ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Bodily Rhythms at the Interface of Instinct and Control

• In Event: The Science and Medicine of Habits II: Habits, The Body and Health

English Abstract

This paper examines the Polish-Jewish émigré psychiatrist Judith S. Kestenberg’s (1910-1999) notions of bodily rhythms as embedded within her movement-based personality assessment technique, situated at the interface of instinct and control in the Cold War period of American psy-sciences. Habitual movement was treated as a “foreign” signal to be deciphered, classified and, if needed, retrained in the service of societal well-being and democratic stability.

Between 1950 and 1965, from an unorthodox integration of neuropsychiatry, psychoanalysis and dance studies, Kestenberg developed her psychodynamic theory of movement behaviour. Through longitudinal infant observations, she traced motor rhythms of feeding and digestion organised by excitation-gratification-relaxation cycles, as well as rhythmicity in breathing, play and non-verbal exchanges in the infant–mother dyad. Kestenberg argued that pervasive flows of muscle tension (tension-flow) and changing body shape (shape-flow) correspond to instinctive processes and affective states, shaping mental organisation, attitudes and personality. Qualities of tension-flow were equated with temperament and drive expression, whereas shape-flow rhythms registered patterns of comfort and discomfort. She proposed a balance between rhythms of tension- and shape-flow.
To render such habits medically legible, she devised an inscription technique and diagrammatic representations to quantify discordances as markers of intrapsychic conflict. The paper follows how this movement profiling, and its subsequent use in her child guidance centre as “movement retraining,” exemplified a broader Cold War investment in recording, deciphering and reshaping bodily processes. In this framework, regulating micro-rhythms of motor behaviour promised a form of psycho-technological control linking rhythmic harmonisation of bodily habits, mental health and the democratic project.

Author

• Janka Kormos, University of Pecs, Hungary