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Formative Psychology

Formative Psychology is a psychological approach developed by Stanley Keleman. It is based in a concept of life as an evolutionary process in which a series of anatomical shapes are continually forming from birth to maturity and on through the stages of aging and dying. Keleman views changing anatomical shapes as the very continuity of human existence. According to the view of formative psychology these shapes give rise to emotions, thoughts, and experiences; thus feeling follows form.

It holds that our anatomical structure is our embodiment in the world. At conception each person is given a biological and emotional inheritance but Formative Psychology asserts that it is through voluntary effort and self-management that this constitutional given fulfills its potential for a personally formed life. As a result we are citizens of two worlds, the embodiment we inherit and the embodiment we form through voluntary effort.

From the perspective of Formative Psychology, our individual soma grows in the daily acts of living and is influenced by the challenges and stresses of life. By learning to influence, through voluntary effort, the shapes dictated by inheritance and social learning we can become creators of a personal world.

Voluntary Effort

The concept of voluntary muscular-cortical effort is a critical component of Keleman’s formative psychological approach. Voluntary muscular-cortical effort mobilizes the soma's inherited pattern and facility of how shapes come into being and how they fade away. This process of organizing and disorganizing anatomical shape through the voluntary interaction of muscle and cortex encourages the growth of new neural connections and new anatomical structures that generate increasingly complex dimensions of experiencing. Keleman believes that changing shape by increasing and decreasing the muscular intensity in a pattern of behavior creates a powerful engagement of the formative process. In Keleman's work, the purpose of this voluntary effort is to generate and form emotional excitatory responses and to know how to receive, contain and shape them.

Keleman believes that when we influence our body shape, we influence how we are present in the world. He asserts that over time voluntary muscular-cortical effort brings forth the existential truth of bodily experience as the basis for creating value and meaning in our lives. From the viewpoint of Formative Psychology, people can participate with these forces of creation, which are inherent in life as an evolutionary process, and grow an inner dialogue and a subjectivity that gives our lives a personal and sacred dimension. For Keleman, it is a gift of life to give personal shape to our existence.

Practice Protocol

Keleman prescribes a practice protocol for this voluntary effort which he describes in detail in many of his writings.

The protocol mobilizes the body to make a series of distinct muscular shapes through a series of five steps.

1. First there is the recognition of a habituated somatic-emotional pattern and the muscular gesture, posture, act or shape or "model" that accompanies it.

2. Second, use increments of increasing pressure to organize a compressing or stiffening or intensifying of this muscular shape, gradually increasing intensity, and pausing between increments. Hold this intensity for a brief period to get a sense of the muscular model involved, both locally and through the whole body.

3. Disassemble the intensity of the muscular pattern in distinct, measured, incremental stages by decreasing intensity and pausing between each decrease. This slow, incremental disassembling of pressure allows the shape to become porous and to swell.

4. Pause at one of these stages of decreasing intensity or disorganization and wait for the appearance of a pulsing, swelling, internal response. When this swelling appears give it an edge of containment by applying small doses of rigidity to form a boundary to contain the pulse or swelling.

5. When you apply rigidity to this swelling to create a new boundary there will be a new shape with new sensations. Give duration to the resulting new shapes and use them in your social and personal activities. Each effort to increase or decrease pressure creates a distinct and new somatic shape. These distinct shapes morph into one another and back again, giving rise to a continuum of connections and shapes – a pulsatory pattern that forms the basis for growing a personal adult.

Keleman asserts that by using the practice protocol of Formative Psychology we can learn to grow the varied possibilities within our given structure. For Keleman, this is how we grow a personal soma with its own meaning and values and a way to sustain and mature our adult life.