This story of perceptiveness, of intelligence, and of persistence, shown by a man without medical training, is one of the true epics of medical research and practice.
-Professor N. Tinbergen

IN THE EARLY 1890s Frederick Matthias (F. M.) Alexander was giving one-man shows in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. Readings from Shakespeare were his specialty, and he was particularly fond of Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice. Early in his career he began to have trouble with his throat and vocal cords. Friends told him that they could hear him gasp and suck in air through his mouth when he recited, and on one occasion he became so hoarse by the end of the evening that he could scarcely speak. Rest and medication, which his doctor prescribed, were effective only until he went back to the platform, when the hoarseness promptly returned. He reasoned from this that it must be something he did while reciting that caused the trouble, and since no one seemed able to tell him what it was, he decided to find out for himself.

Standing in front of a mirror he watched himself both in ordinary speaking and in reciting. At first he noticed nothing in ordinary speaking, but when he launched into one of his recitations, he saw that several things were happening that he had not seen before: He was depressing his larynx and audibly sucking in breath; he was lifting his chest and hollowing his back; and he was changing the axis of his head by lifting his chin and rotating the head "backward and down."

Once he had discovered these tendencies, he found that they were present, though to a lesser degree, in ordinary speaking. Having tried unsuccessfully to deal with each of them separately, he finally came to the conclusion that they were interrelated parts of a total pattern of which the principal part was the change in the axis of the head. When he could keep from pulling back his head in ordinary speaking, the tendency to suck in breath and depress the larynx decreased and the condition of his larynx and vocal cords improved.

Convinced by this experience that he was on the right track, he determined to pursue the investigation further until he could establish a reliable control over his speaking voice. Adding two more mirrors to the system so that he could observe himself in profile, he realized that his response to the stimulus to speak was indeed a total pattern, for it involved an increase in muscle tension everywhere.

To deal with the problem, he devised a set of "directions" (messages from the brain to the various mechanisms) for relaxing muscles in his neck instead of tensing them, allowing his head to go "forward and up" instead of pulling it backward and down, lengthening his spine instead of arching it, and widening his back instead of narrowing it.

These directions (or "orders" as he often called them) were to be projected both sequentially and simultaneously ("one after another and all at once"); that is, he would continue giving the directions for the first part while giving the directions for the second part and so on.

He practised giving himself these directions for long periods of time, "even months," he tells us, without trying to "do" them. Finally, believing that he had mastered the problem, he applied the new "means-whereby" to reciting but was disappointed to discover from the mirrors that as soon as he began to recite he reverted to his old response pattern and pulled his head back and down. From this and from similar experiences with the mirrors he concluded that his senses were unreliable and that he could not depend on instinctive or habitual guidance if he wanted to make a change. His final step was to bring the whole process of inhibiting and directing onto the conscious level and keep it there, deciding at the last instant whether or not to gain his original end and speak, or to change the end and do something different such as lifting his hand. Whichever choice he made, he would continue to project the directions. These procedures, he said, would result in a different activity from the old, habitual activity "in that the old activity could not be controlled outside the gaining of a given end, whereas the new activity could be controlled for the gaining of any end that was consciously desired." This is a compressed account of how F. M. Alexander discovered his technique of conscious control. The account is a paradigm for bringing the pattern of a learned response (any learned response) onto the conscious level where it can be controlled in such a way that when the associated stimulus is presented, three choices are available: to make the response as it was originally learned; to make a different and more appropriate response; not to respond at all. The procedure, Alexander said, is contrary to all learning procedures that have been followed in the past.

He concluded his account by saying: "After I had worked on this plan for a considerable time, I became free from my tendency to revert to my wrong habitual use in reciting, and the marked effect of this upon my functioning convinced me that I was at last on the right track, for once free from this tendency, I also became free from the throat and vocal trouble and from the respiratory and nasal difficulties with which I had been beset from birth."

Secure in the control of his voice, Alexander resumed his career of reciting but continued to experiment with the new technique for monitoring his performance, extending it beyond speaking into other psycho-physical activities. In the course of time he began to share his observations with other actors and reciters (public recitation was a popular profession at that time) and soon was teaching his method on a professional basis.