes when a fly alights on a thin match-like piece of wood or straw, or when it takes to the air again. In short, the smaller the exertion, the finer the increment or decrement that we can distinguish and … The lighter the effort we make, the faster is our learning of any skill.… Moshe Feldenkrais, Learning to Learn, 1979 Feldenkrais understood that by reducing muscular effort, kinesthetic-sensory acuity is improved and it becomes possible for a person to make fine distinctions about what they are doing and to become aware of unconscious or unknown aspects of their physical organization, movement, and action. Feldenkrais realized that his inability to walk was not simply a matter of the poor structural integrity of his knees, but also of the “way” that he walked. In other words, his learned habits of movement were contributing to his problems. This is what Feldenkrais would come to call the general problem of “faulty learning.” He realized that if he could develop a practical means of applying the Weber-Fechner law with functional movement, he would have the means for optimizing the conditions for learning, improvement, and rehabilitation. A fundamental change in the motor pattern will thereby leave thought and also feeling without anchorage in the pattern of their established routines. Habit has lost its chief support, that of the muscles, and has become more amenable to change. Moshe Feldenkrais, Awareness Through Movement Feldenkrais continued to refine his discoveries, and eventually restored his ability to walk. In the process, he developed two entirely original and distinct modalities for realizing his ideas: a one-on-one individual method eventually named Functional Integration, and a group method now known as Awareness Through Movement. In Awareness Through Movement, his discoveries were codified as highly structured self-explorations or guided learning experiments. In both modalities, fundamental or synergistic neuromuscular relationships are utilized to facilitate healthier, more efficient patterns of movement, and posture. Feldenkrais returned to Israel in 1949, to conduct physics research at the Weizmann Institute and assume the post of director of the Electronics Department of the Israel Defense Forces. At the same time he continued to teach his group classes and develop the practical methods to apply his findings on the brain-body relationship. Chaim Weizmann, a fellow scientist and the first president of Israel, told Feldenkrais, “There are many others in physics who understand what you understand, but there is no one else who has the insights about the body that you do.” The effectiveness of Feldenkrais’s work came to be so well known that he finally left the world of physics research in the mid-1950s and started a clinic to help people with a wide range of difficulties, and performing artists seeking to improve their abilities. Feldenkrais often said that Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration are two sides of one coin, meaning that both applications are derived from the same over-arching theory. He was constantly developing and testing both forms. Always foreground was his thesis that the nexus of learning, awareness, and movement provides the most direct means for improving a person’s well-being. Through his daily clinical work over the next thirty years, Feldenkrais developed effective, ingenious, and innovative strategies for improving or restoring nearly every human function. He worked with internationally noted actors, musicians, and dancers, such as theater directors Peter Brook and Paul LeCoq, and musicians Yehudi Menuhin, Narciso Yepes, and Igor Markevitch, and spent so much time with his clinical practice and teaching that he published only one extensive clinical study, The Case of Nora. Fortunately we have nearly two hundred hours of his Functional Integration work on film, and in the more than one thousand experiential Foreword to ‘Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Articles of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’ Awareness Through Movement lessons that he created, we have a written record of Feldenkrais’s thinking as it developed. Feldenkrais’s first training of practitioners of his work took place in Tel Aviv and was completed in 1971 with thirteen graduates. During the early 1970s, Feldenkrais began to teach abroad in both Europe and the United States, and well-known intellectuals and performing artists took an interest in his ideas, including: political figures David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan, anthropologist Margaret Mead, neuroscientists Paul Bach-yRita and Karl Pribram, physiologist Elmer Green, and psychologist William Schutz. With growing international attention, Feldenkrais began his second training of practitioners in 1975 in San Francisco with a group of sixty students. In 1980 he began his third training program in Amherst, Massachusetts, with more than 230 students from fifteen different countries. Since then, his work has continued to grow and now there are nearly ten thousand Feldenkrais practitioners in more than forty different countries. theories and methods. I hope that the publication of this important and long overdue book will help bring his uniquely original and innovative ideas the recognition and the critical analysis they so deserve, and that readers will appreciate this small volume, which is so large in outlook and vision. David Zemach-Bersin The Feldenkrais Institute of New York www.FeldenkraisInstitute.com 212-727-1014 and Doylestown, PA March 2010 When I knocked, unannounced, on Feldenkrais’s door in early 1974, he generously allowed me to sit in his clinic for many months, watching him work with his students. He never used the word “patient,” as he thought that it put the accent on a person’s pathology and he wanted the emphasis to be on their potential to learn. What I saw during those months was no less amazing than what I had observed in Berkeley the year before: a woman with multiple sclerosis being able to abandon her cane, a severely spinal cord injured American able to give up his wheelchair for crutches, a sevenyear-old Israeli boy who had never been able to open his left eye learning to open and close both eyes at the same time, a German cellist who had suffered a stroke learning to use his bowing arm once again, and a young Austrian girl with cerebral palsy learning to walk. I was privileged to study with Feldenkrais until his death in Tel Aviv in 1984, and find myself, still today, fascinated and engaged by his ideas. The legacy of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais has the potential to help millions of people who suffer from aches, pains, movement difficulties, and debilitating neurological problems, as well as performing artists and athletes hoping to improve their abilities. In this foreword, I have touched upon only a few of the implications and applications of Feldenkrais’s work. I believe that areas such as physical medicine, physical therapy, education, and psychology have much to learn from Feldenkrais’s Foreword to ‘Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Articles of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais’ AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT Health Exercises for Personal Growth MOSHE FELDENKRAIS Penguin Books 1 A Concise Biography of Moshe Feldenkrais By Mark Reese Moshe Pinhas Feldenkrais was born on May 6, 1904, in Slavuta, in the present-day Ukrainian Republic. When he was a small boy his family moved to the nearby town of Korets. By 1912 his family moved to Baranovich in what is, today, Belarus. While Baranovich endured many World War I battles, Feldenkrais received his Bar Mitzvah, completed two years of high school, and received an education in the Hebrew language and Zionist philosophy. In 1918 Feldenkrais left by himself on a six-month journey to Palestine. After arriving in 1919, Feldenkrais worked as a laborer until 1923 when he returned to high school to earn a diploma. While attending school he made a living by tutoring. After graduating in 1925, he worked for the British survey office as a cartographer. Feldenkrais was involved in Jewish self-defense groups, and after learning Jujitsu he devised his own self-defense techniques. He hurt his left knee in a soccer match in 1929. While convalescing he wrote Autosuggestion (1930), a translation from English to Hebrew of Charles Brooks' work on E?mile Coue?'s system of autosuggestion, together with two chapters that he wrote himself. He next published Jujitsu (1931), a book on self-defense. In 1930 Feldenkrais went to Paris and enrolled in an engineering college, the E?cole des Travaux publics de Paris. He graduated in 1933 with specialties in mechanical and electrical engineering. In 1933 after meeting Jigaro Kano, Judo's founder, Feldenkrais began teaching Jujitsu again, and started his training in Judo. In 1933 he began working as a research assistant under Fre?de?ric Joliot-Curie at the Radium Institute, while studying for his Inge?nieur-Docteur degree at the Sorbonne. From 1935-1937 he worked at the Arcueil-Cachan laboratories building a Van de Graaf generator, which was used for atomic fission experiments. In 1935 he published a revised, French edition of his Hebrew jujitsu book called, La de?fense du faible contre l'agresseur, and in 1938 published ABC du Judo. He received his Judo black belt in 1936, and 2nd degree rank in 1938. Feldenkrais married Yona Rubenstein in 1938. From 1939-1940 he worked under Paul Langevin doing research on magnetics and ultra-sound. Feldenkrais escaped to England in 1940, just as the Germans arrived in Paris. As a scientific officer in the British Admiralty, he conducted anti-submarine research in Scotland from 1940-1945. While there he taught Judo and self-defense classes. In 1942 he published a self- defense manual, Practical Unarmed Combat, and Judo. Feldenkrais began working with himself to deal with knee troubles that had recurred during his escape from France, and while walking on submarine decks. Feldenkrais gave a series of lectures about his new ideas, began to teach experimental classes, and work privately with some colleagues. In 1946 Feldenkrais left the Admiralty, moved to London, and worked as an inventor and consultant in private industry. He took Judo classes at the London Budokwai, sat on the international Judo committee, and scientifically analyzed Judo principles. He published 2 his first book on his Method, Body and Mature Behavior in 1949, and his last book on Judo, Higher Judo, in 1952. During his London period he studied the work of George Gurdjieff, F. M. Alexander, and William Bates, and went to Switzerland to study with Heinrich Jacoby. Feldenkrais returned to Israel to direct the Israeli Army Department of Electronics, 1951 1953. Around 1954 he moved permanently to Tel Aviv and, for the first time, made his living solely by teaching his Method. He worked sporadically on the manuscript of The Potent Self, which he had begun in London. Around 1955 he permanently located his Awareness through Movement classes to a studio on Alexander Yanai Street in Tel Aviv. He gave Functional Integration lessons in the apartment where his mother and brother lived. In early 1957 Feldenkrais began giving lessons to Israeli Prime Minister, David ben Gurion. In the late 1950's Feldenkrais presented his work in Europe and the United States. In the mid 1960s he published "Mind and Body" and "Bodily Expression." In 1967, he published Improving the Ability to Perform, titled Awareness through Movement in its 1972 English language edition. In 1968, near his family's apartment, he made a studio at 49 Nachmani Street as the permanent site for his Functional Integration practice, and location for his first teacher- training program, 1969-1971, given to 12 students. After giving month-long courses internationally, he taught a 65-student, teacher-training program in San Francisco over four summers, 1975-1978. He published The Case of Nora in 1977, and The Elusive Obvious in 1981. He began the 235-student Amherst training in 1980, but was only able to teach the first two summers of the four-year program. After becoming ill in the fall 1981, he stopped teaching publicly. He died on July 1, 1984. * I have done my best to verify dates, names, and places, though I cannot guarantee their accuracy, due to limitations of information available and discrepancies between sources. 3 PREFACE We act in accordance with our self-image. This self-image—which, in turn, governs our every act—is conditioned in varying degree by three factors: heritage, education, and self-education. The part that is inherited is the most immutable. The biological endowment of the individual—the form and capacity of his nervous system, his bone structure, muscles, tissue, glands, skin, senses—are all determined by his physical heritage long before he has any established identity. His self-image develops from his actions and reactions in the normal course of experience. Education determines one's language and establishes a pattern of concepts and reactions common to a specific society. These concepts and reactions will vary according to the environment into which a person is born; they are not characteristic of mankind as a species, but only of certain groups or individuals. Education largely determines the direction of our self-education, which is the most active element in our development and in more frequent use socially than elements of biological origin. Our self- education influences the manner in which external education is acquired, as well as the selection of the material to be learned and the rejection of that which we cannot assimilate. Education and self-education occur intermittently. In the first weeks of an infant's life, education is chiefly a matter of absorbing the environment, and self-education is almost nonexistent; it consists only of refusal of, or resistance to, any- thing that is organically alien and unacceptable to the infant's inherited characteristics. Self-education progresses as the infant organism grows and becomes more stable. The child gradually develops individual characteristics; he begins to choose among objects and actions in accordance with his own nature. He no longer accepts everything that training tries to impose on him. Imposed education and individual propensities together set the trend for all our habitual behavior and actions. Of the three active factors in the establishment of our self-image, self-education alone is to some extent in our own hands. Our physical inheritance comes to us unsolicited, education is forced upon us, and even self-education is not entirely volitional in the early years; it is decided by the relative strength of inherited personality, individual characteristics, the effective working of the nervous system, and by the severity and persistence of educational influences. Heritage makes each 4 one of us a unique individual in physical structure, appearance, and actions. Education makes each of us a member of some definite human society and seeks to make us as like every other member of that society as possible. Society dictates our mode of dress, and thereby makes our appearance similar to that of others. By giving us a language, it makes us express ourselves in the same way as others. It instills a pattern of behavior and values in us and sees to it that our self-education shall also operate so as to make us wish to become like everyone else. As a result, even self-education, which is the active force that makes for individuality and extends inherited difference into the realm of action, tends to a large extent to bring our behavior into line with that of others. The essential flaw in education as we know it today is that it is based on ancient and often primitive practices whose equalizing pur- pose was neither conscious nor clear. This flaw has its advantage since, having no defined purpose other than to mold individuals who will not be social misfits, education does not always succeed entirely in suppressing selfeducation. Nonetheless, even in the advanced countries, in which educational methods are constantly improving, there is increasing similarity of opinions, appearance, and ambitions. The development of mass communication and political aspirations to equality also contribute significantly to the present heightened blurring of identities. Modern knowledge and techniques in the fields of education and psychology have already enabled Professor B. F. Skinner, the Harvard psychologist, to demonstrate methods for the production of individuals who are "satisfied, capable, educated, happy, and creative." This is also, in effect, the aim of education, even though it is not expressly so stated. Skinner is certainly right about the effectiveness of these methods, and there is little doubt that in time we shall be able to develop units in the form of man that are educated, organized, satisfied, and happy; if we use all our knowledge in the field of biological inheritance, we may even succeed in producing several different types of such units to satisfy all the needs of society. This utopia, which has a feasible chance of happening in our lifetime, is the logical outcome of the present situation. In order to bring it about we need only produce biological uniformity and employ suitable educa- tional measures to prevent selfeducation. Many people feel that the community is more important than the individuals of which it is composed. A trend toward the improvement of the community is found in almost all advanced countries, the difference being only in the methods chosen to realize this goal. There seems to be general agreement that the most important thing is to improve the social processes of employment, production, and provision of equal op- portunities for all. In every society care is taken that the education of the younger generation should result in qualities making for as uniform a community as possible that will then function without any great disturbance. 5 It may be that these tendencies of society agree with the evolutionary trend of the human species; if so, everyone should certainly direct his efforts toward the achievement of this aim. If, however, we for a moment disregard the concept of society and turn to man himself, we see that society is not merely the sum total of the people who constitute it; from the individual's point of view it has a different meaning. It has import for him, first of all, as the field in which he must advance in order to be accepted as a valuable member, his value in his own eyes being influenced by his position in society. It is also important to him as a field in which he may exercise his individual qualities, develop and give expression to particular personal inclinations that are organic to his personality. Organic traits derive from his biological inheritance, and their expression is essential for the maximal functioning of the organism. As the trend to uniformity within our society creates innumerable conflicts with individual traits, adjustments to society can be solved either by the suppression of the individual's organic needs, or by the individual's identification with the society's needs (in a manner that does not appear to him to be imposed), which may go so far as to make the individual feel that he is debased whenever he fails to behave in accordance with society's values. The education provided by society operates in two directions at once. It suppresses every non-conformist tendency through penalties of withdrawal of support and simultaneously imbues the individual with values that force him to overcome and discard spontaneous desires. These conditions cause the majority of adults today to live behind a mask, a mask of personality that the individual tries to present to others and to himself. Every aspiration and spontaneous desire is subjected to stringent internal criticism lest they reveal the individual's organic nature. Such aspirations and desires arouse anxiety and remorse and the individual seeks to suppress the urge to realize them. The only compensation that makes life durable despite these sacrifices is the satisfaction derived from society's recognition of the individual who achieves its definition of success. The need for constant support by one's fellows is so great that most people spend the larger part of their lives fortifying their masks. Repeated success is essential to encourage the individual to persist in this masquerade. This success must be visible, involving a constant climb up the socio- economic ladder. If he fails in the climb, not only will his living conditions become more difficult, but his value will diminish in his own eyes to the point of endangering his mental and physical health. He can scarcely allow himself time for a vacation, even if he has the material means. The actions and the drive that produces them— necessary in order to maintain a mask free of flaws and cracks lest he be revealed behind it—do not derive from any basic organic needs. As a result, the satisfaction derived from these actions even when they are successful is not a revitalizing organic satisfaction, but merely a superficial, external one. Very slowly, over the years, a man comes to convince himself that society's recognition of his success should and does give him organic contentment. Often 6 enough the individual becomes so adjusted to his mask, his identification with it so complete, that he no longer senses any organic drive or satisfactions. This can result in the revelation of flaws and disturbances in family and sex relations that may always have been present but that have been glossed over by the individual's success in society. And, indeed, the private organic life and the gratification of needs deriving from strong organic drives are almost unimportant to the successful existence of the mask and to its social value. The great majority of people live active and satisfactory enough lives behind their masks to enable them to stifle more or less painlessly any emptiness they may feel whenever they stop and listen to their heart. Not everyone succeeds in occupations that society considers impor- tant to the degree that enables them to live a satisfactory mask-life. Many of those who fail in their youth to acquire a profession or trade that would offer them sufficient prestige to maintain their mask-lives claim that they are lazy and have neither the character nor the persist- ence to learn anything. They try their hand at one thing after another, switch from job to job, invariably considering themselves nonetheless fit for whatever may turn up next. This confidence in their own abilities gives them sufficient organic satisfaction to make each stab at something new worth the effort. These people may be no less gifted than others, maybe even more so, but they have acquired the habit of disregarding their organic needs until they can no longer find genuine interest in any activity. They may happen to stumble upon something at which they may last longer than usual and even attain a certain proficiency. But it will still be chance that has given them an occupation and thereby a foothold in society that will justify their own assessment of their worth. At the same time their precarious self-regard will drive them to seek success in other spheres, as likely as not in promiscuous sex. This promiscuity, which parallels their constant changing of jobs, is activated by the same mechanism of belief in some special gift of their own. It raises their value in their own eyes and, again, gives them at least partial organic satisfaction; enough, in any event, to make it worth their while to try again. Self-education—which, as we have seen, is not altogether independent—also causes other structural and functional conflicts. Thus, many people suffer some form of disturbance in digestion, elimination, breath- ing, or bone structure. Periodic improvements in one of these malfunctions will bring about improvement in the others, and increase general vitality for a time, followed in almost every instance by a period of lowered health and spirits. It is obvious that of the three factors determining a man's general behavior, selfeducation alone is appreciably subject to will. The question is really to what extent and, most particularly, in what way one can help oneself. Most people will choose to consult an expert—the best answer in serious cases. However, most people do not recognize the need, nor have they any wish to do so; in any case, it is doubtful whether the expert will be of much use. Self-help is, in the final instance, the only way open to everyone. 7 This way is hard and complicated, but for every person who feels the need for change and improvement it is within the limits of practical possibility, bearing in mind that several things must be clearly under- stood to make the process, the acquisition of a new set of responses, not too difficult. It must be fully realized from the start that the learning process is irregular and consists of steps, and that there will be downs as well as ups. This applies even to a matter as simple as learning a poem by heart. A man may learn a poem one day, and remember almost nothing of it the next. A few days later, and without any further study, he may suddenly know it perfectly. Even if he puts the poem entirely out of his mind for several months, he will find that a brief rehearsal will bring it back completely. We must not become discouraged, therefore, if we find we have slipped back to the original condition at any time; these regressions will become rarer and return to the improved condition easier as the learning process continues. It should further be realized that as changes take place in the self, new and hitherto unrecognized difficulties will be discovered. The conscious- ness previously rejected them either from fear or because of pain, and it is only as self-confidence increases that it becomes possible to identify them. Most people make sporadic attempts to improve and correct them- selves even though they are often done without any clear awareness of it. The average person is satisfied with his achievements and thinks he needs nothing except some gymnastics to correct a few acknowledged faults. Everything that has been said in this introduction is in fact addressed to this average man; that is, to the man who thinks none of it concerns him. As people try to better themselves, different stages of development can be found in each of them. And as each one progresses, the means for further correction will have to become increasingly fine-spun. I have outlined in this book the first steps on this road in considerable detail to enable readers to go even further under their own power. 8 THE SELF IMAGE The dynamics of personal action Each one of us speaks, moves, thinks, and feels in a different way, each according to the image of himself that he has built up over the years. In order to change our mode of action we must change the image of ourselves that we carry within us. What is involved here, of course, is a change in the dynamics of our reactions, and not the mere replacing of one action by another. Such a change involves not only a change in our self-image, but a change in the nature of our motivations, and the mobilization of all the parts of the body concerned. These changes produce the noticeable difference in the way each individual carries out similar actions—handwriting and pronunciation, for instance. The four components of action Our self-image consists of four components that are involved in every action: movement, sensation, feeling, and thought. The contribution of each of the components to any particular action varies, just as the persons carrying out the action vary, but each component will be present to some extent in any action. In order to think, for instance, a person must be awake, and know that he is awake and not dreaming; that is, he must sense and discern his physical position relative to the field of gravity. It follows that movement, sensing, and feeling are also involved in thinking. In order to feel angry or happy, a man must be in a certain posture, and in some kind of relationship to another being or object. That is, he must also move, sense, and think. In order to sense—see, hear, or touch—a person must be interested, startled, or aware of some happening that involves him. That is, he must move, feel, and think. In order to move, he must use at least one of his senses, consciously or unconsciously, which involves feeling and thinking. When one of these elements of action becomes so minute as almost to disappear, existence itself may be endangered. It is difficult to survive for even brief periods 9 without any movement at all. There is no life where a being is deprived of all senses. Without feeling, there is no drive to live; it is the feeling of suffocation that forces us to breathe. Without at least some minimum of reflex thought, even a beetle cannot live too long. Changes become fixed as habits In reality our self-image is never static. It changes from action to action, but these changes gradually become habits; that is, the actions take on a fixed, unchanging character Early in life, when the image is being established, the rate of change in the image is high; new forms of action that had only the previous day been beyond the child's capacity are quickly achieved. The infant begins to see, for instance, a few weeks after birth; one day he will begin to stand, walk, and talk. The child's own experiences, together with his biological inheritance, combine slowly to create an individual way of standing, walking, speaking, feeling, listening, and of carrying out all the other actions that give substance to human life. But while from a distance the life of one person appears to be very similar to that of any other, on close inspection they are entirely different. We must, then, use words and concepts in such a way that they will apply more or less equally to everyone. How the self-image is formed We confine ourselves therefore to examining in detail the motor part of the selfimage. Instinct, feeling, and thought being linked with movement, their role in the creation of the self-image reveals itself together with that of movement. The stimulation of certain cells in the motor cortex of the brain will activate a particular muscle. It is known today that the correspondence between the cells of the cortex and the muscles that they activate is neither absolute nor exclusive. Nevertheless, we may consider that there is sufficient experimental justification to assume that specific cells do activate specific muscles at least in basic, elementary movements. Individual and social action The newborn human can perform practically nothing of what he will carry out as an adult in human society, but he can do almost everything the adult can do as an individual. He can breathe, eat, digest, eliminate, and his body can organize all the biological and physiological processes except the sexual act—and this may be considered a social process in the adult, for it takes place between two persons. In the beginning, sexual activity remains confined to the individual sphere. It is now widely accepted that adult sexuality develops from early self-sexuality. This approach makes it possible to explain inadequacies in this field as a failure in the development of the individual toward full social sexuality. Contact with the external world 10 The infant's contact with the external world is established mainly through the lips and mouth; through these he recognizes his mother. He will use his hands to fumble and assist the work of his mouth and lips, and will know by touch what he already knows through his lips and mouth. From here he will gradually progress to the discovery of other parts of his body and their relationship to each other, and through them his first notions of distance and volume. The discovery of time begins with the coordinating of processes of breathing and swallowing, both of which are connected with movements of the lips, mouth, jaw, nostrils, and the surrounding area. The self-image on the motor cortex Were we to mark in color on the surface area of the motor cortex of the brain of a month-old infant the cells that activate muscles subject to his developing will, we should obtain a form resembling that of his body, but it would represent only the areas of voluntary action, not the anatomical configuration of the parts of his body. We should see, for instance, that the lips and mouth occupy most of the colored area. The antigravity muscles—those that open the joints and so erect the body —are not yet subject to voluntary control; the muscles of the hands, too, are only just beginning to respond occasionally to will. We should obtain a functional image in which the human body is indicated by four thin strokes of the pen for the limbs, joined together by another short and thin line for the trunk, with lips and mouth occupying most of the picture. Every new function changes the image Were we to color the cells activating muscles subject to voluntary control of a child that has already learned to walk and write, we should obtain quite a different functional image. The lips and mouth would again occupy most of the space because the function of speech, which involves the tongue, mouth, and lips, has been added to the previous picture. However another large patch of color would have become conspicuous, covering the area of cells that activate the thumbs. The area of cells activating the right thumb will be noticeably larger than that activating the left one. The thumb takes part in almost every movement made by the hand, in writing particularly. The area representing the thumb will be larger than that representing the other fingers. The muscle-image in the motor cortex is unique for every individual If we continued to draw such outlines every few years, not only would the result be different each time, but it would vary distinctively from one individual to another. In a man who has not learned to write, the patches of color representing the thumbs would remain small, because cells that might have been included would remain unused. The area for the third finger would be larger in a person who has learned to play a musical instrument than in one who has not. People who know several languages, or who sing, would show larger areas covering cells that activate the muscles for the control of breathing, tongue, mouth, and so on. 11 Only the muscle-image is based on observation In the course of much experimenting, physiologists have discovered that in basic movements at least, the cells concerned link up on the motor cortex of the brain into a shape resembling the body, which they refer to as the homunculus. There is thus a valid basis for the concept of the "self-image," at least in so far as basic movements are concerned. We have no similar experimental evidence with regard to sensation, feeling, or thought. Our self-image is smaller than our potential capacity Our self-image is essentially smaller than it might be, for it is built up only of the group of cells that we have actually used. Further, the various patterns and combinations of cells are perhaps more important than their actual number. A man who has mastered several languages will make use both of more cells and more combinations of cells. Most children of minority population communities the world over know at least two languages; their self-image is a little nearer the potential maximum than that of people who know only their mother tongue. It is the same in most other areas of activity. Our self-image is in general more limited and smaller than our potential. There are individuals who know from thirty to seventy languages. This indicates that the average self-image occupies only about 5 percent of its potential. Systematic observation and treatment of some thousands of individuals drawn from most nations and civilizations have convinced me that this figure is roughly the fraction we use of our total hidden potential. The achievement of immediate objectives has a negative aspect The negative aspect of learning to achieve aims is that we tend to stop learning when we have mastered sufficient skills to attain our immediate objective. Thus, for instance, we improve our speech until we can make ourselves understood. But any person who wishes to speak with the clarity of an actor discovers that he must study speech for several years in order to achieve anything approaching his maximum potential in this direction. An intricate process of limiting ability accustoms man to make do with 5 percent of his potential without realizing that his development has been stunted. The complexity of the situation is brought about by the inherent interdependence between the growth and development of the individual and the culture and economy of the society in which he grows. Education is largely tied to prevailing circumstances Nobody knows the purpose of life, and the education that each generation passes on to the succeeding one is no more than a continuation of the habits of thought of the prevailing generation. Life has been a harsh struggle since the beginning of 12 mankind; nature is not kind to creatures lacking awareness. One cannot ignore the great social difficulties created by the existence of the many millions of people the earth has harbored in the past few centuries. Under such conditons of strain, education is improved only to the extent that is necessary and possible in order to bring up a new generation able to replace the old one under more or less similar conditions. Minimum development of the individual satisfies the needs of society The basic biological tendency of any organism to grow and develop to its fullest extent has been largely governed by social and economic revolutions that improved living conditions for the majority and enabled greater numbers to reach a minimum of development. Under these conditions basic potential development ceased in early adolescence be- cause the demands of society enabled the members of the young generation to be accepted as useful individuals at the minimum stage. Further training after early adolescence is, in fact, confined to the acquisition of practical and professional knowledge in some field, and basic development is continued only by chance and in exceptional cases. Only the unusual person will continue to improve his self-image until it more nearly approaches the potential ability inherent in each individual. The vicious circle of incomplete development and satisfaction with achievement In the light of the statements above, it becomes clear that most people do not achieve the use of more than a minute fraction of their potential ability; the minority that outstrips the majority does so not because of its higher potential, but because it learns to use a higher proportion of this potential, that may well be no more than average—taking into account of course that no two people share an identical natural ability. How is such a vicious circle created, which at one and the same time stunts men's powers, yet permits them to feel reasonably self-satisfied for all that they have limited themselves to, a small proportion of their capacities? It is a curious situation. The physiological processes that hamper development In the first years of his life, man is similar to every other living being, mobilizing all his separate powers and using every function that is sufficiently developed. The cells of his body seek, like all living cells, to grow and to perform their specific functions. This applies equally to the cells of the nervous system; each one lives its own life as a cell while participating in the organic function for which it exists. Nevertheless many cells remain inactive as part of the total organism. This may be because of two different processes. In one, the organism may be occupied with actions that require the inhibition of certain cells and the necessary mobilization of others. If the body is occupied more or less continuously with such actions, then a number of cells will be in an almost constant state of inhibition. 13 In the other case, some potential functions may not reach maturity at all. The organism may have no call to practice them, either because it sets no value on them as such, or because its drives lead it in a different direction. Both these processes are common. And, indeed, social conditions allow an organism to function as a useful member of society without in the least developing its capacities to the full. Man judges himself in accordance with his value to society The general tendency toward social improvement in our day has led directly to a disregard, rising to neglect, for the human material of which society is built. The fault lies not in the goal itself—which is constructive in the main—but in the fact that individuals, rightly or wrongly, tend to identify their self-images with their value to society. Even if he has emancipated himself from his educators and protectors, man does not strive to make himself any different from the pattern impressed upon him from the outset. In this way society comes to be made up of persons increasingly alike in their ways, behavior, and aims. Despite the fact that the inherited differences between people are obvious, there are few individuals who view themselves without reference to the value attributed to them by society. Like a man trying to force a square peg into a round hole, so the individual tries to smooth out his biological peculiarities by alienating himself from his inherent needs. He strains to fit himself into the round hole that he now actively desires to fill, for if he fails in this, his value will be so diminished in his own eyes as to discourage further initiative. These considerations must be borne in mind to appreciate fully the overwhelming influence of the individual's attitude toward himself once he again seeks to foster his own growth, that is, to allow his specific qualities to develop and reach fruition. Judging a child by his achievements robs him of spontaneity During his early years a child is valued, by and large, not for his achievements, but simply for himself. In families where this is the case, the child will develop in accordance with his individual abilities. In families where children are judged primarily by their achievements, all spontaneity will disappear at an early age. These children will become adults without experiencing adolescence. Such adults may from time to time feel an unconscious longing for the adolescence they have missed, a desire to seek out those instinctive capacities within themselves that were denied their youthful will to develop. Self-improvement is linked to recognition of the value of the self It is important to understand that if a man wishes to improve his self-image, he must first of all learn to value himself as an individual, even if his faults as a member of society appear to him to outweigh his qualities. We may learn from persons crippled from birth or childhood how an individual may view himself in the face of obvious shortcomings. Those who succeed in looking at themselves with a sufficient, en- compassing humanity to achieve stable self-respect may reach heights that the normally healthy will never achieve. But those who 14 consider themselves inferior because of their disabilities, and over- come them by sheer will power, tend to grow into hard and embittered adults who will take revenge upon fellow men who are not at fault and, moreover, who may not be able to change the circumstances even if they wished to do so. Action becomes the main arm in furthering self-improvement Recognizing one's value is important at the start of self-improvement, but for any real improvement to be achieved, regard for the self will have to be relegated to second place. Unless a stage is reached at which self-regard ceases to be the main motivating force, any improvement achieved will never be sufficient to satisfy the individual. In fact, as a man grows and improves, his entire existence centers increasingly on what he does and how, while who does it becomes of ever decreasing importance. The difficulty of changing an earlier pattern of action A man tends to regard his self-image as something bestowed upon him by nature, although it is, in fact, the result of his own experience. His appearance, voice, way of thinking, environment, his relationship to space and time—to choose at random— are all taken for granted as realities born with him, whereas every important element in the individual's relationship to other people and to society in general is the result of extensive training. The arts of walking, speaking, reading, and of recognizing three dimensions in a photograph are skills the individual accumulates over a period of many years; each of them depends on chance, and on the place and period of his birth. The acquisition of a second language is not as easy as that of the first, and the pronunciation of the newly learned language will be marked by the influence of the first; the sentence structure of the first language will impose itself on the second. Every pattern of action that has become fully assimilated will interfere with the patterns of subsequent actions. Difficulties arise, for instance, when a person learns to sit according to the custom of some nation other than his own. As these early patterns of sitting are not the result of heredity alone, but derive from the chance and circumstances of birth, the difficulties involved lie less in the nature of the new habit than in the changing of habits of body, feeling, and mind from their established patterns. This holds true for almost any change of habit, whatever its origin. What is meant here, of course, is not the simple substitution of one activity by another, but a change in the way an act is performed, a change in its whole dynamics, so that the new method will be in every respect as good as the old. There is no awareness of many parts of the body A person who lies down on his back and tries to sense his entire body systematically—that is, turning his attention to every limb and part of the body in turn—finds that certain sections respond easily, while others remain mute or dull and beyond the range of his aware- ness. 15 It is thus easy to sense the fingertips or lips, but much harder to sense the back of the head at the nape, between the ears. Naturally, the degree of difficulty is individual, depending on the form of the self-image. Generally speaking, it will be difficult to find a person whose whole body is equally accessible to his awareness. The parts of the body that are easily defined in the awareness are those that serve man daily, while the parts that are dull or mute in his awareness play only an indirect role in his life and are almost missing from his self-image when he is in action. A person who cannot sing at all cannot feel this function in his self-image except by an effort of intellectual extrapolation. He is not aware of any vital connection between the hollow space in his mouth and his ears or his breathing, as does the singer. A man who cannot jump will not be aware of those parts of the body involved that are clearly defined to a man who is able to jump. A complete self-image is a rare and ideal state A complete self-image would involve full awareness of all the joints in the skeletal structure as well as of the entire surface of the body— at the back, the sides, between the legs, and so on; this is an ideal condition and hence a rare one. We can all demonstrate to ourselves that everything we do is in accordance with the limits of our self-image and that this image is no more than a narrow sector of the ideal image. It is also easily observed that the relationship between different parts of the self-image changes from activity to activity and from position to position. This is not so easily seen under common conditions, owing to their very familiarity, but it is sufficient to imagine the body poised for an unfamiliar movement in order to realize that the legs, for instance, will appear to change in length, thickness, and other aspects from movement to movement. Estimation of size varies in different limbs If we try, for instance, to indicate the length of our mouth, with eyes closed, by means of the thumb and first finger of the right hand, and with both hands using the first finger of each, we shall obtain two different values. Not only will neither measurement correspond to the actual length of the mouth, but both may be several times too large or too small. Again, if we try, with eyes closed, to estimate the thickness of our chest by placing our hands this distance apart, horizontally and vertically, we are likely to get two quite different values, neither of which need be anywhere near the truth. Close your eyes and stretch out your arms in front of you, about the width of the shoulders apart, and then imagine the point at which the ray of light traveling from the index finger of the right hand to the left eye will cross the ray of light traveling from the index finger of the left hand to the right eye. Now try to mark this crossing point using the thumb and index finger of the right hand; it is unlikely that the place chosen will seem correct when you open your eyes to look. 16 There are few people whose self-image is sufficiently complete for them to be able to identify the correct spot in this way. What is more, if the experiment is repeated using the thumb and index finger of the left hand, a different location will most likely be chosen for the same point. The average approximation is far from the best that can be achieved It is easy to show by means of unfamiliar movements that our self- image is in general far from the degree of completeness and accuracy that we ascribe to it. Our image is formed through familiar actions in which approximation to reality is improved by bringing into play several of the senses that tend to correct each other. Thus, our image is more accurate in the region in front of our eyes than behind us or above our heads, and in familiar positions such as sitting or standing. If the difference between imagined values or positions—one estimated with eyes closed and one with eyes open—is not more than 20 or 30 percent, accuracy may be considered average, though not satisfactory. Individuals act in accordance with their subjective image The difference between image and reality may be as much as 300 percent and even more. Persons who normally hold their chests in a position as though air had been expelled by the lungs in an exaggerated fashion, with their chest both flatter than it should be and too flat to serve them efficiently, are likely to indicate its depth as several times larger than it is if asked to do so with their eyes closed. That is, the excessive flatness appears right to them, because any thickening of the chest appears to them a demonstrably exaggerated effort to expand their lungs. Normal expansion feels to them as a deliberately blown up chest would to another person. The way a man holds his shoulders, head, and stomach; his voice and expression; his stability and manner of presenting himself—all are based on his self-image. But this image may be cut down or blown up to fit the mask by which its owner would like to be judged by his peers. Only the man himself can know which part of his outward appearance is fictitious and which is genuine. However, not everybody is capable of identifying himself easily, and one may be greatly helped by the experience of others. Systematic correction of the image is more useful than correction of single actions From what has been said about the self-image, it emerges that systematic correction of the image will be a quicker and more efficient approach than the correction of single actions and errors in modes of behavior, the incidence of which increases as we come to deal with smaller errors. The establishment of an initial more or less complete, although approximate, image will make it possible to improve the general dynamics instead of dealing with individual actions piecemeal. This improvement may be likened to correcting playing on an instrument that is not properly tuned. Improving the general 17 dynamics of the image becomes the equivalent of tuning the piano itself, as it is much easier to play correctly on an instrument that is in tune than on one that is not.