Jaron Lanier used to be in the habit of starting his big talks with comparing Freudian pressure release to the parallel age of the steam engine. And sure enough, I have been looking into the The Potent Self, A Study of Spontaneity and Compulsion by the great Moshe Feldenkrais and the entire metaphor is right there at the beginning of the book. It makes so much sense for Moshe Feldenkrais to come up with the comparison given his background. But who knows, he might have heard it somewhere in Paris. As far as Lanier is concerned, definitely not OK to use this comparison without obvious attribution.
Further reading:Freudian Steam Engine
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Over the last few years I have been doing Feldenkrais as a practice, and even wrote about it and posted videos on one of the blogs. (There is a book out there on Moshe Feldenkrais and chasidus, which seemed to me pretty weak.) I don’t know what to make of this technique. I guess one could think in terms of astral bodies, energy fields and the like. I decided not to intellectualize the process, and limited myself to reading the literature on neuroplasticity, which itself is miraculous but has some scientific basis. I find it fascinating to turn to your blog and see the words “the great Moshe Feldenkrais.” Perhaps you can elaborate…why is he great?
OK, I am not sure I am qualified but I will take a stab at it.
I had no idea you were aware of Feldenkrais. I’ve been under his spell for quite a number of years. He seems so far out that it’s unclear whether he’ll become a part of public awareness ever. In another book by him and about him, “Embodied Wisdom”, his system is characterized as “an evolutionary step for humankind”. I think of it as nothing less than that.
It’s puzzling (and maybe telling) that nobody has come around to teach his Method any comprehensively, but only his tiny movements without even outlining what significance they may have. It seems (from this book) that even he had troubles explaining it, therefore his scolding and discouraging manner of communicating with the students.
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