What do we do and what is it for?
Résumé
In his writings, Feldenkrais uses a constellation of notions linked together: body image, body schema, self-image, awareness and habits. When writing about ‘self-image’ Feldenkrais refers to Paul Schilder’s The Body Image and the Appearance of the Human Body, first published in 1935 (Schilder 1950), and he recommended that students read this book during the Amherst training. Schilder’s book is seminal for it sets crucial representations for later research: body image (or self-image) is not static, but rather continuously evolving according to a perceptive flux of information. It is also dynamically composed of a variety of sources that Schilder sets as equally important: the functioning brain (and the crucial importance of proprioception, which was first promoted by Schilder, among others), the subconscious and the social (although in Schilder ‘social’ is approached as the interpersonal aspect of subconscious moves). As shown later, Gallagher has recently criticized not the content of Schilder’s book, which sets the foundation for later research on these notions, but his lack of rigor and precision in the vocabulary he is also setting up. Feldenkrais borrows much from Schilder (the notion of dynamic body image, or in more contemporary terms, its plasticity, is crucial to Feldenkrais, as is its multi-layered nature), including the lack of discrimination in vocabulary. Like Schilder, he uses both body image and body schema, without differentiating between the two, and perhaps even more often the term ‘self-image’ – a term that many contemporary Feldenkrais practitioners also favor. Moreover, in his effort to approach theory in a holistic way and demonstrate how different aspects of the self are in fact linked together, he presents the same concept, throughout his writings, with non-consistent descriptions or definitions.
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