In his review of the work of the Rockefeller Foundation for 1937, just published, President Raymond B. Fosdick has occasion, during his discussion of the work being done in the fields of psychiatry and medicine, to lay bare one of the important dilemmas currently facing mankind, to wit: How can science deal with individual man as a whole? The dilemma is implied in the attempts made to integrate the essentially unrelated techniques of medicine with those of psychiatry, or, in other words, to fuse two techniques which had their origin in the wholly false assumption that mind and body are separate entities.

"Just so far as medicine fails to encompass the whole man," writes Mr. Fosdick, "it will fail to understand him. Medicine runs the risk of letting synthesis wait too long upon analysis, of ignoring the whole in the knowledge of some parts. With all its wisdom, if medicine neglects what integrates and harmonizes the functions and organs, its picture will be out of focus and its comprehension incomplete." And by adding that "psychiatry is a headland of medicine and not an island of speculation," Mr. Fosdick believes that psychiatry, which is being heavily backed financially by the Foundation, is the potential integrating factor, an attitude which is certainly not very sound in the light of the fact, as I have implied, that it is sheer folly to try to fuse two techniques, each of which originated in the false theory that mind and body are separate entities.

It is interesting to find such statements in the pages of a publication by the Rockefeller Foundation, whose funds are devoted to the advance of knowledge. But the dilemma which gives rise to such speculation is widespread. An impasse has been reached in science's approach to man, and the need for dealing with the individual as an integrated whole is imperative. "The need," says Mr. Fosdick, "is so great that there is little danger, at the moment of over-stressing it." In the face of this it is curious that the Foundation remains unaware of the existence of a technique which actually employs an integrating principle that is demonstrably practical and scientific. For with a knowledge of the principles and technique of F. Matthias Alexander it is not likely that Mr. Fosdick would ascribe to psychiatry the function of integrating man's "functions and organs." In place of psychiatry, which is at best only a speculative technique, he would have reported enthusiastically upon Alexander's principle of the primary control and his technique for employing it in the integrated action and reaction of the human organism as opening up new avenues into the future well-being of humanity.

The work that has been done by Mr. Alexander in London has been recognized by a number of doctors within the British Medical Association as a work of revolutionary importance. And progress is being made in some quarters in this country by men who have begun to see a new principle at work, a principle which has within it the possibilities of transforming not only the whole science of therapeutics, mental and physical, but education as well. It would be difficult to find any work more worthy of the support of so great an organization as the Rockefeller Foundation.

I do not intend here to describe Mr. Alexander's work. His three books,* which are available in this country, speak for themselves. But in the sense that Mr. Alexander places at the disposal of the individual the scientific means whereby he may condition all his reactions co-ordinately, he has made possible the only existing technique for genuine self-control, which must render all other theories of self-control obsolete. So that when Mr. Fosdick writes, as he does on page 24 of his review, that "self-control is a natural accompaniment of sound health; and the absence of one may mean the lack of the other," he is probably not aware of the full import of his statement. For genuine self-control implies a unified working of the organism, in which strain and tension, physical and mental, have been reduced to a minimum by co-ordinate psycho-physical functioning. True self-control does indeed bring about sound health in both mind and body, but psychiatry, which does not understand the unity of the human organism, has no technique for achieving such self-control. Mr. Alexander has perfected that technique.

It is interesting that in his review Mr. Fosdick quotes a distinguished biologist who recently wrote : "Every thoughtful person will admit that there is a kind of moral necessity to go forward in the attempt to get a better and more comprehensive understanding of the whole nature of man. The material, mechanical civilization he has evolved may easily become a monster to destroy him unless he learns better to comprehend, develop, and control his biological nature."

And of Mr. Alexander's work Professor John Dewey has written:

"Mr. Alexander has demonstrated a new scientific principle with respect to the control of human behaviour as important as any principle which has ever been discovered in the domain of external nature, if these discoveries and inventions are not to end by making us their servants and helpless tools."

There you have the precept and the answer. There is a "kind of moral necessity to go forward in the attempt to get a better and more comprehensive understanding of the whole nature of man," and it is difficult to understand why such great philanthropic organizations as the Rockefeller Foundation continue to leave important stones unturned.

* Man's Supreme Inheritance, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, The Use of the Self (E. P. Dutton).