The Alexander Police

There’s been only one academic history (by Jeroen Staring) of F.M. Alexander and it shows conclusively that he plagiarized most if not all of the ideas that his followers attribute to him.

Yet there is no mention of this in F.M.’s Wikipedia entry. I guess the Alexander police have prevented all mention of this, just as the followers of Yogi Bhajan have so far prevented anything negative about him on Wikipedia.

Joe emails: oh luke luke luke, you always become obsessed with some idea and then get all agitated finding out that its not the full answer to all of your presumed personal desires and needs.

Aside for your own personal need, perhaps, to be let down by “moral leaders”, in this particular case, however, why does it really matter? In a religious teacher, originality, honesty, etc, are deal breakers, but who cares where Alexander cribbed his info from? Many important scientific discoveries were made by people whose morals no one would want to emulate, but that does not affect one bit the truth of the science. A therapy shouldn’t be a religious thing, it should be a way to help patients. If your patients get better, they don’t care if Alexander was a creep or not, and if they don’t, all the saintliness in the world will be of no value.

About Luke Ford

I've written five books (see Amazon.com). My work has been covered in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and on 60 Minutes. I teach Alexander Technique in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com).
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