From: "Richard Scott" <richard.scott-AT-umist.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: chaos theory & developmental psych
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 11:10:27 +0100


Extraordinary. I had no idea that so many links existed. Really the
connection is one that for has been made in my own body. For me Deleuze's
concepts have to spread out into these areas of the practise; alarming how
for so many "thinkers" the body remains an abstraction - PhDs have a lot to
answer for I suspect! I've done work with Garret Newell who was an assistant
to Feldenkrais and also with a theatre director Jos Houben. Houben has an
idea about a "360 degree" self which links creativity and posture with
maximum freedom of choice in available direction at any particular point. In
a very different way I've got insights into this stuff from a dancer Julyen
Hamilton  - his work and teaching seem to me about developing and training
the body as a thinking organism; not exactly bypassing the mind - but
displacing it in favour of senses which seem to be able to respond more
quickly and more accurately. Somehow this seems to allow the mind greater
clarity; something like meditation I suppose. Anyway waffle... thank you
very much Will - you've given me a lot to follow up.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> [mailto:owner-deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU]On Behalf Of
> analytica-AT-escape.com
> Sent: 11 June 1998 20:45
> To: deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> Subject: RE: chaos theory & developmental psych
>
>
> >Any experience of Feldenkrais anyone? I've had a little; a fascinating
> >contact with the precognitive - the body learning its own routes
> while the
> >mind trails behind collecting up the pieces. Unlike  Alexander technique
> >there's something uncentred and anarchistic about how it works - yet
> >incredibly precise and specific too. I'm interested in exploring the link
> >between this stuff and a philosophy of creativity and also improvisation.
>
> ----
>
> In my work "From Psychoanalysis to Schizoanalysis: Chaos and Complexity in
> Therapeutic Practice" (I hope to have it available on a web site soon -
> before the slow moving paper publication) I sought to make exactly these
> links among the wild strands of psychoanalysis and development,
> recent work
> in psychobiology (Edelman etc.), and ethnocultural practices (Zen, Sufi,
> Gurdjieff) by means of Guattari.
>
> Interestingly, developing schizoanalytic practices led me in the same
> directions these posts have gone - toward the embodied mind.
> Reich is still
> the essential here. It's amazing that actually reading something like "The
> Function of the Orgasm" demonstrates how misunderstood he is even by his
> proponents.
>
> There is a whole movement of analytic and phenomenological bodymind
> therapies developing now that could be linked to schizoanalysis. Robert
> Masters' work has linked Feldenkrais to LSD, Gurdjieff and other altered
> states. Thomas Hanna was a philosopher who first brought
> Feldenkrais to the
> US and now has a Somatics  institute in California, and Don Johnson -
> another philosopher - directs the Somatic Psychology program at the
> California Institute for Integral Studies. Mark Seem - who worked with
> Foucault on his PhD and with Guattari at La Borde and who translated
> "Anti-Oedipus" became an acupuncture therapist and has developed the most
> interesting institute for acupuncture and oriental medicine in the US -
> linking it  with schizoanalysis, Reich and other western traditions.
>
> Maybe we have finally broken the link with the "science" of psychology and
> psychiatry and returned to the schizoanalytic phenomenology of bodymind
> practices found in the philosopher/physician of other civilizations -
> including the one Nietzsche dreamed.
>
> For the chaos and complexity of the developing bodymind:
>
> Wilhelm Reich "The Function of the Orgasm"
> Mark Seem "Bodymind Energetics"
> Don Johnson "The Body"
> Thomas Hanna "Somatics"
> Robert Masters "Listening to the Body"
> Alexander Lowen "Bioenergetics"
> Arthur Janov "The Primal Scream"
> Malcolm Brown "The Healing Touch"
> Stanley Keleman "Emotional Anatomy"
> Ron Kurtz "Body-Centered Psychotherapy"
>
> Will
>
>