Frank Pierce Jones:  His Life and Work
By Missy Vineyard

In the nearly 100 years since F. M. Alexander developed his approach to psychophysical reeducation, no one has done more to scientifically demonstrate the physiological mechanisms underlying its principles than Frank Pierce Jones.  Jones hoped his research would scientifically validate Alexander’s discovery and help to establish its credibility.  He believed that the Alexander Technique contributed decisively to our knowledge of human behavior and offered a new and more effective approach to maintaining health and enhancing wellbeing.  He wanted the work to reach public awareness, and he wanted the scientific and educational communities to seriously consider its implications.

Jones began lessons in the Alexander Technique in the spring of 1938.  At the time he would have seemed an unlikely candidate for the role of scientific researcher.  A professor of classics at Brown University, who wrote his dissertation on Greek participles, Jones, age thirty-three, had never set foot in a laboratory.  Yet in a little over ten years, Jones would become not only a teacher of the Alexander Technique but a scientist who in 1951 would begin publishing his own research.

What prompted Jones to undergo a three-year training in this little known field and then to spend twenty-five years conducting a thorough scientific investigation of it?  Jones’s early lessons and the benefits he experienced from them convinced him that the primary control worked but he was dissatisfied with Alexander’s explanations about how it worked.  Later, as a teacher, he was further frustrated by the inadequacy of his explanations to students’ questions.  In short, he was motivated by an innate curiosity and desire to understand.  Jones also believed that experimental research could provide the essential next step of validating Alexander’s discovery.  He hoped to prove that Alexander had identified a fundamental principle governing human behavior, not simply an isolated phenomenon that depended for its success on Alexander’s charisma, on autosuggestion, or on a placebo effect.  Jones believed that scientific validation would help to establish the credibility of Alexander’s method in the mind of the public.  He believed that it benefited people and he wanted them to know about it.

Jones eventually found a home for his experiments at The Institute for Applied Experimental Psychology at Tufts University.  In time he also resumed his classics career becoming a member of the Tufts Classics Department in 1954 and a professor in 1964.  During this period Jones published twenty-four scientific papers in such prestigious journals as The Psychological Review and Science.  He received his license to practice psychology in the first year that licensing exams were instituted.  And just before his death in 1975, Jones completed a book on the technique, Body Awareness in Action.

Early Years

Frank Pierce Jones was born to George Jones and Maude Sackett in Appleton, Wisconsin, on April 10, 1905.  Although he was their first child, Jones had an older stepbrother by his father’s previous marriage to Ella, Maude’s older sister.  Ella had died in 1888.  Several years later George and Maude were married.  Shortly afterward they moved from northern Wisconsin, where George owned a lumber mill to Appleton, where Frank and his younger brother, Bob, were born.  According to Bob Jones, their parents were glad about the move to Appleton.  Their father was eager to establish his business there, and his mother looked forward to the cultural life in Appleton.   Lawrence College, founded fifty years before, had acquired a reputation for its liberal arts and conservatory of music.  Frank’s mother had a fine voice, played the piano, and hoped to continue her musical studies at the school. 1

Maude Jones also sang in the Methodist choir, eventually becoming their leading soprano soloist.  George, who was intelligent, quiet, and hard working, served on the board of trustees of both the Methodist Church and Lawrence College.  They had many friends in the community, and Bob Jones recalled that their home was a stimulating place, both intellectually and culturally, that provided the growing young boys with a nurturing and intellectual environment.  2

Indeed, Frank’s childhood seems to have been marred only by annual summer bouts of hay fever.  But this tranquil life was suddenly and sadly disrupted when Maude Jones died unexpectedly.  Frank was just eighteen and a freshman at Lawrence College.  The following year he transferred to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and then transferred again the next year to Stanford, where he received his BA and then his MA in English literature.

Jones began his doctoral studies in 1929 at the University of Chicago but transferred yet again, this time returning nearer to home.  He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1937.  During this period he met Helen Rumsey, also a graduate student in classics.  Helen remembered that she was asked to give up her graduate fellowship so that the department could hire a scholar from the University of Chicago.  She reluctantly—although politely—acquiesced, but later came to feel that she hadn’t received such a bad deal after all.  The scholar was Frank Jones, and they sat next to each other that year in a class on Homer.  Helen wore a handsome pair of hand-embroidered Norwegian gloves, which opened the conversation.  They were married in 1931 and spent their August honeymoon in Europe.

Their lives and happiness were soon interrupted, however, when Frank was diagnosed with tuberculosis and entered a sanatorium in the fall of 1932. He appeared to recover, returning to his teaching duties and working on his doctorate, but the following autumn he suffered a relapse and returned to the sanatorium on total bed rest for the next year.  Helen described this as the worst period of her life, undoubtedly compounded by the challenges of new motherhood (their oldest son, Tom, was born in 1932), and by the doctor who told her Frank might not survive. 3

When asked how this illness changed her husband, Helen recalled that Frank learned to “savor and appreciate the simple things.” 4 Even after his recovery, Frank’s health remained affected, however.  They both learned to adapt to this, keeping their lives relatively simple and uncomplicated to conserve Frank’s strength.  They left parties early, didn’t socialize a lot, and when he felt a cold coming on Frank got to bed early with a drink of hot rum.  Frank also learned what mattered to him.  “He didn’t want to waste time doing something he didn’t want to do,” Helen remembered.  5 He also continued to suffer from the allergies that required the family to move annually to a less pollen-filled environment during ragweed season.

Despite the results of a psychological test which declared that Jones’s talents would best be utilized as a lawyer, and that the one thing he should not do was teach, Frank loved to teach and remained a teacher all his life.  He liked to share knowledge and believed that if something were interesting to him it would also be interesting to others.  Frank was well informed about world affairs and often connected classic texts with current events in a way that made them come alive.  Although he wasn’t an extrovert, Jones liked people and was not shy.  He also had a wry sense of humor.  Helen recalled an incident when she inadvertently put her hand into some steam and burned herself slightly, exclaiming as she waved her hand up and down that she’d burned her hand in boiling water.  Frank wryly replied that if it was steam it wasn’t boiling water, which, of course, annoyed her but also made her laugh and eased the pain. 6

Jones had a wide range of interests.  He especially enjoyed traveling, playing bridge, and singing.  He also enjoyed reading ghost stories to his children, who remember his warm and resonant voice.  Frank enjoyed life, and although he was sometimes hindered by ill health, his prevailing mood was one of determination and optimism.  Frank remained conscious of his limitations, however, and accommodated to them wisely.  Perhaps it was this practical self-awareness of his problem, rather than a tendency to deny or exaggerate it, which determined his matter-of-fact response the first time he read about the Alexander Technique in Aldous Huxley’s book, Ends and Means.  Although he’d never heard of this rather unorthodox system, Jones respected Huxley and decided to try it.

By this time Jones was an instructor in Greek and Latin at Brown University.  He had received his doctorate the previous year in ceremonies conducted in the stock pavilion at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Helen laughingly recalled that Frank was escorted during the procession by Professor Laird, while the orchestra played the Bach chorale “Come, Sweet Death.”  The family, which now included a daughter, Emlen, born in 1937, managed the move to Providence and took up residence.

First Lessons

Aldous Huxley’s book, Ends and Means was published in 1937 two years after Huxley himself began having lessons with Alexander, or “F.M.” as he was known.  It is a philosophical work and Huxley begins by noting that humanity has always shared the common goals of “liberty, peace, justice and brotherly love” but has not yet found a means of achieving these goals.  Instead, he says, humanity has been hindered by “the clash of contradictory opinions dogmatically held and acted upon with the violence of fanaticism.” 7

In the chapter on education, Huxley defines and discusses the role of physical education in helping us to achieve these ideals:

A good physical education should teach awareness on the physical plane--not the obsessive and unwished-for awareness that pain imposes upon the mind, but voluntary and intentional awareness.  The body must be trained to think . . . The awareness that our bodies need is the knowledge of some general principle of right integration and along with it, a knowledge of the proper way to apply that principle in every phase of physical activity . . . Mind and body are organically one; and it is therefore inherently likely that, if we can learn the art of conscious inhibition on the physical level, it will help us to acquire and practice the same art on the emotional and intellectual levels.  What is needed is a practical morality working at every level from the bodily to the intellectual.  A good physical education will be one that supplies the body with just such a practical morality.  It will be a curative morality, a morality of inhibition and conscious control, and at the same time, by promoting health and proper physical integration, it will be a system of what I have called preventive ethics.  8

After this stirring preamble, Huxley comes to a bold declaration:  “So far as I am aware, the only system of physical education which fulfills all these conditions is the system developed by F.M. Alexander.”  9   He continues:

I am sure, as a matter of personal experience and observation, that it gives us all the things we have been looking for in a system of physical education:  relief from strain due to maladjustment and consequent improvement in physical and mental health; increased consciousness  of the physical  means employed to gain the ends proposed by the will and, along with this, a general working on the physical level to prevent the body from slipping back . . . We cannot ask more from any system of physical education; nor, if we seriously desire to alter human beings in a desirable direction, can we ask any less. 10

Huxley’s words attracted Jones’s attention and inspired him to make an appointment for his first lesson with Alexander’s brother, “A.R.”, who was living in Boston at the Braemore Hotel on Commonwealth Avenue.  Helen recalled that when Frank came back from the lesson she immediately noticed the change in him and told him, “Whatever it is, you’ll have to keep on with it.” 11   Frank later recounted that his health began improving rapidly.  Breathing was less labored, he felt lighter, and moving was easier.  In time he began throwing out bottles of allergy medication, and his energy returned.  Soon Frank, Helen, and their oldest son, Tom, were traveling to Boston for lessons with A.R.  In his book, Jones later vividly describes his first experience of standing up out of a chair while being guided gently by A.R.’s skilled hands:

The most striking aspect of the movement, however, was the sensory effect of lightness that it induced.  The feeling had not been present at the start, nor had it been suggested to me; it was clearly a direct effect of the movement.  While it lasted, everything I did, including breathing, became easier.  After a short time the effect faded away, leaving me, however, with the certainty that I had glimpsed a new world of experience which had more to offer than the limited set of movement patterns, attitudes, and responses to which I was accustomed.  12

 It was Huxley’s description of the Alexander technique, which launched the quiet, personal revolution that led Jones to study the technique; but it was the global upheaval of the Second World War that presented him with the opportunity to become an Alexander teacher.  Due to the heavy bombing of London and their fear that Alexander was on Hitler’s “enemy” list, Alexander’s friends urged him to leave England. 13   He wasn’t eager to go but eventually acquiesced.  On July 8, 1940, a group consisting of Alexander, several of his assistants, and a number of children from his school sailed to Canada.  Two months later Jones took his first lesson with F.M. Alexander in Southwest Harbor, Maine, where Alexander was staying with friends.  By October the two Alexander brothers were alternately teaching in New York City and Boston, and Frank began having regular lessons with F.M.  Of his lessons with the Alexander brothers during the waning months of 1940 and into the winter of 1941, Jones later explained in his book that the lessons were now convincing him that Alexander’s method held the potential for yielding benefits--both physical and emotional--far greater than he had originally imagined.  14

However, the future of the technique itself was looking bleak.  The war caused the suspension of the teacher-training program in England, the number of private students had dropped off sharply, and several of Alexander’s limited number of trained teachers were serving overseas in the armed forces.  Alexander did not advertise to attract potential students to undertake his teacher-training course, but when he spotted an individual with education and talent who might serve to advance the work, he didn’t hesitate to suggest it.  Thus it was Alexander who raised the idea of training to Frank, and Alexander’s temporary relocation to the United States, which made it possible. 15

Frank’s decision to become a teacher was unusual.  Some would even characterize it as risky.  He was thirty-six; he and Helen now had three children (a second son, Evan, was born in 1939); he was an assistant professor at Brown University and his career in classics showed every indication of enjoying continued success; and the family was comfortable and happy in Providence.  Moreover, there were only a handful of Alexander teachers practicing in the U.S., which meant it would be a distinctly solitary and uphill career path.  Jones also had reservations about whether he had sufficient talent for it, believing that he wasn’t good with his hands. 16   But despite the many difficulties and reservations, Jones decided to do it.  He was convinced the technique held significant implications for both education and the health sciences.  Since the Alexander brothers were both in their seventies, their opportunity to train more teachers was starkly limited.  Many of those who had been trained were now serving overseas and Jones thought it likely they would not return.  It seemed to Jones that the technique could disappear, surviving only in obscure literary references to Dewey and Huxley. 17

Although several of his friends attempted to dissuade him, Helen recalled that it wasn’t a particularly difficult decision.  “It meant so much to us personally, we didn’t worry too much about what others thought.” 18   In Helen, Frank had a partner who shared his keenly felt sense of the importance of the technique and the precariousness of its future.  They also shared an altruistic sensibility, which enabled them to value, and to dedicate themselves, to something larger than themselves.  Thus, despite the inconvenience, the insecurity of a career change, and the reservations of colleagues, Jones chose to commit his future to the technique.

The New Profession

In January 1941, F.M. settled in Stow, Massachusetts, with his small staff and the school children that traveled with them from England.  The group lived in a large, Victorian house known as the Whitney Homestead that belonged to the Unitarian Society.  It was here that Frank began his training in July 1941.  At first he was the only student on the course and enjoyed a great deal of personal attention from F.M.  Then Helen joined Frank on the training the following summer.  Although it was wartime and the circumstances were unusual, Alexander was meticulous about stating in writing the terms of their agreement.  It was understood that, because at least initially, Frank was unable to attend class regularly, F.M. would schedule the course in a way that fit Jones’s schedule. 19   Alexander also specified that, in the event that he returned to England before Jones finished, his brother A.R. would complete his training. 20

Frank traveled to Stow in the summer and in the winter to Boston where A.R. and F.M. conducted the course on alternate weeks.  Then, in the spring of 1942, the Jones family put their belongings in storage and moved into the Homestead for the summer.  Those few months proved to be a bright spot in the midst of the pressing bleakness of wartime.  Alexander, his teachers, staff, the school children, and several American families shared residence in the two large old buildings.  Helen recalled her days there as some of the easiest and pleasantest of her young adulthood.  Her children were schooled on the premises and had ready playmates.  Meals were prepared by the staff.  And F.M. and his teachers were stimulating company.

Just five months later, however, Alexander was forced to close the school, since the Unitarians decided to sell the Homestead.  In addition gasoline was being rationed so students found it difficult to travel to their lessons, and hired help for the large group was difficult to find. 21   Alexander moved into an apartment at the Hotel Blackstone in New York City, and the training class moved to Boston under A.R.’s tutelage.  The Jones family relocated to Chestnut Hill outside of Boston and four new students entered Frank and Helen’s class.

That winter Frank wrote his first article on the technique, which was published in January in School and Society.  It examined Alexander’s influence on the philosophy of one of his most famous pupils, John Dewey. 22   Shortly afterward Alexander wrote to Jones from New York complimenting him on the article and requesting reprints. 23   Then in June, homesick and tired of being so far from friends and family who were enduring so much at home, Alexander and his staff sailed for England.

In September A.R. moved the training course once more, this time to Media, Pennsylvania, where it became affiliated with a Quaker school known as the Media Friends School.  The Jones family had to move again but took it in stride.  They stayed in Media for two years, during which time Frank completed his training and assisted A.R.  He also taught English part-time at the Pennsylvania Military College and kept his classical interests alive by publishing two papers, The Role of the Classics in the Emancipation of Women   24 and Anthony Trollope and the Classics.  25   In June 1944 Jones received his certificate to teach signed by A.R. “in lieu of F.M. Alexander.”

That summer A.R. suffered a stroke and had to stop teaching for several months.  Jones received a letter from F.M. in London asking about A.R.’s condition and requesting Jones’s help in recovering the belongings he had left behind:  books, personal effects, a box of cigars, and 27 1/2 pounds of tea that had been given to the school. 26   The latter was by far the most important item since it was wartime and tea in England was nearly as prized as gold.  Thus began what Frank was to refer to as “the tea correspondence,” as Frank and F.M. battled the many government regulators, and regulations, that delayed the return of the goods.  The matter was not completely settled for a year and a half.  In the meantime Frank and F.M. corresponded over a wide range of topics.

F.M.’s letters were mostly concerned with the tea, A.R.’s health, and the state of the technique in England where it was beginning to flourish.  He wrote to Jones, “The future of the work is assured in this country.  The trouble is we cannot supply the demand for the books even with the extra permits for paper granted the publishers.” 27   Due to shortages caused by the war, special permits for paper had to be obtained in order to continue publishing Alexander’s books. In November, F.M. commented to Jones that he wished A.R. could write to him: “I hope that A.R. is making progress and look forward to the time when he will be writing me again.  Have not had a letter from him for a long time now.” 28   Cared for in part by Frank and the other students on the course, A.R. recovered sufficiently to teach again that winter but his health was clearly deteriorating.  In a letter written in February 1945, F.M. counseled Frank on starting to teach:

I am glad that you have made a start in teaching and wish you all success.  Don’t take people whose conditions are such that your experience does not meet your needs in dealing with them.  Believe me, a sound warning.  If all those who come into the new Profession will heed it they will succeed, but not otherwise.  29

Several months later Frank gave a talk on the technique to the parent’s council at the school in Media and again sent reprints to F.M. 30   In May, when the Joneses were preparing to leave Media and move to Boston, F.M. wrote:  “I am so glad that you are pleased with your preparations for starting in Boston and Providence where you should soon gather in A.R.’s connections and build up from that.  It could prove a very sound foundation.” 31

Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go according to plan.  After four moves in four years, the Jones family was expecting to settle down at last.  A.R., whose health had improved but wasn’t yet fully recovered, left for a vacation in England.  Frank was to begin building his teaching practice by contacting A.R.’s former students.  But Dolly Dailey, who entered the teacher training course when it moved from Stow to Boston and worked as A.R.’s secretary/housekeeper, had A.R.’s address book and inexplicably refused to let Frank have it. 32   Helen spoke of this chapter in their history with a frustrated shake of her head and a perplexed expression.  There was nothing they could do.  Frank had to begin from scratch.

Certified Teacher of the F.M. Alexander Technique

Frank wrote to F.M. often, requesting his advice on building a practice and teaching.  In a letter dated July 16, 1945, Jones asked F.M. how to identify himself in the phone book.  Alexander replied, “Regarding the telephone.  Well, now, you put me ‘on the stand.’  What about ‘Body Mechanics’, or ‘Animate Mechanics,’ or ‘Re-education of Animate Mechanisms.’” 33   Two months later Alexander revised his advice: “Regarding your query, I advise that you put in the telephone book--’Certified Teacher of the F. Matthias Alexander Technique.’” 34   It seems that even Alexander himself had trouble deciding on what to name his method.

Later that fall Alexander again advised Jones:  “have a sheet . . . printed telling that you are a trained teacher and giving some short quotations which you think will attract people.” 35   Frank sent him a copy of what he had written.  He titled it, “Lessons in the Application of F.M. Alexander’s Principle of Primary Control in Individual Problems.”  It began:  “The primary control may be defined as the mechanism by means of which thought is translated into action.” 36   Alexander wrote back, suggesting instead:

The primary control of the use of ourselves in the activity of living may be most accurately defined as that relativity of the head to the neck, and the head and neck to the body, at a given time, which makes for the integrated use of the mechanisms of the self as an indivisible whole.  37

In truth, neither description shed much light on the technique for an uninitiated reader.  But this small exchange between them highlighted Frank’s dilemma.  Because he couldn’t explain the technique in a satisfactory way, he knew that he didn’t yet understand it fully.  As a classicist-turned-scientist, Jones would devote himself to doing just this:  to scientifically demonstrating the physiological mechanisms underlying the primary control, by means of which an almost infinitesimally small change of the head and neck could so radically alter a person’s coordination, behavior, and consciousness of himself.

A.R. Alexander

The next year and a half mark a sad chapter in the story of the Alexander Technique as A.R., who had intended only to visit England for a short time, found himself unable to return.  The U.S. authorities were insisting that due to his poor health he had to obtain the guarantee of an American citizen to support him in the event that he should become sick and unable to support himself.  Furthermore, they required this guarantee in spite of the fact that A.R. was financially secure and could always have received, if necessary, further support from his brother. 38   Jones and F.M. discuss this problem throughout their letters of the period, as it becomes increasingly clear that Dolly Dailey and Esther Duke, who had been responsible for bringing A.R. to Media, would not grant the necessary guarantee. 39   In September Jones told Alexander that there were now nine people in the training class in Media, which was being run by Dolly Dailey--herself only a beginning teacher.  F.M. replied:

I could not approve of people with the experience of those concerned teaching--or rather trying--to teach people to teach.  It is absurd and unjust to those foolish enough to be led into it . . . It is a sad, sad experience for me at my age to find this occur after the way I have protected the interests, present and future, of the work in your country and elsewhere.  Of course, my brother’s illness must have completely upset his judgment and his difficulty in getting back to [the] USA is entirely due to this. 40

In January 1947, A.R. himself learned of their refusal.  F.M. wrote to Jones:

Mrs. Duke has written to tell A.R. she will not give the guarantee required.  This after leading him to believe that she would.  From the first I was certain that she never intended to do this but A.R. placed complete faith in her promise and that of D.D. [Dolly Dailey].  It has proved a great shock to him I can assure you, from which I fear he may not quickly recover . 41

Indeed, A.R. died three months later in England at F.M.’s home in Kent, Penhill House.

Jones and Dewey

Amid these events Jones was going about the business of building his practice in Boston and teaching once a week in New York.  His ideas and questions about the technique, however, continued to percolate and the closing years of the decade saw Jones entertaining the idea of research. 42   Perhaps the strongest force propelling him in this direction, in addition to his own intellectual curiosity, was the renowned American philosopher, John Dewey.

Dewey had studied with Alexander during World War I and in the early 1920s, when Alexander taught in New York for several months each year.  Dewey assisted Alexander with one of his books and wrote introductions for three others. 43   He also specifically referred to the technique in several of his own works. 44   Dewey was well versed in the practice and theory of the technique and even tried to get foundation support for a scientific investigation of it.

In Dewey, Jones found a compatriot.  Dewey shared Jones’s sense of the importance of such an investigation, as well as the belief that Alexander had made an important discovery about human behavior but did not fully understand how it worked.  Their letters reveal Jones grappling with a number of difficult questions and offer an interesting glimpse into Jones’s thinking at the time.  Much of what he discussed with Dewey proved to be key themes underlying his future research.

Early in their correspondence in 1947, Jones sent Dewey a draft of the article he was working on entitled, “A New Field for Inquiry.”  Dewey replied with praise commenting that he liked the way Jones spoke of his own experience in studying the work.  Dewey’s only advice was that Jones should emphasize the fact that, “’naturally’ we have the required organic mechanism and that the [Alexander] lessons are but a recovering [of] what we have lost by our own misuse.” 45

Jones replied to Dewey explaining that the difficulty he had in writing the article was in clarifying his own thinking about the technique.  He said that neither Alexander’s writings nor the lessons had explained the experience to his satisfaction, and that he’d had to puzzle it out for himself. 46   He added that he took issue with F.M.’s definition of the primary control as a certain relativity of the head to the neck, and the head and neck to the body, as Alexander had defined it to Jones in his letter in 1945.  “To me, this relativity is the index of how the organism is being used at a particular moment; the control is the thinking itself.” 47 Commenting further he added:

. . . the instant I begin to think . . . to take in  the relativity between my head and neck, a control is established even though there has been no overt change anywhere…

This was then followed, he added, by an awareness of an ‘integrating force’ that worked within him to improve his overall coordination and balance. 48

Dewey replied agreeing with Jones.  “The ‘relativity’ of the head etc., etc.’ is not a name for [the] primary control but rather for the mechanism by which the control is erected or is missed.” 49

The conversations with Dewey helped Jones to test and hone his thinking about Alexander’s work.  In 1948 Jones wrote Dewey to tell him that he had been reading Dewey’s Art as Experience:

. . . to say that I find it helpful and stimulating would be a bad understatement. . . I had never considered before the fact that there is a time-space relationship in all perception.  The fact is vital for an understanding of the primary control and the experiences related to it. 50

In fact the book had an important influence on Jones’s thinking and strengthened his interest in kinesthetic perception.  He told Dewey that the book helped him to understand that kinesthesia, the felt sense of our bodies, could be made conscious and that our perception of this kinesthesia has “order, movement, [and] extension in time and space.”51   It also has “a freshness,” said Jones, since the self is always changing, too, and these changes in the self are reflected in a continually changing perception of the kinesthetic experience.

From his earliest lessons, Jones had been struck by the improvement in his health, the increasing clarity of his kinesthetic perception, the ease with which he found himself able to move, and particularly by the sense of near weightlessness of his body as he moved.  This sensation of lightness intrigued him.  Since it was so consistently a result of the lessons--not only for him but for others as well, Jones reasoned that there must be some “organic mechanism,” as Dewey put it, that the Alexanders were activating in their students when they moved the head and neck. 51   And, whatever they called it--the primary control or otherwise--it was the manner in which they moved the student’s head and neck, both prior to and during a movement, which appeared to determine the lightness effect.  But this experience was not achieved only through the teacher’s physical manipulation of the student.  Alexander gave precise directions, or ‘orders’ as he sometimes called them, to the student to think--to sustain a clear and conscious intent about the way one was to use oneself in the movement--before actually beginning to move. This change in the student’s thinking facilitated both the lightness and ease of movement.  It also served to heighten the student’s self-perception throughout the movement.

In addition to the kinesthetic change which lessons produced, Jones was impressed by the change in thinking and awareness, which the technique taught him to sustain.  The technique was a method that improved his functioning during the early phase of the lessons and, over time, taught him how to change his manner of thinking so that he could also bring about the changes for himself.

The fact that Jones was so intrigued by the experience and by “how it all worked” gives us a glimpse into his nature.  Although not yet a scientist, Jones was scientifically minded in the best sense of the term.  When presented with the technique for the first time, he reserved judgment until he tried it for himself.  And then, even when it proved to benefit him markedly, he didn’t become infatuated with it as a cure-all or accept it simply on faith. 52   He was not afraid to question how the technique worked or to disagree with Alexander.  Jones wanted to understand, and to do that he required the freedom to explore fully:  to question, observe, experiment, and draw his own conclusions.  Like Dewey, Jones thought that Alexander had not simply created a method to improve posture, as some believed, but had opened the door on an entirely new field--a field that provided a means of increasing our knowledge of ourselves. 53

Dewey’s impact on Jones, then, was pivotal.  The conversations with Dewey gradually evolved from a cordial correspondence to a friendship between like minds.  Jones occasionally gave Dewey lessons at his apartment in New York.  And the issues they discussed, in person and throughout their correspondence--primary control, kinesthetic perception, and the interrelationship of thought and behavior--would form the framework upon which Jones would later build his research.  Dewey’s belief in the importance of scientific investigation, as well as his direct encouragement to Jones, helped strengthen Jones’s resolve.  In his book Jones says of himself during this period in the late 40s when Dewey was encouraging him to do research:

It was increasingly frustrating for me that I was unable to produce any objective evidence for a principle that my senses told me was true and my experience convinced me was of fundamental importance.  I did not consider myself qualified by temperament or training to undertake a scientific investigation, but no one else seemed prepared to undertake one… 54

In 1949, one of Alexander’s pupils, Alla Libbey, gave Jones $500 to spend on research.  Jones was poised for yet another career.

Early Investigations

Before he could undertake a scientific investigation of the technique, however, Jones had a lot to learn.  From the most immediate and practical standpoint, he needed at least a working knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and experimental psychology.  He also needed advice on how to approach the topic experimentally.

Jones was fortunate in many respects.  Although a classicist, he had the willing help of a number of eminent and well-placed scientists.  His friend and colleague, Harold Schlosberg, was an experimental psychologist who had been on the faculty with Jones at Brown and, at the time, was revising a textbook on experimental psychology.  He was well acquainted with experimental techniques for studying sensorimotor phenomena.  He and another eminent psychologist, J. McVicker Hunt, gave Jones the idea that the technique could be investigated within the framework of experimental psychology.  Next there was Grayson McCouch, a professor of neurophysiology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.  Jones met McCouch when he was enrolled in the Alexander teacher training class in Media.  McCouch had done extensive research with Charles Sherrington on postural reflexes in animals.  He believed that the primary control Alexander had discovered enhanced the functioning of the postural reflexes in humans.  He, too, wanted to see someone conduct a scientific investigation and counseled Jones to develop a theory of mechanism to account for the phenomenon that could be tested experimentally.

These people, in addition to advising him, steered Jones toward pertinent reading material, critiqued his writings, and introduced him to other scientists in the field.  Among these were Don Fawcett and Paul Chatfield, both professors at Harvard.  Fawcett taught anatomy and let Jones sit in on his gross anatomy class.  Chatfield assisted Jones with neurophysiology and helped him gain enough familiarity with the field to enable him to read and understand technical papers.

Then Schlosberg introduced Jones to John Kennedy, who was director of the Tufts Institute for Applied Experimental Psychology.  With the $500 from Miss Libbey and the assistance of Kennedy and Dr. Mason Crook, the institute’s scientific director, Jones got started using electromyography.  This enabled him to study muscle activity when subjects sat in their “habitual slouch,” when “sitting up straight,” and when they had been “guided” into a new sitting posture by Jones.  The results of this pilot study done in 1949 were not published, 55 but Jones sent a privately printed copy to Dewey who replied:

There isn’t much use congratulating you personally but the whole movement is to be congratulated on the most important event scientifically that has happened since the anatomical location of the coordination centre at the base of the brain, and potentially more important, I believe. 56

The results of this study were cited several years later in a paper delivered by Dr. Wilfred Barlow to the British Association of Physical Medicine. 57

In 1950 and 1951, Jones began studying the “startle pattern,” a reflexive response of muscle tension, which spreads throughout the body with the stimulus of a sudden, loud noise.  During this time Jones was also corresponding with Alexander about the work of American biologist George Ellett Coghill 58 and the book that had recently been published about Coghill by Judson Herrick.  Herrick wrote about Coghill’s recognition of Alexander’s work and its bearing on Coghill’s research. 59

Coghill spent forty years researching the embryonic and larval stages of amblystoma, a primitive vertebrate, and demonstrated a total pattern of response in the organization of its nervous system.  He showed that the development of the animal’s movement responses began first at the head, and then proceeded downward through the trunk, spreading secondarily into the limbs.  Coghill wrote that Alexander’s work corroborated his own findings by demonstrating that the principles of organization of movement, which he had discovered in the primitive amblystoma were present and operative in humans as well. 60

When Jones wrote to F.M. in early 1952 and told him of his recent research effort and its results, his comments clearly show that he had Coghill’s work in mind.  “I have been interested in finding a way to record a ‘total pattern’ of response,” he wrote, adding that their money ran out so they couldn’t continue the study, but that their results gave a “graphic” demonstration of the nature of the subject’s reaction to a disturbing stimulus. 61   The EMG results showed that the pattern of tension began in the trapezius muscle at the back of the subject’s neck and then proceeded downward through the trunk and into the limbs.  Jones published the results of his research in the Journal of Psychology in 1951, his first published scientific study. 62

About this time Jones met Dr. Arlie Bock, director of student health at Harvard and professor of hygiene.  Bock had heard favorable reports about the Alexander Technique from some of his patients who were also students of Jones’s.  Bock decided to help Jones launch a scientific investigation.  In 1952 Jones wrote to Bock proposing an investigation of muscle tone.  Bock showed the proposal to Dr. Stanley Cobb, chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.  Cobb replied in a letter dated June 13 that Jones’s difficulty was that he was proposing an investigation of an entire field, including techniques spanning from psychological studies to physiological and clinical research.  He offered that Jones had to decide how to reduce his plan to a “single, workable research project” that could answer one of his many questions. 62

Cobb went on to suggest fifteen specific questions culled from the broad outline Jones had made, which he thought would be worthwhile research projects.  Cobb’s letter represents another critical point in Jones’s development as a scientist since it pressed him to more precisely address the question of what he wanted to investigate.  In order to do this, Jones needed to do more than just pick a topic from the list.  He had to grapple with what it was he wanted to know and how to find it out.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to see that Jones thought deeply about these fundamental questions because the direction his research ultimately took was not random or haphazard.  His research was shaped by his belief in what he was doing (reinforced by Dewey) and by the clarity and force of his intellect.  Specifically, Jones wanted to know how Alexander’s primary control worked. 64   He wanted to develop a theory of mechanism to account for the phenomena and to test his theory experimentally.  With characteristic directness and simplicity, Jones went straight for the crux of the matter.

We can now appreciate Jones’s motivation to undertake research and understand the importance of the questions he wanted to answer.  But we can easily fail to recognize the enormity of the problem he was attempting to solve.  On the pragmatic side, he had garnered advice and gained the necessary scientific background; but before he could go on to solve the problem of how to investigate Alexander’s primary control, Jones had to contend with the prevailing attitudes of the day--about the technique and about science itself.

Obstacles to Research

Jones was not the first person to consider conducting a scientific investigation of the technique.  By this time Dr. Wilfred Barlow, a physician and teacher of the technique practicing in London, was conducting clinical trials using before-and-after photography. 65   But the prevailing attitude among Alexander teachers, including F.M. himself, was that the technique couldn’t be successfully investigated and that it didn’t need to be.  In addition Alexander’s work had been criticized as unscientific and his students described as a kind of cult.  The implication of this view was that the technique wasn’t worth investigating.  Important questions, then, loomed before Jones.  Was it possible to scientifically demonstrate the validity of the technique?  What was to be gained by such an investigation?  Was it worth doing?  Why was the technique attacked as “unscientific”?  In order to understand how Jones resolved these questions we must begin by examining the criticisms of Alexander’s work. 

By the 1950s the word “science” typically meant an established body of knowledge dealing with laws governing the physical world.  The term “scientist” was reserved for those who had undergone lengthy study in an established, scientific field; and research was the province of scientists, working in laboratories, armed with devices to measure external phenomena.  The goal of science was to remove the internal, “subjective” self from the process of investigating this external, “objective” reality.  66, 67

The popular concept of subjective versus objective was not only a dichotomy, which split reality into an outer world and an inner self, it removed the self from the realm of valid scientific investigation.  It had become an almost immutable belief that because our perceptions of ourselves were difficult to measure, inconstant, and seemingly unique to each individual, they couldn’t be verified. 68   In short, self-perception couldn’t form the basis of “hard” scientific research.

It wasn’t surprising, then that Alexander’s technique was criticized as unscientific:  Alexander wasn’t a scientist.  His method investigated the self rather than the external world.  And his method of investigation was considered subjective, i.e., faulty, because he obtained his information by means of his own sensory perception rather than by filtering it through the medium of an “objective” external instrument.  Another explanation for the criticism was offered by Mungo Douglas, a physician and student of Alexander’s.  In an article written in 1946, Douglas pointed out that there simply wasn’t any existing scientific proof of the method’s validity because it was not based on a body of previously established facts.  “It is original, and is nowhere an offshoot of any predecessor,” wrote Douglas. 69

In the same article, Douglas addressed another important question:  was a scientific investigation of the technique necessary to establish its validity?  Douglas began by reminding his reader of an older and broader definition of science as “the pursuit of knowledge or truth for its own sake.” 70   He added that John Dewey defined science as “a matter of perfected skill in conducting an inquiry” not “something finished, absolute in itself” but “ . . . the result of a certain technique.” 71   Thus, if science was not a prescribed body of facts but the pursuit of them, then a scientist was someone who did the pursuing:  who observed, gathered information, and sought to determine a causal relationship among events.

As a scientist--in this broader sense--Alexander did indeed conduct a scientific investigation.  Because of a recurring hoarseness that threatened his acting career, he began to observe himself in a mirror and discovered that his felt sensations of what he was doing as he spoke did not correspond with what he saw himself doing when he watched in the mirror.  In particular he noticed that he was tensing his neck and pulling his head back.  He also realized that he hadn’t been aware that he was doing this.  Alexander began experimenting with using a mirror to guide him as he altered the position of his head and neck.  He eventually found a new poise of his head, which seemed to improve his overall functioning as demonstrated by what he saw in the mirror and by the improvement in his voice, breathing, and coordination.  He also noticed that as he maintained this new poise of his head over time, he gradually became able to maintain it without having to look in the mirror.  Alexander discovered that his subconscious habit of tensing his neck muscles was causing his vocal problem.  More importantly he learned to know when he was doing this and he learned how to stop it.

Alexander went on to frame a theory based on his empirical findings about our psychophysical functioning and unity.  First, we do not always know, inherently, what we are feeling.  Feeling and knowing what we are feeling must be considered different aspects of our kinesthetic sense.  Feeling is innate but knowing, or understanding, what we feel is learned and may be interpreted inaccurately.  Next, there is a physiological mechanism (the primary control), governed by the relative position of the head and neck, which plays an important role in determining our overall level of functioning.  Once we learn to maintain this relationship consciously, the functioning of the whole is improved.  In turn, this same mechanism enhances our ability over time to more accurately perceive or understand what we are feeling.

Objective and subjective experience do not arise, then, from the outer world and the inner self--both exist on a single continuum that is our perception.  Alexander found that unnecessary and unconscious habits of malcoordination alter the accuracy of this perception.  If the primary control is interfered with, our feeling and understanding become skewed; when it is operative, feeling and knowing become aligned ever more precisely and accurately with each other.  Alexander had accomplished nothing less than opening the door to a means of scientifically examining ourselves--objectively--using our own self-perception.  As Douglas expressed it:

If science is the pursuit of knowledge or truth for its own sake, then the primary task of the scientist is to make observations and the first task of the observer is to prove that his own means of making observations are reliable, and it is to this service Alexander has applied himself.  72

Douglas concluded, then, that by learning the technique itself we generate our own scientific evidence, or proof, of the validity of the method.  Since by learning to use the primary control our overall functioning is improved, as is our ability to perceive this change, we have gained a means of knowing--for ourselves--that we are using the method successfully and that it works.  Inherent within the process of learning and using the technique, then, was its own means of scientific validation and no further proof was necessary.  The technique was, as Douglas put it, “a unique example of operational verification” 73 since the student could experience and demonstrate its validity for himself.

After reading Douglas’s article, Jones wrote to Alexander to tell him how impressed he was with it.  Jones added that critics of the technique seemed to think it could be proved or disproved in a clinical study, in the same way that drugs were shown to be effective. Instead, he pointed out, Alexander had made it possible for each of us to use scientific method in the study of ourselves, and to gain an “expanding control” over the self in the same way that scientists had been using scientific method for hundreds of years to expand their understanding of the external world. 74 

Although Jones agreed with Douglas that the technique offered a ‘unique example of operational verification,’ he did not agree however with Douglas’s conclusion that further scientific validation was unnecessary.  As many teachers of the day expressed it, “Don’t worry about proof--just get on with teaching.”  Jones, however, continued to believe that a scientific investigation was important.  But before he could begin to address the matter, Jones also had to give some thought to the views of Alexander himself.  Why was Alexander so obstinately opposed to such an investigation?

Up until this time, the few scientific studies that had been attempted were clinical trials.  For example, Dr. Wilfred Barlow was conducting a clinical experiment using before-and-after photography of students who had had a series of Alexander lessons. 75  The photographs showed that the subjects experienced a variety of physical changes, such as increase in overall height.  The goal of clinical research, such as Barlow’s, is primarily to demonstrate that something has produced a given result or effect--for instance that a particular drug lowers blood pressure.  However, clinical research has important limitations.  For example, clinical research does not establish how or why a specific effect, such as lowering blood pressure, has been achieved.  Clinical research can’t definitively establish that the Alexander technique, for example--and nothing else--has produced a given result, since it is too difficult to control all the variables that are affecting a subject at a given time.  Finally, clinical research can’t account for a possible placebo effect or for autosuggestion; and it doesn’t prove that the same results couldn’t be achieved by other means.

Another problem, of which Alexander was well aware, was that the lack of a successful test outcome wasn’t necessarily proof that the technique “didn’t work.”  Alexander understood that the very nature of the technique was a process of self-inquiry that rendered sensory impressions more reliable and by means of which the individual could learn to activate the primary control to enhance his functioning.  But Alexander also knew that the effects of the primary control varied according to the pre-existing state of each individual.  More importantly, since the technique was an educational process that gave the student the means to change, it was the student who possessed the freedom and the responsibility to choose to use it or not.  Thus, Alexander knew it was impossible to predict with certainty what specific improvements or changes a student might experience or when.

Dewey claimed that Alexander had discouraged his efforts to launch a scientific investigation of the technique but we can now better appreciate that Alexander understood--and feared--its potential pitfalls.  Any investigation launched by scientists who hadn’t experienced the technique and didn’t understand what it did, applying methods of investigation antithetical to its essential hands-on learning process, seemed to him to have little chance for success.  Alexander also knew that the technique was not an attempt to cure anything, despite the criticisms that it failed in this respect.  The “effect” of the technique was itself a process that the student had to learn and then implement.  Testing for a specific result of that process was, in Alexander’s mind, a faulty basis on which to conduct an experiment and sure to fail.  As Jones put it in his letter to Alexander, it wasn’t at all like taking a drug, whose effects could be clearly demonstrated and predicted.  So Alexander believed it wasn’t possible to prove the validity of the technique.  He also feared that if it was attempted and failed, the developing reputation of the technique, for which he had worked so long, would be set back. 76

Jones understood the limitations inherent in clinical studies.  He understood Alexander’s argument that such an approach sought to prove that the technique produced a certain result, whereas the aim of the technique itself was a learning process, not a specific physical change or health benefit.  However, because of the advice and guidance he received from the scientists he knew, Jones--unlike Alexander--understood that the methods of experimental research, as opposed to clinical research, offered a fundamentally different approach to scientific investigation.  Experimental research offered the possibility of getting at the more fundamental question of demonstrating the existence of the primary control and how it worked.  This is precisely what Jones hoped to do.

In order to better understand what experimental studies can accomplish, it is useful to return to Alexander’s discovery.  Alexander, acting alone, began by making empirical observations of himself as he watched himself speaking, and then posed a theory to explain those observations.  Many scientific discoveries have been made in this way, seemingly by accident, often by individuals untrained as scientists.  Typically they have been astute and patient observers, watching carefully, testing their observations, trying out new possibilities, and then forming their conclusions.  Initial discoveries such as these are sometimes the dawning of new sciences:  first, the simple act of observation; next, the formulation of a theoretical framework to explain the relationship among the observed events.

However, a third stage must then take place in the evolution:  the process of scientific validation.  As Dewey said, the theory must be tested.  Through experimental research, a cause and effect relationship is established by reducing the variables so that it can be determined what mechanism has caused the phenomenon; then data is gathered, analyzed, compared.  Through painstaking study and repetition, the phenomenon must be shown to be an occurrence that can be recreated by others and reliably predicted to occur under given conditions.  In the process, experimental studies offer a means for determining how and why an observed phenomenon works and for validating or refuting the truth of the theory that has been developed to explain it.

Alexander identified the existence of the primary control in humans, formulated a theory to explain it, and then developed a method for teaching people to use it consciously.  But Jones, with the instinct of a scientist, was facing the challenge of the next step.  He understood that experimental research could yield a better understanding of the underlying physiological mechanism of Alexander’s primary control and validate the discovery itself.  Through this means he sought to prove that Alexander had discovered a fundamental principle of human behavior and to advance the technique as a new field for inquiry.  He hoped to show that it was the beginning of “a new science of man.” 77   In order to conduct an experimental study, however, Jones had to find a way to conduct his investigation through the translating medium of existing technology and the methodology of operationalism.  In other words, he had to find a way first to record, then to precisely measure, and finally to analyze the movements of the head and neck using existing technology and applying procedures that could be precisely described--cookbook fashion--so that another scientist could repeat his methods and yield similar results.  Jones was fortunate to have ample advice from some excellent scientists and to have the opportunity, through John Kennedy, to work in an experimental psychology laboratory.  But the clarity and intelligence with which he approached the problem, his motivation, and his unique suitability--as a scientist and an Alexander teacher--created an amalgam of personal strengths which, in the end, contributed greatly to Jones’s success.

In 1952 Jones found himself contemplating his response to Cobb’s long and thoughtful letter suggesting possible areas of investigation.  He wasn’t satisfied with Douglas’s idea that there already existed sufficient validation of the technique within the method itself.  Like Alexander, Jones concluded that a clinical investigation was designed to prove something he did not want to prove, couldn’t answer the question he was asking, and wasn’t conclusive enough.  Unlike Alexander, however, Jones enjoyed the benefit of the guidance and insight of a number of renowned scientists.  They gave him reason to believe that through experimental psychology he could find a means to test and demonstrate the mechanism Alexander discovered and bridge the gap from Alexander’s new and solitary discovery to the larger, more professional, and more public arena of scientific research.  About this time Jones received a second gift for research.  He used it to explore a multiple-image photography technique.  This appeared promising because, unlike still photography, the method could capture on film relative changes in the position of body parts such as the head and neck over time.

In 1954, on the basis of letters of recommendation from the scientists who had been helping him and his findings from the study on the startle pattern, Jones applied for--and received--a two-year grant from the Carnegie Corporation to study the role of postural reflexes in human behavior.  By this time he had also received a research assistantship at the Institute for Applied Experimental Psychology.  In the five years since he received his first financial support for research, Jones had acquired the knowledge he needed formulated an initial plan and method of investigation, and found a place to conduct his studies.  A year later he and his research assistant, Marshall Narva, published their first paper. 78

Research

Jones was finally ready to delve into the concrete question of how to begin:  how to record the small, subtle movements of a subject’s head and neck so that these movements could be measured, and the measurements analyzed and compared.  The method would need to be relatively uncomplicated, and it had to be inexpensive since funding was limited.  From 1955 through 1958, Jones would devote himself largely to testing and refining his recording techniques.  He began with still photography but quickly moved on to multiple-image photography which allowed him to capture on film a succession of images of a simple movement, such as standing up or sitting down.  In 1956 he published an article detailing his technique for using strobe lighting with the aid of techniques developed by Harold Edgerton at M.I.T. 79   Initially, in order to obtain sufficient lighting and to create identifiable marks on the subject’s body for measurement, light bulbs were attached to the subject’s clothing.  For the subject, who was being photographed while moving, this was quite an encumbrance.  Jones tried Edgerton’s strobe lighting using reflecting tape on the subject’s clothing and achieved better results.

Jones also experimented with the placement of the reflecting tape in order to obtain more accurate measurements of the movement of the head and neck, and with different flash rates of the strobe light.  By 1958 he added a revolving wheel in front of the camera lens. 80   The wheel had five apertures, each covered by a gelatin filter of a different color.  This color-coding technique helped him to more easily determine which of the many overlapping images on the film corresponded with each other and to more easily calculate the rate of movement of body parts relative to each other.

Throughout this period, Jones was refining his methods for measuring the movements he had recorded.  He placed reflecting tape on the head, midway between the tragion of the ear and lowest point of the orbit of the eye; on the sternal notch; at the top of the seventh vertebrae; and on the upper arm and thigh.  The first three markers, when connected, defined a triangle; the angles that were created by the sides of this triangle, and the angles created by a single side of the triangle and the line of the horizon, provided the source of quantitative data which he needed to study the movements of the subject’s head and neck.

As Jones filmed a subject moving from sitting to standing, for example, he could now quantitatively determine how much, and in what direction, the head had moved relative to the torso.  With markers on the arms and legs he could also note the rate of speed of body parts during different phases of the movement and follow the trajectory of the head in space.  By now Jones had a workable methodology for obtaining data that was increasingly sophisticated and precise, and was yielding valuable information.

In the early 1960s he continued adding to this data on the head and neck through the use of x-rays to examine the changes in the cervical vertebrae after he had guided a subject’s head and neck into the “experimental” position, 81 and EEG studies to measure activity in neck muscles, particularly the sternocleidomastoid and the trapezius. 82

Now, rather than defining the placement of the head as “forward and up” or as a “relative position of the head to the neck, and the head and neck to the torso,” as Alexander did, Jones could speak with more precision.  He found that the poise of the head which Alexander had utilized so effectively could also be described in these terms:  the center of gravity of the head moved forward and up relative to the top of the spine creating a slight stretch on the extensor muscles of the neck and back.  This increased their tonus or strength, enabling the back musculature to easily support the torso in an upright poise against gravity.  There was also an increase in the distance between the first two vertebrae and a decrease in activity in the sternomastoid and trapezius muscles.

As early as 1958, Jones was using his increasing knowledge to expand on the familiar concept of posture. “Our concept of posture is based on the principle that all other relations between parts are subordinate to the relation of the head to the trunk.”  83  Jones explained that with multiple-image photography he could examine posture as a dynamic rather than static phenomenon--as “the manifestation of a changing relationship among the parts of an integrated whole.” 84   In other words his methods allowed him to obtain a record showing posture as a relationship between the head and the spine and as a function of time as well as space.

Now that Jones was able to define the poise of the head, he could go on to record, measure, and analyze what this change produced.  He set about the task of documenting its effect on the subject’s total pattern of movement and its role in creating the kinesthetic effect of lightness and ease that subjects experienced.  The following year he conducted a study in which subjects were given twenty lessons in the Alexander technique, rather than just being guided briefly by Jones during the photographic sessions. 85   With greater time allotted to learning the method, Jones found that the subject’s overall patterns of movement changed noticeably.  They were more coordinated, and there was greater uniformity in the movement from subject to subject.  For example, the head and trunk followed a different trajectory in the movement from sit to stand.  This trajectory was smoother, with less forward movement of the torso before the subject began to rise.  The movement itself was completed in less time, although subjects recounted the seemingly contradictory sense of having more time in which to move.  Jones also found that the subject’s upward movement of the head began simultaneously with the movement of the thighs and that the velocity of the torso didn’t slow down at the point at which the subject began to rise from the chair.

He documented the lightness effect by giving subjects an adjective checklist and asking them to select the words that best described the felt sense of the movement.  Seventy-two per cent of the subjects chose the word “lighter.”  Later, in 1970, Jones used a strain gauge force platform to determine that the subject’s felt sense of reduction in effort corresponded with the amount of force used as measured by the force platform. 86

In 1963 Jones introduced the concept of ‘postural set,’ which was an important adjunct to Alexander’s concept of misuse. 87   Alexander saw that when a student altered the poise of the head by pulling it back and down into the neck, there was an accompanying pattern of malcoordination that was produced throughout the body.  He termed this ‘misuse.’  To elaborate on this idea, Jones drew on psychology’s use of the term ‘set,’ which is an attitude of expectancy that limits our ability to respond. 88   Jones expanded on this idea by coining the phrase ‘postural set’ which referred to a “postural change that precedes and accompanies movement.” 89

He went on to show that the position of the head and neck could be used as an index of this postural set.  After being told to stand up but before doing so, subjects typically responded to their intent to move by pulling the head back and down.  This postural set affected the characteristic pattern of the movement that followed.  When Jones guided the subject to achieve a better poise of the head prior to moving, thus altering the postural set, the movement response also changed.  He points out that our usual notion of posture is that it consists in a particular configuration of body parts that can be held and maintained with exercise and achieved through will power.  Instead, posture should be seen as dynamic to allow for continual changes and adjustments.  Jones concluded that our postural sets limit our problem-solving behaviors.  In contrast, “the value of this direct kinesthetic experience is that it serves to break up a set and thus facilitates the formation of a new concept.” 90   

Jones was beginning to establish the all-important link, which so fascinated him when he first started to study the technique, between the intent to act, or thought of moving, and the nature of the response that followed.  By guiding the subject’s head to achieve the improved poise before he began to move, Jones was helping the subject to change his postural set and thus to significantly change the movement itself.  As Alexander had discovered, the key ingredient in the subject’s ability to change his postural set was the kinesthetic experience he received from the Alexander teacher’s hands.  Once he had experienced it, he learned to alter the postural set himself, thus enabling him to change his habitual response.

In 1965 Jones published perhaps his best work, “A Method for Changing Stereotyped Response Patterns by the Inhibition of Certain Postural Sets.” 91   It was a thorough summary of his research to date and included an introspective report of his own experience learning the technique.  Jones concluded the article by explaining that by learning to inhibit the postural set which interferes with the poise of the head, we gain conscious control of a stereotyped response.  “In so doing, says Jones, we “greatly enlarge the area of behavior where choice can operate.” 92

Jones was then able to explore a wider range of problems and questions.  Since his data enabled him to precisely define a normal pattern of movement, he compared this with the movements of neurologically impaired patients, suggesting that his methodology could become an important diagnostic tool. 93   He also compared his findings with studies done by other researchers concerning the effect of posture on heart rate 94 and neck muscle tension. 95   Jones introduced his data into the investigation of these questions and suggested that the results of these studies should be reevaluated in light of his findings.

In a paper published in 1964, Jones reexamined the startle pattern and linked the overall lack of muscle tone that is characteristic of the startle reaction with the malposture of old age. 96   He suggested that the startle reaction was a paradigm of malposture and that it was akin to the organism’s pattern of response to stress.  The malposture that comes with aging is a result of the individual’s lifelong accumulation of stressful reactions.  Jones proposed that instead of recommending exercise to counter this, we ought to be examining the nature of our postural responses to stress and finding ways to change our responses as they occur.

Near the end of his research career, Jones had acquired the knowledge, techniques, and data necessary to launch a simple but important clinical study.  Now that he had a means for documenting changes in the subject’s head, neck, and back, he could correlate these changes with results from a sound spectroscopy test.  Jones used the spectroscope to compare changes in a singer’s vocal quality before and after receiving lessons in the Alexander Technique.  These results, as well as independent judgments of musicians who listened to recordings of the singer’s voice, verified that as the singer’s primary control improved, so did the resonance of her voice. 97

This clinical study was the culmination of two and a half decades of research.  Its significance lies chiefly in the fact that since Jones had developed a methodology for recording and measuring the relative change in the head, neck, and back, he could then establish that this change, and nothing else, was responsible for the improvement in the singer’s voice.  Conducting clinical studies to show the physical benefits of the primary control had not been Jones’s objective.  Rather, he sought to use experimental research techniques to develop a method for measuring the head, neck, back relationship and demonstrating that this relationship played a role in determining the overall coordination of the subject, and for developing a theory to explain how this mechanism worked. 98   As the result of his research, Jones presented this hypothesis:

1. The reflex response of the organism to gravity is a fundamental feedback mechanism, which integrates other reflex systems.

2. Under civilized conditions this mechanism is commonly interfered with by habitual, learned responses, which disturb the tonic relation between head, neck, and trunk.

3. When this interference is perceived kinesthetically, it can be inhibited.  By this means the antigravity response is facilitated and its integrative effect on the organism is restored. 99

In addition to his own research, Jones gathered further support for his theory from the existing scientific literature, most importantly the work of Rudolf Magnus.  Magnus investigated postural reflexes which are involved, for example, in enabling a cat, when held upside down and dropped, to right itself in midair by first orienting its head to the horizon and then rotating its body in relation to its head, thus landing on its feet. Magnus’s studies led him to the conclusion that in vertebrates there exists an array of reflexes which, acting together organize the animal’s movements so that the head leads the body in movement. 100

The existence of these reflexes had thus already been established through the work of Magnus, Sherrington, and others.  But Alexander observed that our learned habits of malcoordination and tension imbalance prevent these reflexes from functioning fully.  This then creates a sort of internal “tug of war” between reflexes and our learned behaviors.  Alexander’s technique is a means by which we can learn to restore our innate potential for integration.  As Jones eloquently expressed it, the technique is “a means for improving motor performance in such a way that the voluntary does not interfere with the reflex and the reflex facilitates the voluntary.” 101

Jones’s research, then, validated the accuracy of Alexander’s empirical observations.  His research showed that the head, neck, back relationship plays a key role in altering our overall coordination and ease of movement.  He showed that this change is accompanied by a sensory effect of lightness and less effort; that it affects such autonomic functions as heart rate and respiration; and that it even alters vocal resonance and quality.  Jones’s research also demonstrates that the primary control is not a fixed position but a dynamic relationship that must be free to continually readjust itself over time as the individual engages in activity.  That is, the individual must maintain a dynamic equilibrium of the whole of itself, while using any particular part of itself.  Jones’s research, with corroborating evidence from Magnus and others, lent important support and validation to Alexander’s observations that the primary control serves to integrate the postural reflexes to assist in the optimal functioning of the organism.

This accomplishment is significant enough that it would be easy to presume that Jones’s research became his chief occupation and interest.  But Jones’s experiments were not ends in themselves.  They were the means by which he hoped to give Alexander’s discovery greater validation.  And he hoped this validation, in turn, would encourage more people to embark on an exploration of the method and discover the insights and freedom, which it offered.  In fact, it would be more accurate to say that Jones’s commitment to Alexander’s new profession actually sprang from his own interest in consciousness and its role in endowing us with the capacity to understand and change our behavior.  For example, Jones commented in an article he wrote in 1967 that he hoped psychology, as a relatively new science, would not simply gather data and proffer theories but offer people the specific means to “achieve a more rational control of human behavior.” 102

Throughout his career, Jones never stopped teaching the Alexander Technique or writing about it for the lay public.  Although he did not study consciousness per se in the laboratory, in his scientific papers he discusses the technique’s role in enhancing attention and awareness. In his articles for the general public he repeatedly discusses the relationship of the technique to the study of consciousness--even thought it was precisely this aspect of Alexander’s method which, he well knew, was the most difficult to convey in words.  But as early as 1954, Jones began discussing the technique in terms of consciousness.  As a method that teaches the student to recognize and prevent previously learned habitual reactions, the student becomes able to “be aware of his reactions as regular patterns and to control and direct them by releasing latent powers of consciousness.  In the process, consciousness expands and as it does so becomes itself the instrument for further change. 103

Jones believed that Alexander’s technique did more than restore a physiological mechanism that governed postural reflexes.  He believed that the process of learning to restore this mechanism itself became the means through which the individual learned to systematically explore and develop consciousness.  Any discussion of Jones’s ideas and contributions to the Alexander Technique would be incomplete without some further explanation of what he meant by this and why he held this view.

A Means for Developing Consciousness

In the 1950s and 1960s when Jones was conducting his research, consciousness was not considered an acceptable topic for hard, scientific investigation.  Not only was it considered too difficult a subject to study scientifically, but consciousness was frowned upon as an unworthy subject for “serious” scientists.  In the midst of such prevailing attitudes Jones had to temper his insights about the topic with his desire to be viewed as a serious researcher by the scientific community.  In a lecture he delivered to a class at Tufts in 1972, Jones comments that he chose to write about “awareness and attention” (more widely used and accepted scientific terms at that time) rather than consciousness, in order to get around this difficulty. 104

Today, however, the climate has changed radically.  During his presidency George Bush proclaimed the nineties the decade of the brain, and research into consciousness has been launched across a diverse range of professions, from neurobiology and neurology, to psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and computer programming.  New books on the subject appear at a dizzying rate.  And no less an eminent figure that Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA working now at the Salk Institute, has published a book on the subject. 105   Given this change in attitudes, we can hardly deny that Jones was ahead of his time when we read the letter he sent in 1968 to the editor of the American Psychologist proposing the creation of a new science.  Jones termed this new science “synidetics”, and defined it as the study of consciousness:

For a science of synidetics, . . . the subject matter would be the awareness of events that are simultaneously . . . observable within the organism and the environment.  It would be the purpose of the science to determine the physiological and psychological factors that affect and are affected by consciousness. 106

Although consciousness is now recognized as a legitimate topic for research, it is no easy matter either to define it or to agree on the best means for studying it.  Crick favors an experimental methodology to uncover the mysteries of the brain’s neurophysiology, but he yields to others in the attempt to define the word.  Crick also maintains that any study of the subjective nature of consciousness--the felt, inner experience of ourselves, which Jones describes as our “kinesthetic experience,” cannot be examined scientifically. 107   Another prominent scientist, a neurologist also conducting research at Salk, Antonio Damasio, derives much of his thinking on the subject from his study of patients suffering from various forms of brain damage.  Damasio argues that any definition of consciousness, and any study of it, must include our subjective, sensory experience of ourselves.  Damasio says that this internal, felt experience is an essential ingredient of what we call consciousness and that to confine our studies to the microscopic level must inevitably limit the scope--and usefulness--of our understanding. 108   Further, J. A. Hobson, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, derives his ideas from studies of changes in brain-mind states, particularly the difference between waking and sleeping patterns in normal and mentally ill patients.  Hobson, however, doesn’t hesitate to offer a definition of consciousness, and it is a definition astonishingly akin to what both Alexander and Jones had in mind:

Three bold corollaries of this unification principle hold:  that consciousness is the brain’s awareness of its own physical state; that consciousness is a tool for studying the brain; and that consciousness is a tool for changing brain activity in strategic and healthful ways. 109

Jones would not have considered experimental research such as Crick’s to be outside the realm of his proposed field of synidetics.  But he would have welcomed and perhaps even applauded Damasio’s validation of the essential nature of the individual’s subjective experience (so long considered outside the province of science) for a fuller understanding of the phenomenon.  And, I believe he would have been especially gratified by Hobson’s definition of consciousness as a mechanism for “changing brain activity in strategic and healthful ways” which could, he knew, be developed and improved.  But Jones would have understood, and pointed out, that all three scientists are missing insight into the critical area around which Alexander’s work sheds so much light.

If, as Damasio argues, consciousness derives not merely from the independent activity of neurons but from the ever-shifting interactions between the organism as a whole (both the body and the brain-mind) with its environment, 110 then the manner in which our minds interpret sensory information, as well as any process which distorts or interferes with the way in which this interpreting occurs, must come within our scrutiny.  To understand consciousness we must examine not only the fact of our sensory apparatus but the manner in which sensory input becomes the interpreted experience upon which we make judgments and base our behavior.

Why did Jones believe that the Alexander Technique was a means for doing this?  Anyone who experiences lessons in Alexander’s technique is provided not only abstract information but direct, concrete experience that enables him to examine within his own behavior the same observations Alexander made on himself:  1. Our learned, habitual behavior frequently constitutes a “misuse” of ourselves, interfering with reflexes and with the integration of the cortical and subcortical aspects of our behavior (the voluntary and the reflex). 2. This misuse also interferes with the way in which we interpret, or make judgments about, ourselves and our experience.  3. Our misuse and its concomitant distortion of our perception contributes to a wide variety of problems ranging from poor coordination, muscle and joint injuries and chronic pain, to subtler difficulties in learning new skills and in accurately perceiving, and then changing, our behavior.

Beyond the insight he gains from directly studying this misuse and its effects within himself, the Alexander student learns to prevent his misuse by learning to change the associative thought process that triggers it.  This change brings new sensory experiences of improved integration and reflexive control.  And these new sensory experiences lay the foundation for a gradual expansion of self-awareness to encompass a fuller understanding of what he is doing and how he is doing it--while he does it.  Gradually, the student makes sense of these new experiences, which constitute both an unaccustomed extension of awareness of himself in the moment that he begins to act--in order to perceive his misuse--and a reinterpretation of the new sensory experiences which this creates.  It is an inseparable evolution of shifting awareness that changes behavior, which then changes awareness; and a new thought process, or consciousness, evolves and unfolds.

This acquired skill is more than a restoration, more than a process by which we can return to the easy and graceful coordination we had as young children before acquired habits of misuse have really set in.  It is the process of restoring, which brings new consciousness and, as Jones would say, becomes the skill by which we gain “the freedom to change.”  We gain control and choice over how we do what we do and over what we do.  Consciousness thus emerges not merely as awareness of self but as a learned skill--as Hobson would say, a tool for strategic and healthful change.

The challenge Jones was posing in his call for the new science of synidetics was to bring Alexander’s process of self-study (that leads not only to self-examination as an end in itself but to beneficial improvement in the use of psychophysical mechanisms), under scientific scrutiny.  He wanted to see this process recognized and explored experimentally by reputable scientists.  Crick might say this is not possible.  But Jones’s experience of the Alexander Technique, and his work in the laboratory, was the basis for his own conclusion that it is.  His methodology, which allowed him to measure the changes in the head, neck, and back relationship, was the first step.  A promising second step was his use of the adjective checklist, which enabled him to examine whether or not his subjects’ subjective description of their felt experience of standing up from sitting, after improving their primary control, showed a significant consistency between subjects.  In fact, this consistency proved to be quite high.  Jones’s methodology thus sets the stage for further studies to examine how the primary control, and the accompanying improvement in reflexive coordination, makes more uniform the sensory experiences between subjects, as well as restoring a more accurate means of interpreting and perceiving sensory input within each individual.  It also sets the stage for further clinical studies to examine the more concrete improvements of health and functioning, which have long been described anecdotally by students of the method.

Alexander was long frustrated by the gap he perceived between scientific researchers, who seemed to him to simply gather data and collect facts, and his own method, which offered a practical means for learning to improve one’s own psychophysical well-being.  It was Jones’s idea, within his proposed field of synidetics, to recognize and value both endeavors and to unite them.  Alexander’s exploration and insight broke new ground into previously unexplored territory.  Jones’s studies bestowed him with the unique capacity for building the link between them.

Epilogue

In October of 1975, Frank Pierce Jones--professor of classics and Greek scholar, Alexander teacher, professor of psychology, scientist, and author--died of brain cancer at the age of 70.  His death brought an abrupt end to his enormous contributions to Alexander’s discovery and technique.  Had he lived longer, Jones undoubtedly would have continued--through his research, his teaching, and his writing--to bring the Alexander Technique to the attention of the public.  Sadly, his untimely death prevented his many years of work from achieving their fullest aims.

In 1975, shortly before he died, Jones wrote a letter that he submitted to Science, but wasn’t received in time for publication.  In Jones’s modest and unassuming manner, he recounted over two decades of thoughtful and meticulous research.  The last sentence, never made public, was a brief but earnest appeal:  “A serious investigation at both the clinical and experimental levels is long overdue.” 111   Although he had dedicated much of his life to the technique and to scientifically validating it, Jones was not drawing attention to his own accomplishments.  He simply wanted the effort to continue.

Notes

1. Jones, Robert.  Frank Pierce Jones:  His Family and Early Life, unpublished manuscript, 1992.

2. Ibid.

3. From an interview with Helen Jones, January, 1990.

4. From an interview with Helen Jones, June 14, 1992.

5.  Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7.  Huxley, Aldous, Ends and Means:  An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into the Methods Employed for their Realization (New York:  Harper and Brothers, 1937), p.1.

8. Ibid, p. 256.

9.  Ibid, p. 258.

10. Ibid.

11. From an interview with Helen Jones, January, 1990.

12. Jones, Frank Pierce, Body Awareness in Action (New York: Schocken Books, 1976). p.7.

13. Letter from Alexander to Irene Tasker, June 16, 1940:  “I am being urged to leave England now that the position is becoming so bad as friends think I may be on the German black list because of what I wrote about them in M.S.I. [Man’s Supreme Inheritance, 1918.]   So I am considering the matter.  As you know I should be terribly distressed to be forced to leave England, as you know, but I am always ready to consider the interests of the work and those connected with it before myself.”

14. Jones, Body Awareness, p. 73.

15.  Interview with Helen Jones, June 14, 1992.

16. Ibid.

17. Jones, Body Awareness, p. 73.

18. From an interview with Helen Jones, June 14, 1992.

19. Letter from Alexander to Jones, July 1941.

20.  Jones, Body Awareness, p. 74.  

21. Letter from Alexander to Irene Tasker, July 27, 1942.  “This place has been sold and in consequence I will have to consider new plans for the winter.  Here there will be doubt as to the supply of fuel and the gasoline rationing presents another difficulty only a little less than that of help in this big house.”

22. Jones, “The Work of F.M. Alexander as an Introduction to Dewey’s Philosophy of Education,” School and Society, vol. 57, no. 1462 (January 2, 1943): pp.1-4.

23. Letter from Alexander to Jones, January 1943.

24. Jones, “The Role of the Classics in the Emancipation of Women,” The Classical Journal, vol. 39, No. 6 (March 1944): pp. 326-342.

25. Jones, “Anthony Trollope and the Classics,” Classical Weekly, vol. 37, no. 23 (May 15, 1944): Pp. 227-231.

26. Letter from Alexander to Jones, September 11, 1944.

27. Letter from Alexander to Jones, October 22, 1944.

28. Letter from Alexander to Jones, November 7, 1944.

29. Letter from Alexander to Jones, February 7, 1945.

30. Jones, “The F. Matthias Alexander Technique,” unpublished essay, 1945.

31. Letter from Alexander to Jones, May 20, 1945.

32. Interview with Helen Jones, January, 1990.

33. Letter from Alexander to Jones, July 16, 1945.

34. Letter from Alexander to Jones, September 9, 1945.

35. Letter from Alexander to Jones, October 6, 1945.

36. Jones, “Individual Problems of Re-education,” unpublished manuscript, December 1945.

37. Letter from Alexander to Jones, December 1945.

38. Letter from Alexander to Jones, February 15, 1946.

39. Letter from Alexander to Jones, January 27, 1947.

40. Letter from Alexander to Jones, September 16, 1946.

41. Letter from Alexander to Jones, January 27, 1947.

42. Letter from Jones to Alma Frank, June 3, 1947.

43. See Dewey’s Introductions to Alexander’s books:  Man’s Supreme Inheritance, (New York:  Dutton, 1918), pp. xxiii-xvii; Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual,  (London:  Chaterson Ltd., 1923), pp. xxi-xxviii; The Use of the Self, (New York: Dutton and Co., 1932), pp. xiii-xix.

44. Dewey, John, Human Nature and Conduct  (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1922), pp. 29, 35; and Dewey, John, Experience and Nature  (New York: Dover Publications, 1958), pp. 296, 302.

45. Letter from Dewey to Jones, April 15, 1947.

46. Letter from Jones to Dewey, March 1947.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Letter from Dewey to Jones, May 10, 1947.

50. Letter from Jones to Dewey, June 14, 1948.

51. Letter from Dewey to Jones, June 14, 1947.

52. Interview with Helen Jones, June 14, 1992

53. Jones, “A New Field for Inquiry,” unpublished manuscript, 1948.

54. Jones, Body Awareness, 1975, p. 105.

55. Unpublished manuscript, Jones, Frank Pierce, “EMG study,” 1949.

56. Letter from Dewey to Jones, December 8, 1949.

57. Barlow, Wilfred, “Postural Homeostasis,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the British Association of Physical Medicine, April 26, 1952.

58. Letter from Jones to Alexander, February 9, 1950.

59. Herrick, C.J., GeorgeEllett Coghill:  Naturalist and Philosopher,  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 87, 254.

60. Letter from Coghill to Michael March, April 19, 1939.

61. Letter from Jones to Alexander, February 15, 1952.

62. Jones, F.P. and Kennedy, John, “An Electromyographic Technique for Recording the Startle Pattern,” Journal of Psychology, vol. 32 (1951):  pp. 63-68.

63. Letter from Stanley Cobb to Arlie Bock, June 13, 1952.

64. Letter from Jones to Dewey, March 1947.

65. Barlow, Wilfred, “Posture and the Resting State,” The Annals of Physical Medicine, vol. 2, no 4 (October 1954): pp. 113-122.

66. Letter from Alma Frank to Jones, May 1, 1948:  “The whole trend of science as well as general human awareness is away from the old-time reliance upon the human sensory mechanism…”

67. Buchler, J., ed., Philosophical Writings of Pierce, (New York:  Dover, 1955).  Pierce says, “To satisfy our doubts…therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency—by something upon which our thinking has no effect…”

68. Kerlinger, Fred, Foundations of Behavioral Research, (New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), p. 6.  Speaking again of Pierce’s views, Kerlinger adds:  “As Pierce says, the checks used in scientific research are anchored as much as possible in reality lying outside the scientist and his personal beliefs, perceptions, biases, values, attitudes and emotions.  Perhaps the best single word to express this is objectivity."

69. Douglas, Mungo, “A Unique Example of Operational Verification During Scientific Experimentation,” The Medical Press, vol. 216 (1946):  pp. 3-10.

70. Ibid., p. 4.

71. Dewey, John, Experience and Nature, New York, 1926.

72. Douglas, Mungo, Op.cit, p. 9.

73. Ibid., p. 1.

74. Letter from Jones to Alexander, December 12, 1946.

75. Barlow, Wilfred, “Postural Homeostasis.” Op.cit.

76. For further elaboration on Alexander’s ideas on the technique and scientific validation, See Alexander’s book, The Universal Constant in Living, (New York: Dutton, 1941), Chapter 6.

77. Jones, Frank Pierce, “The Science of Man,” The New Leader, March 6, 1948.

78. Jones, F.P. and Narva, Marshall, “Interrupted Light Photography to Record the Effect of Changes in the Poise of the Head upon Patterns of Movement and Posture in Man,” The Journal of Psychology, vol. 40 (1955): pp. 125-131.

79. Jones, F.P. and O’Connell, D.N., “Applications of Multiple-mage Photography in the Time-Motion Analysis of Human Movement with a Note on ‘Color Coding,’” Photographic Science and Technique, vol. 2, no. 3 (1956): pp. 11-14.

80. Jones, F.P. and O’Connell, “Color-coded Multiple-image Photography for Studying Related Rates of Movement,” Journal of Psychology, vol. 45 (1958):  pp. 247-251.

81. Jones, F.P. and Gilley, Philip, “Head-Balance and Sitting Posture:  An X-ray Analysis,” Journal of Psychology, vol. 49 (1960): pp. 289-293.

82. Jones, F.P., Hanson, John and Gray, Florence, “Head Balance and Sitting Posture II:  The Role of the Sternomastoid Muscle,” Journal of Psychology, vol. 52 (1961):  pp. 363-367.

83. Jones and O’Connell, “Posture as a Function of Time,” Journal of Psychology,vol. 46 (1958):  pp. 287-294.

84. Ibid.

85. Jones, Gray, Hanson and O’Connell, “An Experimental study of the Effect of Head Balance on Patterns of Posture and Movement in Man,” Journal of Psychology, vol. 47 (1959):  pp. 247-258.

86. Jones and Hanson, “Postural Set and Overt Movement:  A Force-Platform Analysis,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 30 (1970):  pp. 699-702.

87. Jones, “The Influence of Postural Set on Patterns of Movement in Man,” International Journal of Neurology, vol. 4 (1963):  pp. 60-71.

88. Ibid.

89. Ibid.

90. Ibid.

91. Jones, “Method for Changing Sterotyped Response Patterns by the Inhibition of Certain Postural Sets,” Psychological Review, vol. 72 (1965):  pp. 196-214.

92. Ibid.

93. Jones, Hanson, Miller J., and Bossom, J., “Quantitative Analysis of Abnormal Movement:  The Sit-   to-Stand Pattern,” American Journal of Physical Medicine, vol. 42, no. 5 (1963): pp. 208-218.

94. Hanson and Jones, “Heart Rate and Small Postural Changes in Man, Ergonomics, vol. 13, no. 4  (1970):  pp. 483-487.

95. Gray, Hanson and Jones, “Postural Aspects of Neck Muscle Tension,” Ergonomics (1966).

96. Jones, Hanson and Gray, “Startle as a Paradigm of Malposture,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 19  (1964): pp. 21-22.

97. Jones, “Voice Production as a Function of Head Balance in Singers,” Journal of Psychology, Vol. 82  (1972): pp. 209-215.

98. Unpublished manuscript, Jones, “Head Balance as a Postural Mechanism in Man,” 1975.

99. Ibid.

100. Magnus, Rudolf, Korperstellung, (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1924).

101. Jones, Body Awareness.

102. Jones, “The Organization of Awareness,” Lecture delivered to the University of Michigan, 1967.

103. Jones, “A Mechanism for Change,” Forms and Techniques of Altruistic and Spiritual Growth,  1954, p. 2.

104. Jones, “Altered States of Consciousness,” Lecture delivered at Tufts University, 1972.

105. Crick, Francis, The Astonishing Hypothesis, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994.

106. Jones, “Synidetics:  The Study of Conscious Experience,” American Psychologist, 23, 1968.

107. Crick, F. Op.cit.

108. Damasio, Antonio, Descartes’ Error, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994, p. 243.

109. Hobson, J.A., The Chemistry of Conscious States, New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1994, p. 26.

110. Damasio, Antonio, Op.cit, p. xvi.

111. Jones, “An Experimental Study on the Effect of Head Balance on Patterns of Posture and Movement in Man,” 1959.

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