Chapter 3. Kinesthetic memory

Further critical reflections and constructive analyses

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

This essay expands and broadens a 2003 article on kinesthetic memory. It does so by critically examining currently favored taxonomies of memory as put forward by scientists, philosophers, and neuroscientists, and, in turn, by presenting a phenomenological perspective on body memory based on investigations by a Jungian analyst/phenomenological philosopher. The perspective brings to light highly complex and subtle dimensions of body memory, thus challenging us to enrich our understanding of body memory by turning studious attention to experience and actively investigating living experiences of body memory.

Keywords: body memory, either/or contraries, habit, kinesthesia, kinesthetic/kinetic melodies, kinetic dynamics, pointillist conceptions of movement, tactile-kinesthetic/affective bodies, taxonomies of memory

Published online: 25 January 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/aicr.84.05she

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Cited by 13 other publications

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2021. Embodied Intelligence and Self-Regulation in Skilled Performance: or, Two Anxious Moments on the Static Trapeze. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12:3 ► pp. 595 ff.

Brozzo, Chiara

2021. A Role for Conscious Accessibility in Skilled Action. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12:3 ► pp. 683 ff.

Fridland, Ellen

2017. Automatically minded. Synthese 194:11 ► pp. 4337 ff.

Koch, Sabine C, Thomas Fuchs & Michela Summa

2014. Body memory and kinesthetic body feedback: The impact of light versus strong movement qualities on affect and cognition. Memory Studies 7:3 ► pp. 272 ff.

Koch, Sabine C., Christine Caldwell & Thomas Fuchs

2013. On body memory and embodied therapy. Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy 8:2 ► pp. 82 ff.

Liu, Lucen

2022. Paddling with Maxine Sheets-Johnstone: Exploring the moving body in sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 57:2 ► pp. 236 ff.

Olivares, Himmbler & Carlos Cornejo

2020. The expressive dimension of interpersonal coordination and collaborative remembering. Pragmatics & Cognition 27:2 ► pp. 500 ff.

Olivares, Himmbler, Paloma Opazo, Daniela Sepúlveda & Carlos Cornejo

2015. Sequential remembering and lived remembering in the flow of experience: a videographic study / Recuerdo secuencial y recuerdo vivido en el curso de la experiencia: un estudio videográfico. Estudios de Psicología 36:2 ► pp. 451 ff.

Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine

2014. Animation: Analyses, Elaborations, and Implications. Husserl Studies 30:3 ► pp. 247 ff.

Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine

2019. Kinesthesia: An extended critical overview and a beginning phenomenology of learning. Continental Philosophy Review 52:2 ► pp. 143 ff.

Simpkins, Sara Anne & Katherine Myers-Coffman

2017. Continuing Bonds in the Body: Body Memory and Experiencing the Loss of a Caregiver During Adolescence. American Journal of Dance Therapy 39:2 ► pp. 189 ff.

Streeck, Jürgen

2021. The emancipation of gestures. Interactional Linguistics 1:1 ► pp. 90 ff.

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