Items from the list of books recommended by Dr Feldenkrais for SF training, 1975
Paul SCHILDER (1886-1940)
Mind: Perception and Thought in their constructive aspects, New York,
Columbia University press, 1942.
A major reference for Feldenkrais, who devoted many lessons to the « Body image », but a very
specific one AY24 “The body image, a lecture” (vol. 1 part. A). Paul Schilder trained as a doctor
(mainly neurologist and psychiatrist), philosopher (he studied phenomenology and
Gestaltpsychology) and Freudian psychoanalyst in Vienna. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1930,
where he obtained a research professorship at New York University. One of his works, The Image
and Appearance of the Human Body (1935), remains a key work. I highly recommend reading it
over and over again, as it provides a number of insights into « body schemas » and their
interactions.
Paul Schilder studies the image of the body as a physiological support, in its libidinal structure and social significance, and defines “the articulation of the biological reality of the body with its erogenous and phantasmatic reality”. See in Mark Reese’s Biography of Moshe Feldenkrais, 2015, many references to Schilder.
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