[If you got here from the newsletter you might want to skip the first two paragraphs and continue reading at “That Charlotte would speak about ‘body image’…”]

I visited the archives at Cooper Union in New York City on March 12, 2020, only a day before the college closed its doors to students and visitors because of the Covid 19 pandemic. In a letter Charlotte wrote to her teacher Elsa Gindler in Berlin on February 4, 1957, I had read about a talk she had given as part of the Cooper Union Forum’s series on “The Self.” “Your ears must have rung on January 23,” Charlotte wrote, “because that evening I gave a talk at Cooper Union in front of 1,100 people. […] The theme was given to me [..], ’Body Image.’ A delicate theme! After I laid out the different influences leading to such an image, I was able, by way of our work, to slowly arrive at reality. What one can say in one speech is of course very limited, but it was as perfect (or imperfect) as it could have been in such a short time. It seems that the lecture made an impression. I received a letter from the chairman of Cooper Union Forum, asking for permission to broadcast the recording of the lecture on the radio as well as loaning it to other educational institutions.”

I had approached the archives some months prior, just as they were in the process of digitizing some 2,000 reels of tape. It took a few months but then the good news came – Charlotte’s talk was among them, in pristine condition. It appears that the lecture was broadcast indeed, resulting in copyright issues, which is why I was only granted permission to listen to the talk and take notes on location. Strangely, I then all but forgot about the visit and the talk. In part, perhaps, because my writing at the time was less about her teaching activity in New York and more about the falling out with Gindler shortly after that talk. The onset of the pandemic was probably another reason that the visit simply faded from memory. Only recently, when I was rereading the chapter that I want to share with you today, did I suddenly remember. However, though I now remember sitting in front of a computer at a white desk in a small office, I still can’t at all recall hearing Charlotte’s voice. Luckily, though, I did recover the notes and they really make me want to get a hold of that recording, so I just got back in touch with the archive. Hopefully, I will be able to share the talk with you in full sometime in the near future. For now I can share some of my notes. Maybe they’ll whet your appetite too.

That Charlotte would speak about “body image” at all will come as a surprise to some of us who remember that she strongly disapproved of the use of the word “body” as to something we have. She generally asked us to replace “body” with the first person pronoun I, saying something like, “it’s not your body, it’s you!” 

What’s more, in the talk she introduced herself as a “teacher of body-reorientation.” Sensory Awareness was not yet the name of her work, though she started toying with that term around the time of the talk. Really surprising to me was that she did not disproof of having an image of the body in the first place. Again, students of her will remember how she discouraged us from having images at all. But in this talk she recognizes the inevitability of having images of ourselves, calling it “one of the most exciting and revealing [topics] for self inquiry.” Rather than discouraging it, she sees her work as a process of inquiry leading to the dismantling of acquired imagery which then can lead to the building up of a healthy body image grounded in our own felt experience. 

Here are some snippets from the talk: 

“There are many more factors contributing to our body image. Everything which happens in our environment, our relations to other people, friendship, love, sex, people's attitude towards us. How they look at us, what they say about us, ideals of beauty, fashion, the dictates of the advertising agency, the tendency to conform to the current patterns of what everybody does, what we read, hear, and see. […] In our civilization, the influences from the environment due to modern means of mass communication, are very powerful. They may be healthy, challenging, and constructive, but often they are the opposite: Irrational, superimposed, artificial.”

“We are endowed with the potential which allows us to accept the challenge. We can perceive clearly. We can weigh out what we perceive. We can make the choice. It's all in our biological equipment. There are only some ifs: If we are alert; if we are responsive*; if we can play the game. This brings us face to face to the significance of awareness, of fuller sensory awareness in living.”

“The knowledge that our body is well equipped to gain accurate information, gives the feeling of security, while sensory awareness, which permits us deeper, more differentiated experiences, adds richness to our feeling of self. It seems to me that only when we are fully open for reception, with no brakes applied, so that the whole range of sensory perception is possible, a healthy balance can be achieved between our own mobilized totality and the influences from the environment, which we then are able to evaluate properly. And only then a healthy body image can develop.”

“To find out about body image in our generation means really to find out about the dynamic forces in our time, a time of extreme opposites. On the one hand, there are true efforts towards self realization, towards deeper experiencing fuller expression, towards more meaningful living. On the other hand, there are potent elements of prejudice, the trend to conform, the lure of luxury and fancifulness. There is superficiality, there is narcissism, which dilutes genuine substance and hinders growing.”

“Would ever a person whose sense of self, whose body image is healthily developed, who has faith in his own riches, want to throw off his own and try to become like somebody else?”

“Why do words have such an impact on us? The answering of this question leads us to the most basic issue, which influences our self-experience today. The separation of mind and body, or still more correctly, mind over body.”

“This is [her teachers Elsa Gindler and Heinrich Jacoby’s] contribution to the chapter of body image. First: That there are no ungifted people. When we think we are, we will find on closer examination that we are only hindered. And hindrances can be shed. Second: That one can sense how hindering tendencies come about and what one has to allow to let them be dissolved. Third: That any technique the human mind designs will never be as complete as what our own organism can teach us once we become able to listen to it.”

“So what we are aiming at is [the] unfolding of the human totality, and this time not neglecting the physical. The releasing and fostering of the natural capacity to grow; more health and freedom in our living; more responsiveness* towards our environment. A true work on bio-social relatedness, […]

“We gradually begin to realize in what an overstimulated way we are living; how many unnecessarily efforts we are making; how often we put on an act when we think we are genuine. Such recognitions are very helpful. We learn that in order to become more responsive*, the whole organism has to become receptive, antenna-like. We learn that we can't force sensations through straining or doing – they are wise, they come, they happen.”

“Many people's body image includes the concept that effort is necessarily for every activity, as though the organism were not potent enough to develop the energy needed. Even for relaxation one makes efforts. As one student remarked: "All this week I tried hard to undo my overdoing."

Interestingly, even though Charlotte had just spent an hour talking about the body image, she did end her excursion into the world of her work with words that suggest that images of ourselves drop away or become less static.

“We gain the knowledge that whether we are younger or older, at any time there can be a new beginning because every moment is a new one. The experience that I, a living being among other living beings, underlie the same natural laws and so am related to all living, is a really cosmic experience. As one of my students once explained it so beautifully, "The experience of all one." We have come home to ourselves, a home in which the reality of our living self takes the place of body image.” 

Coda: Just as I was getting ready to post this blog I heard back from the Cooper Union archives. The archivist sent me a link to the recording, allowing me to listen to it, which I immediately did. To hear Charlotte’s voice at the age of 56 for the first time (again) was a surprisingly strange experience – but I won’t get into this. I want you to have your own experience when the recording becomes publicly available for streaming on the archive’s new website. I’ll keep you posted. 

*Charlotte used the words “reactive” and “reactiveness.” I took the liberty to change that. I believe “responsive” it is more in the spirit of what she meant. The way we use and hear these words may have changed since 1957.