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A Fascinating and Stimulating Exchange: Raymond Dart's and Alex and Joan Murrays' Correspondence

A key part of the collaboration of Raymond Dart with Alex and Joan Murray was their written correspondence during the 1960s and 1970s.

The following is much of the written correspondence between Raymond Dart and Alexander and Joan Murray from 1967 to 1971. Most of the letters were handwritten and have been transcribed from xerox copies by Marian Goldberg. The typewritten letters are scans of xeroxes of of the originals. One hand printed letter from Alex Murray to Dart has been scanned from a xerox copy. This material has been generously provided by the Murrays.

1967 Dart/Murray Correspondence

1968 Dart/Murray Correspondence

1969 Dart/Murray Correspondence

1970s Dart/Murray Correspondence

 

1967 Letters from Raymond Dart to Alexander and Joan Murray

The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential

22.9.67

Dear Mr. Murray,

I understand from a letter sent to me by Walter Carrington, as also from your own 6th last that you will now have returned to Lansing & probably be getting straight with the accumulation of affairs that have developed during your absence.

I must thank you in the first place for your letter explaining the succession of events in your experiences. How interesting that we were so near to one another in ___________ & what a strange trail has had to be followed before our speaking to one another. It just shows how inefficient human means of intercommunication still are.

Certainly you are free to use anything of what I have written that can help your students or the musicians for whom you write your books. I profited by your conversation whilst in London about the whispered AH; & if you have not already read it I think that you might find a book written by a physiotherapist called Feldenkrais useful. It’s title, if I recall it correctly is The Mature Body or something similar & it was published in England. Perhaps Waller could could search it out. I understand that he lives in Israel & looked after Ben-Gurion physically. His book dealt to my mind excellently in a popular way with the reflex mechanisms.

If in some way it proved feasible for both of you to visit these Institutes & to bring Frank Pierce Jones with you to meet either informally or formally the staff of the Institution before the winter is here, it would be rather thrilling I feel sure. It may be too much to look forward to but it would be fine if it could happen because we could go over so much ground speedily.

But if it cannot by managed we must do the best possible with these more leisurely ways of writing & reading. Meantime wishing you the greatest possible success in Hawaii.

Your sincerely,
Raymond A Dart

 

Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential

10-5-67

Dear Mr. Murray,

My wife & I are glad to know that you will both be able to come down to Philadelphia for the week-end 14-16 October including Monday because that should give you a chance of seeing on Monday something of what goes on here (Sunday & Saturday) being basically days when everybody is away for week-end pursuits.

Unfortunately, neither Glenn Doman nor Carl Delacato will be here because they leave for Brazil next Thursday & will be away for a month but doubtless you will see the Institutes & meet some members of the Staff & be able to appreciate the manner in which their organisation operates; & perhaps also the extent to which they may be enabled to profit from a knowledge of what Alexander & his pupils have discovered & at the same time the latter may be able to profit from the Institutes & their work.

At any rate between now & your visit I will have an opportunity of thinking about all that you have written to me even if I cannot find the answers before we may be able to discover them together with Dr. Jones’s help.

I regret that the supply of spare copies of my articles produced so long ago has run out but I will see what can be done to meet your requests if not before your arrival then by the time you come. In the meantime I wish to thank you for all the enclosures: the sketches & the papers & will look forward to our meeting with you both & also, as we hope, with Dr. Jones.

Yours sincerely,
Raymond A Dart

 

26-10-67

The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential

Dear Mr. Murray,

I have just been writing to Dr. Frank Pierce Jones to tell him about a little of book of 40 pages on Baby Gymnastics; a translation by a Johannesburg woman I know (Agnes Wenham) of Detleff Neumann-Neurode’s Säuglingsgymnastik (23rd edition) completely revised by Wendula Kaiser (nee Neumann-Neurode). Ten pages of text & 20 pages of illustrations, they will interest both of you & your friends; the is published 1967 by Pergamon Press, here & in England, etc.

The information about Dr. Daris R Swindelr’s work & his artists is most encouraging: such comparative work is most important & will be greatly needed by all the workers in the Regional Primate Research Centres in the U.S. & elsewhere to say nothing of medical schools & biology departments.

I am glad to know that you both feel that you have profited from your contact with us & with The Institutes, without whose prior struggles & successes, of course, we could not have made contact with you either in London or here.

I am sorry that both Doman & Delacato were away in Brazil, when it was convenient for you & Frank Pierce Jones to be here with your wives. They would probably have enjoyed answering your questions & discussing the daily realities, with which they have had the courage to contend during the past 20 years; & while their own concepts of practices have developed without the advantage of knowing anything whatever about Alexander or his students & their achievements,

But the visit, talk & demonstrations made a big impact on their students & there is no feeling on the part of the Directors of these Institutes that they have all the answers to the problems that brain injured children present. It is to help them in that quest for answers that they have brought us here.

Nor did we attempt to show you what answers they have & what they strive to teach (& unteach) both the parents & the future staff members of other Institutes. That is why, if both of you are interested enough, it would be useful if you were able ______ to attend one of their I.O.C. (i.e. Intensive Orientation Courses) during the period before Carrington comes over. It take a week!

Having heard & perhaps also seen (if you could spend a fortnight here) the things that they do you would be able to influence their outlook upon the part that each of them plays in the communication of ‘good use’ to those whose uses of their bodies are indifferent, bad, & even non-existent: Their ambition is not only to make ‘ill people well’ but ‘average folk better’ & also the ‘better individuals ideal or perfect’. So the ambitions are the same even if the means are not as yet identical nor synthesized.

Perhaps what is needed is the impact of many people: Carringtons, Joneses, Murrays, Darts, & Wielopolskas & perhaps many others beyond the dedicated group that are already here, before The Institutes will achieve the human potential they aim at achieving. The big thing to me is that they have done so much with such previously neglected human material that was so unpromising, & that they have had the courage to announce what their aim is in their name.

I do not aim to teach: I have never even imagined that I have had the ability to teach anybody anything. I have talked about things I have seen & imagined I learned & also written about them more or less extensively. So I am not trying to teach The Institutes or its staff.

If like yourselves, they run across anything that I have written & unfortunately have been unable to illustrate or have illustrated by others & which they find useful & applicable, I enjoy the communication it brings between us & am tempted to go further. But in these matters of muscular journey that are only communicable only by experience & not by language I find myself inadequate through lack of training to put them through the routine of any technique such as been devised hitherto. That is where you & your wife have the advantage.

I will try to get of copies of Adventures of the Missing Link for your two friends & send them to you inscribed as you desire. Meantime xerox copies of the three papers dealings with muscles, malocclusion & poise are being prepared & will probably accompany the books or be sent later. We are both pleased that your students have enjoyed stimulating lessons as well as Dr. Niblock & will look forward to hearing about the primate phylogenetic explorations & their results.

Yours sincerely,
Raymond A Dart

 

The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential

10-11-67

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Murray,

I am sorry to be replying late to your letter of 31-10-67 but I have been very busy since I came & have awaited the return of Doman & Delacato from Brazil. You will be welcome here as participants in the Intensive Orientation Course as my guests but the intensity, strange as it may appear, is bearable provided you both wrap yourselves up warmly against the cold (overcoats & _______ if necessary) & advantage would be taken of your presence for you both to participate in the course & to demonstrate to the students & staff.

I leave for Dallas next Tuesday & will be away a week but we will be here during the 3-9 period. I do not know how your living costs of lodging & of transportation can be met but perhaps you will be able to manage that side of the matter.

I am including copies of the forms to be filled out if you do not not have them & suggest that you send them back completed to Neil Harvey, the Dean of the Avery Postgraduate Institutes as soon as possible.

I will not attempt to go into the differences between techniques & attitudes because I hope to be seeing you both & discussing in detail any aspect of these matters that we desire & by the time I get back from Texas & you arrive here I will have digested the whole business more thoroughly and by the end of the Intensive Orientation Course & your direct association with what has been done & is being done by their techniques despite all the imperfections of the treated & the treaters the approaches towards integration will doubtless become more manifest.

I thank you for the clarity with which you have expressed your ideas & I am sure that we will be able to devise a series of illustrations that will be of great help to all those who are striving to improve their postures, potentials, & performances.

With kindest regards to you both from us both.

Yours sincerely,
Raymond A Dart

 

27-11-67

The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Murray,

Your reservation forms have been handed over to Dean Harvey this morning & this is just to thank you for your L____ book, the hand-out re Equilibrium & Music & your letter.

I am glad to know that you came to the recognition of the relationship between the foetal position & the conquest of fear in your account. You may find that the rolling-over with hands clasped over your head (fingers inter-twined) rewarding if you have not discovered it already!

The hand-out will assist me on Friday evening next at 6:30 when I expect to talk briefly to the staff here about the Alexander Technique & about yourselves & your accessibility to them during the following week.

I think that the week of the Intensive Orientation Course, quite apart from its content—which you will find useful as well as interesting—will assist in explaining what you have termed the “Dart-do-it yourself-AT” with the Doman–Declacto–pro[?] principles practices.

Obviously the practices that consume the time of the other two 5[?] month courses cannot be communicated in a week but the principles are & I think that with your Alexander-alerted insights both of you will enjoy the experience. Anyhow—I hope so!

Yours sincerely,
Raymond A Dart

 

1968 Dart/Murray Correspondence

1969 Dart/Murray Correspondence

1970s Dart/Murray Correspondence

 

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