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"Suppose a man starts out to reach a certain destination and comes to a place where the road branches into two. Not knowing the way, he takes the wrong road of the two and gets lost. He asks the way of someone he meets and is told to go straight back to the crossroads and take the other road, which will lead him directly to the place he wants to reach. What should we say if we heard that the man had gone back to the crossroads as directed, but had there concluded that he knew better after all than his adviser, had taken again his old road, and again got lost, and had done this thing not once or twice, but over and over again? Still more, what should we say if we heard that he was worrying dreadfully because he kept getting lost and seemed no nearer to getting to his destination?"
The story can be found in F. Matthias Alexander's book "Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual", first published in 1923. Alexander is best known for the teaching method he developed, known today as the Alexander Technique. Alexander goes on to write: "I can see the reader's look of skepticism as he reads this and assures himself that he, at any rate, could not be guilty of (this) crime..." Then, talking about his own teaching experience, "...this is more or less what happens in the case of every pupil, even of those who are accounted the most intelligent, the most highly educated, the most scientifically trained and this serves to strengthen my conviction that the principles underlying present methods of education are erroneous. Indeed it would seem that our education systems, our methods of training in scientific and professional spheres, have tended actually to cultivate and establish the defect to which I have referred." What is the precise nature of the defect Alexander is talking about? And why is it so important? Alexander is focusing on the balance between the desire to do - "volition" and the ability to check that desire, which he labels "inhibition". Volition is the act of responding to a stimulus: the phone rings and you immediately get up to answer it. Inhibition is the refusal to respond to a stimulus: a car cuts you off on the freeway and you refrain from trying to get revenge. In Alexander's words, "volition is what we intend to do" and inhibition "what we wish to hold in check, what we wish to prevent."
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