“There are as many certified charlatans and exploiters of people as there are uncertified.”  Carl Rogers

 It is perhaps fair to say that in the past issues to do with professionalism and professionalisation have not been that high up the agenda of many Alexander Technique teachers.  A casual search of the Internet and journals reveals a paucity of wide-ranging and impassioned debate on the subject. 

However, at this time, the issue of professionalism is becoming more important.  For example in the UK, STAT (the oldest and largest organisation representing Alexander Technique teachers) and some other Alexander organisations, are engaging in a regulatory process which is specifically aimed at professionalising the Alexander Technique.  This process has come about partly through pressure from the UK government and partly from pressure within our occupation.  Such pressure can be seen in the context of a wider, global movement towards regulation and control of the workplace and of education and training.  Many other occupations are facing pressure to professionalise at this time, particularly in the field of Complementary and Alternative Healthcare in which we so often get categorised.  It is likely that those Alexander societies which have not yet felt the pressure to professionalise will soon do so.

I suggest that the present, generally accepted, viewing of the Alexander Technique as “a profession” (as opposed to an occupation) is technically inaccurate, and that if we go along with the process of professionalisation some teachers may get a shock when they realise what being a true profession actually involves.  Profession is a complex word, which is used in many different ways.  In this essay I will use it in the way which is implied when we talk of the professionalisation of an occupational area.  Examples of such professions are: Law, Medicine, Mainstream Teaching and Social Work.

To paraphrase Macdonald 1:

A profession is an effective monopoly.  In order to gain this monopoly it needs to develop a special relationship with the state.  This involves a regulative bargain.  The style of this bargain will be strongly influenced by the prevailing political culture.

Although is has an effective monopoly, the profession is still competing in a market place against others who can offer similar or substitute services.  This means that the profession must defend, and will probably seek to expand the scope of its activities.

Professions provide a service, which is perceived to be valuable to their clients.

Professions aim to achieve social closure.  In other words, they seek to exclude people, through the maintenance of a closed social world with requirements for entry, stereotyped ways of interacting, and rules and codes of behaviour.  They seek to gain maximum advantage for members.

These criteria are at present clearly not descriptive of the Alexander Technique.  There are no genuine regulative bargains between Alexander organisations and the state, and in countries with a large number of teachers there may be a plurality of organisations representing teachers, with no one organisation having a monopoly.  There is nothing like the degree of social closure to be found in true professions such as law or medicine.  The social and practical choices that Alexander Technique teachers can make without being excluded remain very broad indeed.

In this essay I examine what is actually involved in the regulative bargain required in order to become a true profession in the contemporary world, and I will argue that to adopt such a bargain and become such a profession would involve making choices which run counter to the principles of the Alexander Technique, and to the values and beliefs of many teachers.  I will be drawing on sources from the world of psychotherapy and counselling.  This is because the debate on professionalisation in this field is already well advanced and many of the issues in the two fields are similar:  in  both fields, practitioners work with clients in a more or less intimate way involving profound personal challenges and changes for the client; both fields present the possibility for the practitioner to use the relationship to abuse and disempower the client, either overtly or covertly, and this danger is in both fields presented by some as a reason for greater regulation; finally both fields are to a greater or lesser extent concerned with challenging norms and values which are dominant in society.

The Regulative Bargain

The details of the regulative bargain demanded of occupations in order to become professions obviously varies from country to country.  An essay of this length will naturally be unable to do full justice to the diversity and complexity to be found in the real world.  However the increasing globalisation of academic and professional labour, and the increasing presence and influence of professionals and academics in modern ruling elites has meant that broad patterns of similarity have developed between the way in which states and their professions operate at a practical level, in spite of cultural and political differences 2.

Modern states, particularly the Western democracies where the majority of Alexander Teachers practice, are run by a culturally dominant group consisting of politicians, industrialists, professionals, academics, and civil servants 3. Increasingly the trend is that this elite aims to control what happens in the workplace and education systems (and hence in society) through demanding the attainment of minutely detailed and prescriptive outcomes from each worker and student 4.  In every field of work it is becoming the norm to be under rigorous surveillance and subjected to continuous auditing procedures to ensure that these outcomes are attained 5.  Under such systems, which have their roots in behaviourist industrial training procedures aimed at producing a controllable and obedient workforce 6, the end becomes all important; the quality and by-products of the process become sidelined and irrelevant.  The individual’s role is to be a willing cog in the implementation of the elite’s agenda.  Their creativity is allowed to operate only in so far as it fits in with values imposed from above, and the world view encoded in these values.  Spontaneity, freedom and idiosyncrasy are sidelined.

There is an increasing tendency to reframe social problems as technical ones, which it is hoped can be solved through the imposition of grand plans devised by academics and civil servants, and put into practice by professionals in collusion with the state.  Simply expressed, the idea seems to be that if only you can make people behave in a certain way (which the elite “knows” to be best) then everything will be all right.  Unfortunately life is not so simple.  The pursuit of such solutions to human problems is in itself a form of domination.  As Cooper 7 points out, “fundamental principles about freedom, autonomy and citizenship are threatened by this state of affairs”.  Such an approach is dehumanising because it necessitates that people undergo continual surveillance, demands conformity, objectifies people, standardises human relationships and interaction, and reinforces social divisions.

The implementation of these new methods of social control has been accompanied by a burgeoning of agencies whose role is to control, monitor and check the work of others. The remarkable philosopher Krishnamurti pointed out that:

“we are addicted to institutions…[they] will never stop what is happening in the world…Organisation in the psychological world is destructive.”8

Perhaps the urge to tightly control and monitor society and the work of individuals, which has reached a new and frightening level of sophistication in the contemporary world, is counter-intuitively an aspect of a way of being which is the cause of many of our global ills, based as it is on lack of trust in people and in life, fear of spontaneity and freedom, and the need to dominate, monitor and control others—with all the social divisions and fragmentation which that entails.   The hope that human beings can organise and control their way out of their deep rooted problems of relationship is a vain one because these problems are a product of such controlling behaviour, which can be seen as a habitual response to the fear of disorder and loss of control 9.   In the misguided pursuit of fragmented, “top down” approaches to societal ills, society is becoming a more controlled and controlling place. It is less and less an environment which enables people to “allow the right thing to do itself”, on either a personal or organisational level.  In fact such an approach to life is in direct contradiction to the logic of the system, and totally incompatible with the world view on which it is based. In the new social order, “doing” reigns supreme.

 It is my contention that choosing to professionalise would inevitably involve a degree of collusion with the end-gaining and controlling agenda of the modern state.  It would mean the forming of an alliance with damaging and manipulative cultural forces which are in fact opposed to the most basic principles of our work.

Illich writes:

 “A guild, a union, or a gang forces respect for its interests and rights by a strike, blackmail, or overt violence.  In contrast a profession, like a priesthood, holds power by concessions from an elite whose interest it props up.” 10

How are an occupation’s interests served by the making of such concessions, and how does doing so further the aims of the hegemony it colludes in maintaining?  Although the details differ from country to country and profession to profession, there are broad patterns of similarity.  The contemporary regulative bargain tends to look something like this:

By professionalising, the members of an occupation get greater power, prestige, social status and money through:

Reciprocal connections with powerful elites—academics, civil servants, politicians and other policy makers.

The granting of a monopoly or quasi-monopoly.

Access to state funds-either directly or indirectly.

Access to “captive clients” in schools, colleges and the health and social care system.

They pay for these privileges by fitting in with, and actively furthering the establishment’s agenda and values through:

the adoption of state approved approaches to accreditation and training;

tacit agreement to not seriously challenge or question the politics and power dynamics of the health, education and social care systems in which the profession’s members may work.

Through the enforcement of state approved auditing and surveillance on the profession’s members and clients in an effort to ensure “accountability”.

At the heart of professionalisation is a move away from the margins towards respectability.  Krishnamurti said:

“…inevitably you will revert to the pattern, because in that pattern there is safety, there is respectability, there is money and profit, there is something to be gained and so you become slaves to authority…”11

This statement points towards the true nature of respectability, which at heart is about fitting in, and not threatening the status quo by questioning beyond acceptable limits.

Mowbray writes of the importance of maintaining a counter-cultural space in society.  With regard to psychotherapy he points out:

“Because it addresses the ‘normal’, the movement that carries that process must stay on the margin and not be ‘absorbed’, not be tempted by the carrots of recognition, respectability and financial security into reverting to the mainstream but rather remain-on the ‘fringe’-as a source that stimulates, challenges convention and ‘draws out’ the unrealised potential for ‘being’ in the members of that society.” 12

Such arguments are equally valid for the Alexander Technique which also addresses the “normal” (e.g. end-gaining behaviour, the belief in doing and control as a solution to personal and societal ills etc.) and calls it into question.  I suggest that in order to effectively and ethically question ways of being which are deeply embedded within society and its structures, we should reject calls for greater respectability, and choose to remain on “the fringe” where our work will have greater power and credibility as a force for real change as opposed to becoming a professionally administered panacea for the individual which leaves the institutional, social and political context of the client’s problem untouched and unchallenged.

However in some quarters within our occupation, arguments are put forward to support a move towards greater professionalism.  The most common ones can be summarised as follows:

It protects the public from abusive practitioners;

It safeguards the standards of teachers and training;

It means Alexander teachers can make a better living.

In the second part of this essay I wish to examine these claims.  I will argue that the first two are quite simply false.  The last may be true, but has profound implications for the context in which we see our work.

Myths of Professionalism

The claim that the Alexander Technique needs to become professionalised and regulated in order to protect the public has a certain amount of common sense appeal. However there are already robust laws against harming people and misrepresenting ones business, which allow the possibility of redress.  To make a case for regulation to ensure the public’s safety stand up to scrutiny (and hence justify the upheaval of values and organisational relationships required) would demand strong evidence: that these laws are not working, with the result that the public is being clearly and substantially harmed by the activities of Alexander Practitioners; that greater regulation would prevent this happening to a significant degree; and that there were no other, less intrusive, way of solving the problem.  As far as I am aware, there is no evidence to support any of these claims. 

No doubt there are some rogue practitioners who behave in an unethical or abusive way.  This is the case in any field of work, whether regulated or not, and cannot be solved simply by greater regulation.  Many highly regulated fields (for example medicine) have a far worse record in this respect than our own.  In fact available research evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that regulation fails to protect the public from abusive practitioners in any meaningful way, as Mowbray 13 convincingly demonstrates.  Incidences of abuse do not decrease when there is greater regulation and may even increase.

Mowbray points out that:

“We have the very occupations who ought to know better, pursuing the myth of accreditation in this area and seeking ‘official recognition’…  By doing so the practitioner’s status as expert would become endorsed by the state and his or her authority commensurately enhanced… [C]lients can be lulled into a false sense of security and suspension of judgement by such a system.  It encourages them to defer to the authority of the practitioner…[T]o leave their brain at the door—in a way that fosters dependency and a letting down of appropriate self-protective guards.”  14

Carl Rogers wrote that:

“… there are as many certified charlatans and exploiters of people as there are uncertified.  If you had a good friend badly in need of therapeutic help, and I gave you the name of a therapist who was a Diplomat in Clinical Psychology, with no other information, would you send your friend to him?  Of course not.  You would want to know what he was like as a person…recognising that there are many with diplomas on their walls who are not fit to do therapy, lead a group, or help a marriage.  Certification is not equivalent to competence.” 15

Anna Sands writes:

“you cannot legislate against one of the greatest dangers in therapy—that power can ‘go to the head’ of the practitioner, cut him off from an intuitive sense of what is right, and encourage arrogance.” 16

I suggest that this also one of the biggest dangers in Alexander Technique practice, and is no more fixable by legislation than it is in the field of psychotherapy.  It is impossible to impose respectful and non-abusive relationships on people.  It is perfectly possible to psychologically abuse and dominate a person while fulfilling all the requirements of a professional code of conduct.  In fact many psychotherapists are increasingly concerned that this is exactly what is happening in their field, with therapists (not necessarily consciously) using the standards and the respectability they bring to reinforce their authority and power in the relationship, in collusion with governing bodies 17.  So long as guidelines are followed, the therapist is assumed to be “OK”, and can dominate the client with impunity in more subtle and covert ways which can never be legislated against or proven.  The client may be left wide open to abuse because the practitioner can easily “prove” that they have acted correctly, and the official backing behind these claims only serves to make the practitioner’s position stronger.

 Looking at the phenomenon of professionalism more broadly, Illich 18 describes the development of a “serviced society”, which ends up sustaining or worsening the very problems it claims to solve.  Professionalised assistance has come to dominate every corner of people’s lives to the point where increasingly they may feel insecure or incompetent to make the most basic decisions about their health, the education of themselves and their children, and their psychological state without the help of certified professionals.  This trend represents an extraordinary and unprecedented disempowerment of humanity, and helps to create the very problem of dependency and lack of responsibility which professionalisers argue justifies professionalisation!  It creates a culture of infantilisation, which encourages people to become what Hall 19 calls “reluctant adults”, who do not wish to be responsible for their own choices, regulation or relationships. The paternalistic state steps in to protect “for their own good” the people it has colluded in infantalising. It is perhaps surprising that teachers of a Technique which is fundamentally concerned with taking responsibility for oneself should see no contradiction in participating in such cultural dynamics.

McKnight points out that professional servicers depend for their income and social status on the continuing neediness of the general population, and have a vested interest in ensuring that this neediness continues-or grows.

“In a servicing economy where the majority of the people derive their income from professionalised ‘helping’ … nations need an increased supply of personal deficiency.  [Such an economy] is more accurately defined as an economy of need.  The political consequence is neighbours unable to act as communities of competence with the capacity to perceive or solve problems.” 20

Over time, this need for an increasing supply of clients (to provide more income for a growing number of professionals) tends to mean that professions use their respectable status and relationship with the state to define problems in their own terms and then to ensure that they are paid to “solve” them.   The dynamics of the professional/state relationship helps to create and sustain the idea in society that only help provided at high cost by an officially approved professional is safe, helpful or (if the profession can get away with it) permissible.  This is clearly nonsense, but is a widely held belief which disempowers individuals and communities, who come to be dependant on the ministrations of “caring” professionals in every area of their life to an entirely unnecessary degree.  This is not to say that it may not be appropriate to consult an expert from time to time, but that the self-serving dynamics of professionalism create a situation where the perception of what is necessary and appropriate gets skewed society-wide, to the professions’ resounding benefit.

A profession’s position is further bolstered by the gaining of the right to ascribe needs.  People who previously were unaware of being needy may find that they have been classified as exactly that by professional “helpers”-often to the extent of those helpers removing choice from individuals as to whether or not they are serviced, or who they are serviced by. For example the education establishment has recently overseen a "credential and training explosion", with the result that it is becoming hard to find, or keep, any kind of job without undergoing some form of ongoing state accredited training. It should be noted that such training generally contains ideological and affective elements, demanding demonstrable outcomes in these areas in accordance with the state's agenda.

It is not far fetched to wonder about how a professionalised Alexander Technique might seek to make people undergo the services of its practitioners.  There are already teachers who have managed to get the Alexander Technique incorporated as a compulsory part of arts training courses, with all students required to undergo Alexander training—which may include the requirement to undergo surveillance in the form of written reports about their “progress”.  To arrange matters so that individuals are obliged to undergo training in the particular psycho-physical-philosophical system which one happens to have a predilection for is surely questionable at best-especially so when such work involves the potential to give powerful emotional and physical release experiences with the hands. Such programmes may or may not benefit the course participants, but they clearly benefit their teachers.  Where such a trend might end is of course unknown but it is likely to continue if the Alexander Technique chooses to integrate further with state health and education systems.

The influence of professionalisation is likely to be felt particularly strongly on Alexander teacher training courses where the adoption of detailed state and professional requirements for trainees to be judged against is likely to necessitate a shift in the emphasis of training.  Instead of trainee teachers being free to use a course to develop their understanding of the Alexander Technique and how to teach it according to their own values and judgement, the course is likely to be used by the profession and the state to impose their standards, values and behavioural norms on trainees.  The trainees role changes—she is no longer a citizen paying for teaching on her own terms.  Her new function is simply to please her professional trainers and meet their expectations.  McKnight remarks that:

“The ultimate sign of a serviced society is a professional saying ‘I’m so pleased by what you’ve done’.  The demise of citizenship is to respond, ‘thank you’.” 21

Such an environment is the opposite of what is needed to enable teaching relationships where the trainee is respected rather than subtly coerced through the threat of professional exclusion.  I suggest that such a respectful, open and non-coercive training environment is essential in order to allow the freedom and self directed discovery and exploration on which profound and integrated learning (as opposed to mere imitation) depends, and which is behind true quality and high standards in training.  The attempt to impose universally agreed standards on training inevitably gives rise to imitation and mediocrity.

Krishnamurti writes:

“Implicit in right education is the cultivation of freedom and intelligence, which is not possible if there is any form of compulsion, with its fears…Co-operation between teacher and student is impossible if there is no mutual affection, mutual respect.” 22

Teaching relationships which are respectful demand that the teacher is prepared to enter the relationship as a social equal, which implies not having a social or pedagogic agenda to enforce.  Such a teacher must be prepared to make themselves vulnerable, to break down the social space that exists, and to acknowledge their incapacity and helplessness in the face of an ambiguous problem which cannot be solved in a meaningful and integrated way without the full and equal involvement of the student.  Such an attitude is alien to professional trainings, which by nature seek to impose the values of the profession and the state on trainees in the hope of securing the social and financial elevation of the profession’s members 23.

Such attitudes can be seen reflected in the assumptions behind the setting of standards and the accreditation of competence. I suggest that the viewing of a teacher’s competence as a possession which people have and can be certified for by others is based on the view of the individual client as an object to be serviced, and is in a subtle way disrespectful and demeaning.  The competence to work with another person in an educational setting, if it is to be in a respectful way, is not a personal possession implying rights to “operate” on them (without even gaining their permission if the person is required to undergo the professional’s service), but is something which must be discovered afresh in every new relationship through a mutual process of dialogue and exploration.  It is not owned by the practitioner, but is shared and discovered by both parties.

Alternatives

So the decision by an occupation to pursue a “professional project”, involves a far-reaching reassessment of that occupation’s and its members’ relationship to society.  The adoption by an Alexander Technique organisation of a fully professional ethos would represent the culmination of a process of radical transformation from Alexander’s early envisioning of the work as “Man’s Supreme inheritance”, to an impoverished view of the Technique as a service provided in a competitive market place to clients by professionals who are colluding in social dynamics that reflect the very problems being experienced by the client.

The implications of this shift should not be underestimated, not least because not all Alexander teachers have fully abandoned Alexander’s original position.  This position was extreme and, one could argue, grandiose and unrealistic. Humanity as a whole is not going to seize the Alexander Technique and evolve onto the next stage of evolution in the near future, judging by present evidence. It is likely that Alexander himself realised this during the course of his life, and adjusted to the realisation.  However, the full scale adoption of the values of professionalism would be an over compensation which negates the fact that, to its practitioners, the Alexander Technique is not simply a livelihood, but is a way of life and being, perhaps even a calling-and one which is not necessarily in accord with mainstream societal values.

There is a tendency for proponents of professionalisation within a field to claim that such a process is inevitable, or a “natural evolution”, or that it is a normal part of the maturing of an occupational area.  It is none of these things, but is simply one possible direction out of many which an occupation might choose to take.  If governments attempt to impose professionalisation such attempts can be challenged and resisted.  Erroneous claims about the inevitability of professionalisation have the effect of stifling debate, and help interested parties to push through reform unhindered.  Government pressure does not equal inevitability, and accepting this opens up many options which are at present largely unrecognised and unexplored.

There are alternative approaches to problems of organisation and accountability other than professionalising. One possibility is the network model.  An example is the UK’s Independent Practitioners Network (IPN), which uses a “flat” democratic structure of inter-linked groups to accredit members through an ongoing process of peer assessment, support and challenge.  Each group “stands by” the work of its members, and agrees to help and mediate if problems arise in the therapeutic relationship, including complaints.  This organisation is a successful example of a structure which is truly democratic, autonomous and egalitarian, allows real diversity, and which sees its central function as:

“…providing support—Support for clients, through a model of accountability which delivers what it promises; and support for practitioners, through peer supervision and feedback…” 24

Once integrated with state mechanisms it will be at best extremely difficult to disentangle ourselves. Whilst acknowledging the hard work and good intentions of those involved in the regulation process, it is my contention that the Alexander Technique world as a whole has not as yet discussed these issues nearly widely or deeply enough. Often it takes a considerable period of time, for everyone to become fully aware of the issues surrounding such a profound cultural and organisational development, and for different perspectives to emerge, be heard, and be properly considered. I contend that the Alexander Technique is in danger of reaching a point of no return before sufficient time has been taken to allow such a process of exploration to fully run its course.   There is no hurry whatsoever, and our Technique deserves that we take as long as is needed to enable a really wide ranging, open, and unpressured debate.

References

Keith Macdonald The Sociology of the Professions London: Sage (1995).

Eva Etzioni-Halevy (1985) The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophecy, London: George Allen and Unwin; Michael Power The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1997).

Thomas Dye Who’s Running America: Institutional Leadership in the United States,Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall (1976); Eva Etzioni-Halevy, op. cit.; Michael Power, op. cit.

Ronald Barnett The Limits of Competence Buckingham: Open University Press (1994), chapter 5.  Mark Smith, “Competence and Competency”, retrieved from www.infed.org.uk on November 12th 2002 (1996);

Andrew Cooper, “The state of mind we’re in: social anxiety, governance and the audit society, “Psychoanalytic Studies 3 (3-4) pp. 349-62; Michael Power, op.cit.

Mark Smith, op. cit.

Andrew Cooper , op. cit. p. 362.

Quoted in: Richard House, “The Statutory Regulation of Psychotherapy: Still Time to Think Again”, retrieved from ipnosis.postle.net on 15^th February 2003, first published in: The Psychotherapist, (2001) 17, pp. 12-17.

Andrew Cooper, op. cit.

Ivan Illich The Right to Useful Unemployment, and its professional enemies London: Marion Boyars (1978) p. 50.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, “Madras, 4^th Public Talk, 3^rd December 1961”, The Krishnamurti Text collection retrieved from  HYPERLINK http://www.kinfonet.org www.kinfonet.org on 28^th February 2003.

Richard Mowbray The Case Against Psychotherapy Registration London: Trans Marginal Press (1995) pp. 198-9.

Ibid., chapter 13.

Richard House and Nick Totton (eds) Implausible Professions: Arguments for Pluralism and Autonomy in Psychotherapy and Counselling Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books (1997) p. 38.

Carl Rogers, “Some New Challenges to the Helping Professions”, in eds Howard Kirschenbaum and Valerie Henderson (1980) The Carl Rogers Reader, Boston: Houghton Mifflin p. 364.

Personal communication quoted in: Richard House, op. cit.

Richard House Therapy Beyond Modernity: Deconstructing and Transcending Profession-centred Therapy London: Karnac (2003).

Ivan Illich et al. Disabling Professions, London: Maryon Boyars (1977).

Jill Hall The Reluctant Adult: An Exploration of Choice Bridport: Prism Press (1993).

Ivan Illich et al., op. cit., p. 79.

Ivan Illich  et al., op. cit., p. 89.

Jiddu Krishnamurti Education and the Significance of Life. Madras: Krishnamurti Foundation India (1953) p. 33.

Keith Macdonald, op. cit. P 53.

Richard House and Nick Totton (eds) op. cit. P. 293.

Recommended Reading

Ronald Barnett The Limits of Competence Buckingham: Open University Press (1994).

Andrew Cooper, “The state of mind we’re in: social anxiety, governance and the audit society, “Psychoanalytic Studies 3 (3-4) pp. 349-62.

Richard House Therapy Beyond Modernity: Deconstructing and Transcending Profession-centred Therapy London: Karnac (2003).

Ivan Illich et al. Disabling Professions, London: Maryon Boyars (1977).

Richard Mowbray The Case Against Psychotherapy Registration London: Trans Marginal Press (1995) pp. 198-9.

Carl Rogers, “Some New Challenges to the Helping Professions”, in eds Howard Kirschenbaum and Valerie Henderson (1980) The Carl Rogers Reader, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Copyright © 2009 Marcus Sly.

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