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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 mechanism 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, expression 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 for several seconds, such as a slow count of 10. 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 a minute or two 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.

History, Development and Opportunities for Learning

Stanley Keleman has been developing and articulating the concepts of Formative Psychology for over forty years. His first of ten books on the subject was published in 1971. See Bibliography below for a full list.

Keleman has been the director of the Center for Energetic Studies [2] in Berkeley, California since 1971. The Center offers personal and professional education through workshops, classes, and private sessions.

Somatic-emotional education at the Center uses individual experience, emotions, action patterns, insights, and images to discover how life has been shaped and what is seeking to emerge. The focus is learning to use the cortex and muscles to voluntarily generate experiences to grow oneself and to create a personal skill for managing one’s life, in one’s own way, with vitality and emotional truthfulness.

He is the honorary president and director for research at the Zurich School for Form and Movement, and the Institute for Formative Psychology in Solingen, Germany [3]where he also teaches.

Bibliography

• Keleman, Stanley (1999). Myth & The Body: A Colloquy with Joseph Campbell. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. ISBN 0-934320-17-9. • In 1973, Stanley Keleman and Joseph Campbell began to hold what would be fourteen annual seminars, to trade their thoughts on the subject of mythology and the body. This recently published book, Myth & the Body, is based largely on the transcriptions from these years of taped seminars. Campbell and Keleman shared the belief that myths describe the experiences of the body and, in fact, are metaphors for internal body states.

• Keleman, Stanley (1994). Love: A Somatic View. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. p. 96. ISBN 0-934320-15-2. • An analysis of the biological basis of love and individual patterns or styles of giving and receiving love. Includes case studies and suggestions for therapeutic intervention.

• Keleman, Stanley (1989). Patterns of Distress. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. p. 75. ISBN 0-934320-13-6. • This clinical study shows the process by which shock, trauma, abuse and neglect are embodied into individual somatic patterns of distress.

• Keleman, Stanley (1996). Bonding. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. p. 131. ISBN 0-934320-11-X. • A discussion of some of the somatic aspects of transference and counter transference and the relation of body forms to the therapeutic process.

• Keleman, Stanley (1987). Embodying Experience. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. p. 108. ISBN 0-934320-12-8. • A companion volume to Emotional Anatomy, this book describes the methodology that accompanies Keleman's somatic theories. Using a systematic guide, the reader is encouraged to identify his own somatic patterns and to learn from his experience.

• Keleman, Stanley (1985). Emotional Anatomy. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. p. 176. ISBN 0-934320-10-1. • A landmark work that revises both anatomy and psychology. It presents in depth how sadness, anger, fear and other emotions are physiologically organized.

• Keleman, Stanley (1981). Your Body Speaks Its Mind. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. p. 192. ISBN 0-934320-01-2. • This book is about the emotional language and biological language of the body, which Keleman puts together. He says, "We do not have bodies, we are our bodies. Emotional reality and biological ground are the same and cannot, in any way, be separated or distinguished."

• Keleman, Stanley (1979). Somatic Reality. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. p. 128. ISBN 0-934320-05-5. • Transitions--crises, changes and turning points--are part of each human life and they include bodily transitions and experience. How life changes are expressed somatically is the theme of Somatic Reality.

• Keleman, Stanley (1971). Human Ground: Sexuality, Self and Survival. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. p. 195. ISBN 0-934320-02-0. • This is Keleman's first book and the one which covers the most basic aspects of his work and philosophy. In a style that quickly engages the reader, he weaves a picture of human form and experience--the many ways people take on self-definition. Short, concise chapters include many case histories and therapeutic dialogues from Keleman's workshops.

• Keleman, Stanley (1974). Living Your Dying. Berkeley, CA: Center Press. p. 158. ISBN ISBN 0-934320-09-8. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help) • Originally published by Random House. • Examines attitudes toward dying, styles of dying, and styles of living.