Comment II

Tunde Rozsahegyi could not put her comment through the blog's comments so she mailed this:

Laci,

I absolutely agree with the thoughts in this thread of postings and since your original entry I keep thinking of the issue you highlighted.Yes, we live in a world in the 21 century when anecdotal evidence is not sufficient enough to move CE forward. If we want to strengthen CE by identifying, proving and making the strength and uniqueness of CE more widely acceptable we have to do two things: firstly disseminate our values, experiences and expertise in an academic manner; secondly identifying the weaknesses too.Over the last 30-40 years in English language so many people have said their thought and perspectives on conductive education: therapists, psychologists, educators but unfortunately less heard from conductors themselves. Would a professional body be helpful to change this? Would it be influential enough first of all to have members? I seem to remember that in the last 20 years there were sooooooo many attempts to establish a professional body! Sorry for being pessimistic but I see the role of a professional body something different.I think the advancement of CE and the establishment of a proper academic discourse is emerging, perhaps not in a pace as it is anticipated by those who just passively wait for its outcomes.Working for and 'doing' proper research, seeking and writing about evidence based practice seem to be something alien for the majority of conductors, but this perception needs to be changed and opportunities and support have to be given to those who feel confident and interested to be involved. Hard to believe this can take place without the support from CE organisations, managers and others in a decision-making position.Andrew writes a lot about the economic depression and I do not want to reiterate any of his thoughts accept that in recessions education always do well because people see a way of getting out from the situation by gaining new knowledge and experiences. Perhaps for those involved in the strategic level of managing CE services it would be a time now to rethink what would be useful as a long-term investment; how could they support their conductors to cope with this ever-changing world. To do this it needs long term vision, understanding and commitment to CE and belief in its values.A very final thought if conductors do not articulate CE, will not look into how it should be developed further it is hard to envisage that it will survive in a long term. Others will not do instead of us.

Best wishes,

Tunde

Comment

I think it is very important to share Judit’s comment here because she thought forward the issue of CE paradox and pointed out some serious truths where from we must move…..

“I really enjoyed reading your post. I read it again, and again, and again. You raised a very important question. ‘So we are here, but what next?’The directions of CE will be determent on the clarity and focus we are prepared to invest in creating its future. Clarity is power. We know this from our work when we facilitate in a conductive way. Just when we look at how CE works at its best, what do we need for that? Amongst many other things we need a unified team who believes in, manifests and carries the same highest level of standards, with a clear outcome in mind. Wishing and hoping will not take us there. Do we want it badly enough to make us move and create such a team? Do we really want to have a professional body, which is prepared to publish the basic core values, standards and structures that would truly represent Conductive Education?We need more brave, talented and diligent people in the here and now to deal with this paradox and to help all of those who are trying to work with CE in different settings. If we really wanted to be taken seriously I think it is about time that we created something valuable for all of us and for the future generation to come.Once hearts and minds meet it will be done.”

First, it is not enough merely to discuss about the difficulties but some actions should be taken. The professional body must be efficient and directed by the real needs. Most importantly, CE professionals individually should reach a certain interest level and develop their own quality requirement for themselves. To sign a code of practice is not automatically means that we are living so….

Next to my everyday practice I work nowadays a lot towards science which makes me a bit capable to recognise some part of why we are still in a professional infancy, it makes me to be a critical viewer of everything what happens around CE. The acceptance of anything (a new medical method, pedagogical approach, philosophy, etc.) comes through science in the modern world. We live in an age where sciences are testable, and the results of careful studies are both replicable and generalizable. I sadly have to recognise that what we completely missed is the scientific appearance in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties about CE. This fact also caused that we pretty often turned to be so variable and so different in opposite part of Europe or the World. Everybody runs conductive education as she thinks CE is. That is a simple result of lack of scientific introduction and acceptance.
So, because the scientific method is so widely accepted, conductive education practices that are grounded in science will be easier to “sell” to the still sceptical public or potential clients, and especially to organizations that want reassurances that the service will be effective. My prediction is that conductors who can honestly claim to work from a foundation of the latest scientific research and theory will have a tremendous market advantage over their peers. Not only will prospective employers look favourably on them, they will enjoy the comfort of knowing that their interventions are effective (not only in front of them but widely) and obviously appropriate to their unique client base. The importance of science to our field was recently noted and hopefully will help to find the ground for a new start and identify our strengths better than in the past. Have a good day….

CE paradox

The work of the brave, talented, diligent people who pioneered the field of CE has started to pay off a bit: CE is more widely known - mostly in the private sector of rehabilitation of physical disabled - in some cases getting accepted, different kind of conductor training programs are existing. Even, some Universities take notice of our profession. I should say we are effective.
Beneath this veneer of effectiveness however, there is an irony in the profession that I think of as CE paradox: For a profession that systematically helps people aspire to and reach their innate and function potential, CE has not yet reached its own potential. In fact, although CE is a 60 years old profession, it is still in its relative professional infancy.
CE lacks a coherent, widely agreed on definition, conductor training varies in content and its interventions differ sometimes greatly. In short, CE is still a broadly defined endeavour in need of refining. I would not suggest to look for ‘mistakers’ but we should definitely learn from our mistakes of past and start to be more constructive for the future.
So, we are here, but what next? In which directions CE might move how our interventions and services might evolve in the near future. Where do we, as profession, go from here? CE has long been a powerful force for transformation in people’s lives. Whether contributed in school situations, in blocks, summer camp ways, private, etc., CE is about harnessing the best in people and inspiring them to live out their potential. CE should be a wake-up call, challenging habilitation, rehabilitation, challenging folks to tap their inner abundance. The profession of conductive pedagogy is fortunate to have many skilled and imaginative people working toward a great end.
I hope we can get there one day….

Somatisation - body IV.

This post continues the body topic. The following about somatisation was written by Robert Shaw which is perfectly embedding into my topic and meets my voice. Shaw is a Psychioterapiest and registered Osteopath in private practice (for note; see belowe).

The construct of somatisation, within the medical world, refers to bodily pain which does not appear to have an organic physical aetiology. Such pain represents a challenge to medicine, as it defies classification within a discrete pathological category. Nevertheless, the very naming of a specific category, in this case somatisation, does provide a medical label. However, people to whom thi label is attributed are often additionally classified by the medical profession as “crocks, turkeys, hypochondriacs, the worried well, and the problem patients” (Lipowski, 1988) There is a belief that pain is ‘all in the mind’ (Evans 1993). There appears to be an assumption that somatisation and psychosomatic disorders are linked, and of less importance than ‘real’ illness, where the patient has a demonstrable pathological label.

Somatisation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in primary health care settings throughout Western culture. Medicine is beginning to view the phenomenon with increasing interest, as the cost of treatment for people who are somatising is called into question. Other cultures have observed somatisation; for example shamanism acknowledges the existence of psychosomatic process (Achterberg 1985). In ancient Buddhism, it was believed that the conversation psychological pain into somatic pain was an adaptive achievement. In other cultures, there is an attempt to link affect to bodily organs, and thereby transcend the mind-body dichotomy; an example here is how Afghanis refer to ‘squeezing of the hart’ to denote sadness or depression. In Chinese medicine, somatic changes and emotions are linked by notions of the angry liver and the melancholy spleen (Ots 1990).

Somatisation, is a distinct category, does try to solve the problem of linking mind and body, bot does so only within the confines of reductionistic medical discourse. This problem has been noted by Ots, who rejects the notion of somatisation on the grounds that it is embedded in the mind-body dichotomy. In arguing against the use of the term somatisation, he makes the link with the body another way, and suggests that the German word ‘lieb’ could be employed. This would describe how mind, body, and person are considered to be all part of lived experience.

Note:
The Embodied Psychotherapist The Therapist's Body Story
Author: Robert Shaw
ISBN: 978-1-58391-269-0 (paperback) 978-1-58391-268-3 (hardback) 978-0-203-42081-2 (electronic)
No. of pages: 170
Originally Published On: September 2003

Thinking strange

Dear Readers,

since I hardly get any feedback (comments) of my writings, a question is raising in my mind. Is anybody interested in things I have been posting? Is anybody interested in sorts of academics associated with CE? Without the Locomap I should feel nobody is, but thanks that map I realise some people visit the blog. I feel however strange to write academics further...

Body - Drew Leder

Drew Leder (1990) has contributed to the paradigm of lived-body, through his analysis of how we come to know our bodies by their absence. Until we have our attention drawn to our body, it remains, to all intents and purposes, absent from consciousness. An assumption is made that the body will exist from one lived moment to the next. However, this disappearing act poses a problem which Leder (1990: 69) states: “Why, if human experience rooted in the bodily, is the body so often absent from experience?” He attempts to resolve this by taking the disappearance of the body into the background of consciousness as a significant phenomenon. This, Ledder suggests, is related to bodily functioning. Body absence then becomes essential to normal body function, the body’s ability to conceal itself “will help account for our cultural understanding of embodiment” (Leder 1990:69). Thus, Ledder draws our attention to the visceral body; he highlights the notion that bodily perception ins not always conscious. Strauss (1966) has argued that, phenomenologically, movement and sensation are intrinsically linked. This is contrary to Cartesian thought, which viewed sensation and movement as fundamentally separate.

Here we see that sensation and movement are inextricably linked. It is clear that these perspectives dissolve the argument for mind-body dichotomy.


Notes:

Drew Leder (1990) The Absent Body The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Strauss EW (1966) Phenomenological Psychology Tavistock, London

Body II

It seems, there is much interest within sociology on the subject of body. Sharma(1996) goes on to suggest that there is a body culture dualism often underlying the sociological and anthropological approaches to the problem of body investigation. This leads to a difficult tangle of dualisms; mind-body, mind-culture and body-culture. An important consequence of addressing the body would, rest on an attempt at corporeal understanding before we are reduced to a state of desiccated consciousness. Would it be holism? Why not? Anyway, I believe this could be the way how Andras Peto was thinking. The problem of the body is highlighted in sociology by Frank when he observed “It [the body] is not an entity but the process of the own being” (Featherstone et al 1991:96).
The notion of the ‘lived body’ arose from the work of Erwin Straus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and drives us to the field of phenomenology. In ‘The Phenomenology of Perception’ Merleau-Ponty (1962) provides insights into how the body is our means of belonging to our world. We are able to perceive and sense from birth, and the apparatus we have determines the nature of the perception. Both Straus and Merleau-Ponty were influenced by the work of gestalt psychology, which suggested (about gestalt see my blog on 22nd of September 2008) we perceive in groups, in wholes, rather than discrete entities (Clarcson 1989; Rock and Palmer 1990).
In the paradigm of the lived body, they suggest that “ it is the body which first ‘understands’ the world, grasping its surroundings and moving to fulfil its goals… the body is not just a caused mechanism, but an ‘intentional entity’ always direct toward an object pole, a world” (Leder 1984:31). Robert Shaw (1997) points out that the idea of lived body allows for an interaction with our environment, and lends a perspective of dynamism to the body. The body does not merely have things done to it, but takes an active part in engaging with the world; it is a lived-body. An understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception takes us away from the Cartesian dualism and suggests that the body is “ the very basis of human subjectivity” (Crossley 1995) If we examine the body from this view we might see bridging the gap between individual and collective subjectivity, since we all have bodies, and come to know of them in both a self-reflexive manner, as lived-body experience, and also in relation to other bodies and their reaction to us.
It will be continued…

Please do not worry, at the end of this topic I wish to give a full reference of authors and their works. Thanks for your patience.