The Meaning of Movement

Embodied Developmental, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives of the Kestenberg Movement Profile

Janet Kestenberg Amighi, Susan Loman, K. Mark Sossin, Janet Kestenberg Amighi, Susan Loman, K. Mark Sossin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351038683
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Danza

The new edition of The Meaning of Movement serves as a guide to instruction in the Kestenberg Movement Profile (KMP) and as the system's foremost reference book, sourcebook, and authoritative compendium. This thoroughly updated volume interweaves current developmental science, cultural perspectives, and KMP-derived theory and methods for research and techniques for clinical practice. Through the well-established KMP, clinicians and researchers in the realms of nonverbal behavior and body movement can inform and enrich their psychological interpretations of movement. Interdisciplinary specialists gain a way to study the embodiment of cognition, affects, learning styles, and interpersonal relations based on observation and analysis of basic qualities of movement.

Section I
The Kestenberg Movement Profile Explained

Introduction

Janet Kestenberg Amighi, Susan Loman, and K. Mark Sossin

The search for the understanding of movement begins with everyday observations and experiences. Though often outside of our awareness, we regularly rely on nonverbal cues to assess the feelings and personality traits of others. We each have our own informal ‘lexicon’ of movement patterns that becomes an untaught, yet essential, reference guide, enabling us to respond and adjust to others. Given the breadth of information that bodily movements potentially reveal to us, it is not surprising that a wide variety of methods have been used in scientific and artistic fields to decipher the meaning of movement.

The use of movement analysis for psychological assessment and treatment rests on the understanding of the mind, emotions, and body as closely integrated, mutually interacting systems. This link, this holistic connection, means that not only does the body reflect the psyche, but the body can affect the psyche as well. This is to say that the KMP is, in its very essence, focused on patterns and processes of embodiment. Embodiment is variously defined, but in our understanding includes the notion that cognition, temperament, feelings, social patterns, and a wide range of experiences (1) are represented in the body, and (2) often arise from and are shaped by the body in ways that reflect an interaction of the body’s structure and functions and its varied experiences in the world.

There are many highly systematized approaches to movement study in the field of psychology and psychoanalysis. Some prioritize muscular changes in the face (Ekman & Friesen, 1978), others derive from the major contributions of Laban (1960), addressing body architecture, and still others have been developed for special purposes, such as the identification of key message exchanges, as between infant and parent (Beebe, 2005; Stern, 1995; Trevarthen, 1979; Tronick, 2007). The KMP, with roots in Laban’s systematizing, brings a distinct view of developmental processes to bear, and offers itself as a unique research tool, assessment method, anchor for clinical intervention, and approach to individual, interpersonal, and cultural differences. Historically, the KMP has served a key role within the training of dance/movement therapists. Psychology and psychoanalysis are also fields enriched by the approach to understanding meaning in movement. As various scientific endeavors, such as robotics (Shack & Ritter, 2009), attempt to decipher elements of movements that are most associated with emotion and human interaction, the KMP also serves as a mainstay classification system.

However, the KMP goes beyond these contributions, as a distinct theory of infant/child development. Kestenberg offered a theory that synthesizes her body-mind integration approach with relational development, attachment theory, ego-psychology, and psychoanalysis through seeing that the relational elements give structure and shape to drives, temperament, defenses, and coping skills. Furthermore, she focused from the start on the biological and neurological underpinnings of all behavior. She observed how sucking, for example, serves not only an early survival need but also is adapted to numerous other functions such self-soothing, empathy, and taking in the environment. It is why the KMP integrates so seamlessly with neuroscience.

Body-mind integration is becoming more widely recognized as critical to the study of human behavior. We know that both physical and emotional experiences leave long-term traces upon the way individuals hold themselves and move; we also are learning how much the body influences the way we think, feel, and experience the world. Thus, the study of movement opens a door not only to understanding but also to movement-based therapeutic approaches such as Body-Mind Centering(™) (i.e., Bainbridge Cohen, 2012), dance/movement therapy (i.e., Lewis, 1993; Chaiklin & Wengrower, 2016), and/or movement retraining (Buelte, 1992). Those focused on infant-caregiver relationships, as well as on adult relationships, often highlight the efficacy and signaling power of nonverbal communication. Mental health professionals regularly use the facial expressions and body movements of those they treat as indicators of affects and motives that may not be verbalized (or conscious), and they may use their own movement patterns and paralinguistic features (consciously or unconsciously) to construct and sustain a working, trusting relationship. One may also attend to the ways in which movement patterns of two or more individuals clash and harmonize, creating positive or negative ‘chemistry’ between partners and among group members, forging or disrupting relationships. Finally, as a result of interest in improving human-accessible communication and complex movement abilities in robots and avatars many engineers are experimenting with various movement coding systems (e.g., Schack & Ritter, 2009).

Those interested in pursuing the study of nonverbal behavior range across many disciplines and backgrounds, including caregivers who study parenting manuals seeking insights into their children’s nonverbal development, as well as social, developmental, and clinical psychologists, anthropologists, educators, animal behaviorists, as well as those in the fields of semiotics, communications, linguistics, creative art therapies, kinesiology, robotics, dance, drama, and child development.

To serve research, clinical, and artistic pursuits, professionals often require coding and classificatory systems for describing and analyzing nonverbal behavior. Although many formats have been developed, some are overly broad, utilizing general movement categories, while others are extremely specialized and thus may not be suitable for one’s particular goals. Of value to a wide range of disciplines is a system that is sufficiently detailed and specific to capture subtle, yet important distinctions and individual variations, while comprehensive as well. We believe that the KMP offers such a system.

Our purpose in rewriting this book is to present the complex but encompassing system of notation and movement analysis of the Kestenberg Movement Profile (KMP) first developed in the 1960s, as well as offer relevant literature and research in related fields and applications in child development, psychotherapy, and research. We will explain how the KMP offers: (1) a Laban-derived method of labeling and categorizing basic movement patterns, (2) a system for developmental and psychological assessment based exclusively on the observation and analysis of natural movement, (3) a theoretical framework that guides the interpretation of an individual’s movement repertoire in developmental and psychological terms, and (4) a framework for designing interventions for the prevention and treatment of a wide variety of issues such as psychological, developmental, and educational. Movement qualities that are coded using the KMP system reflect individuals’ expression of needs and feelings, styles of learning and cognition, modes of relating, styles of defense, and dynamics for coping with the environment. Psychoanalytically oriented therapists and researchers can use the KMP to access information about drives, object relations, ego development, the superego, and defense mechanisms. However, the KMP is equally accessible to those with other theoretical orientations and can be used as a survey of movement patterns.

This text also includes chapters that survey clinical approaches incorporating the KMP and presentations of several research studies and applications of the KMP.

A Portrait of the KMP

The Austrian choreographer and movement educator, Rudolf Laban, conceived of and generated a system of dance notation and movement analysis (1960, 1966). The Laban system provides a means of perceiving and describing elementary components of movement, both qualitatively and quantitatively (Bartenieff & Lewis, 1980). Labanotation and Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) are applicable to many areas of study, as they involve the processes of movement that were fundamental for Laban, “not the end product or goal of the action” (Bartenieff & Lewis, 1980, p. ix). The movement components described by Laban are readily observable and the interpretive scheme offered is logical and accessible to the layperson.

Reflecting their essentially developmental and psychological interests, Kestenberg and her colleagues in the Sands Point Movement Study Group elaborated upon the LMA system that they were learning to reflect the ways in which movement patterns evolve within the context of development. In order to facilitate the use of the KMP for psychological assessment, they sought to highlight the correspondences they discovered between movement qualities and Anna Freud’s (1965) developmental scheme.

In the course of long-term movement observation of children, clinical practice, and research, Kestenberg and the original study group amended Laban’s description of efforts into four distinct movement clusters: tension flow rhythms (that reflect unconscious needs and biological drives) tension flow attributes (that reflect temperament and the expression of affects), pre-efforts (that reflect immature ways of coping, often used in learning and defensive behaviors), and efforts (used in coping with space, weight, and time elements). Some Laban terminology has also been amended (Kestenberg & Sossin, 1979). These four clusters were transformed into four diagrams that came to comprise System I of the Kestenberg Movement Profile.

Similarly, they differentiated Laban’s concept of shape flow elements into bipolar shape flow (movements that reflect global self-feelings) and unipolar shape flow elements (involved in responses to specific environmental and internal stimuli). With guidance from movement experts, Paulay (Lomax, Bartenieff, & Paulay, 1967), Bartenieff (Bartenieff & Lewis, 1980), and Lamb (1965), they added movement qualities that relate to how we move and gesticulate in the kinesphere, or bubble of space that surrounds us (shape flow design), and followed these with shaping in directions (used in self-protection and structuring learning) and shaping in planes (used in mature and complex relationships). These five clusters were transformed into five diagrams that came to comprise System II of the Kestenberg Movement Profile.

The movement qualities of System I are based on contraction (bound flow) and release (free flow) of muscle tension. These changes in muscle tension comprise the dynamics of System I movements. The movement qualities of System II are based on the shrinking and growing of body contours. These changes in body contours comprise the structure for System I movements. For example, individuals can bind their muscles without moving. But if the individual shrinks and binds muscles at the same time, the shrinking gives a structure/shape to the change in muscle tension.

What emerged was a movement-based profile, consisting of qualitative information and nine diagrams that display the relative frequency of more than ninety different qualities of movement in an individual’s movement repertoire. The nine frequency diagrams of movement quality clusters are arranged to reflect developmental sequences and the alternation of mobilizing and stabilizing qualities in development (see Laban, 1960). Comparing diagrams within the KMP can illuminate how movements qualities of System I and System II are used in varied harmonious and clashing combinations (see Figure 0.1).

Once a KMP is completed, it serves as a movement portrait upon which to base a developmental assessment, and in clinical contexts, a treatment plan. As described earlier, it can also be used to assess learning styles, personality characteristics, temperament, learning and defense styles, ways of coping with the environment, creative intelligence (System I) and sense of self, ways of using space, and styles of relationships, or by comparing two or more KMPs, one can discover areas of accord and conflict among individuals.

The original arena fo...