The emotional on the body, 1939 - Susan Isaacs writes to a teacher about emotional conflict expressed on the body.

June 1939 in Home and School "Readers Questions"

“M.G.” writes:

I wonder if I might ask for your advice about a young pupil of mine - a boy aged nine and a half? His general intelligence is normal, but he seems to have considerable difficulty over muscular control. His walk is poor, the right leg is thrown out as if not under full control. His stance is bad as he has a nervous thrust forward on the left shoulder, and he seems to find some difficulty in sitting or standing peacefully and still. His handwriting and handwork are laboured and slow, with the remarkable exception of the double-handed action of playing the piano at which he excels. He gives moreover an impression of nervous tension.

There are, however, circumstances which might help to explain this. His parents have both been, perhaps, a little over anxious for his success: he is being“chased’ by a rather more placid and easily successful brother of six and a half. Moreover, his father says that he, as a boy, had something of the same nervous movements. I may add that the child has been thoroughly examined for any physical defect and that none has been found.

When this lad was learning to write, he showed a preference for the use of his left hand. He was, however, told to employ the right. Both his parents and I are anxious to know whether you would consider that his defects are in any way the result of this forcing of the use of the right hand. If so, would you think it any advantage at this stage to revert to the use of the left hand? Is it an action that would cause a temporary set-back as he no longer prefers his left hand?

We should be very grateful for your opinion in this matter and of any other advice in his treatment that you think might be helpful to him.

Yes, I would certainly believe that the interference with the boy’s preference for the use of his left hand has contributed a good deal to his difficulties in muscular control. The picture you draw of his ways of movement shows so vividly the feelings of conflict which underlie this awkwardness in movement.

You say his right leg is drawn out as if not under full control, and yet his left shoulder is thrust forward in a nervous way. One can hardly imagine a more vivid picture of conflict of impulses which is being expressed in a bodily form; and doubtless it is being expressed in a bodily form because it was a bodily habit, namely the use of the left hand, which was interfered with by his parents. This has apparently increased the while body tension and the anxiety connected with bodily movements.

You refer to the remarkable exception of the double-handed action of playing the piano, at which he excels. Evidently he is good in this series of movements just because there is no conflict of left and right, but both join together in harmony. I should surmise that the left and right hand, the left and right side of the body, and the question of which should come first or which should be used for any particular purpose, have taken up the whole of the boy’s emotional conflict about his relations to people: the conflict between love and hate, and between father and mother.

The competition with his younger and more successful brother have doubtless contributed to his anxiety for some years, and this would act all the more powerfully at the time when his first efforts at writing were made more uncertain and more strenuous by his own personal preference for the use of the left hand being interfered with.

There seems to be reason to believe that the preference for the left hand, at any rate sometimes, is associated with a tendency to some degree of social difficulty, but this, the social difficulty, is nearly always enhanced when the use of the left hand is interfered with. The use of the left hand is in part one of the ways in which the child asserts his independence against his parents and society in general, and if he is denied this comparatively harmless idiosyncrasy, then his negative feelings and conflict are intensified and have to be expressed all the more vigorously in other and more harmful directions. The evidence all round is does seem to be clear that it is much better not to interfere with a preference for the left hand.

In some walks of life left-handedness is a serious handicap, for example, in industry. Most industrial machines are made for right-handed workmen. But in the professions or in sports, and certainly in writing, the left hand is just as good as the right, and it is nobody’s business but the person’s concerned which hand is used.

With regard to the problem of whether or not it would be better now to leave him to use the left hand, I would suggest that you should certainly leave him free to use whichever he would like.  If he started again using his left hand there would doubtless be some temporary set-back, but the freedom of feeling which he would gain might as well set off this temporary disadvantage. I would not necessarily suggest to him that he should now use his left hand for writing, but I would refrain form the slightest interference with any tendency he has to operate with the left hand in any other pursuit.

What might be a very great help would be to introduce some new manual activity, some form of handicraft with which he had not come into contact with before, and leave him completely free to use whichever hand he preferred in this. If he could somehow get the sense that his left hand was a useful, directing instrument, this might help to being a greater and more harmonious balance of his body as a whole, and give him more confidence in its general use. The great majority of left-handed people are right-handed in some respects, so that what he needs is simply to have the balance redressed. He has been made to feel that his left hand is a bad leader, and now to get his emotional balance and bodily poise properly developed I would say he needs some way of feeling that his left hand can be a good idea and leader, can take the initiative in a good form and in some sort of activity, if not in all.

It is not easy for me to suggest an actual handicraft, since I do not know what opportunities he has already enjoyed; but I would urge that you should consider this point, and find some new manual occupation of a creative kind which would give him the chance to use his left hand as the preferred instrument. And apart from this, I would do all I could to make him feel that the left side of his body was as good as the right, and I would give him lots of opportunity for gymnastics, games and sports, as well as for creative activities in general.