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Theory HFM
2.The notion of positionality
The viewpoint of functionality described under point 1 is not only applicable to the human movement, but also to the animal movement. In the notion of positionality the difference that is only demonstrable in the human movement comes up for discussion. Owing to this the addition ‘human’ in our name gets its pregnant denotation.
The notion of positionality is borrowed by Buytendijk from the anthropological philosopher H. Plessner, who makes a difference between eccentric and centric positionality.
De Graaf and Verberk have given this notion an empiric elaboration and made it suitable to describe apparent-different shapes of behaviour of motion. With that two positions can be distinguished that means two shapes of positionality.
The shortest description of the two positions is as follows:
in centric positionality I am a body, which functions
in eccentric positionality I have a body with which I function as with an instrument.
Those different positions are apparent in all earlier acquired behaviour of motion – such as walking, balancing, stooping, seizing, writing, cycling and so on. When I’m cycling in a centric positionality there is (as long as nothing special happens) no attention at all given to the many complicated movements, necessary to keep one’s balance and to move forward in a particular direction. There is not any distance between myself and the functions of motion I execute, for I am completely that moving, functioning body.
That form of being bodily active is the centre from where I live at the moment.
As regards those functions of motion I am in centric positionality, for that ‘I-function’ is as it were submerged in it. From that centre I can focus my entire functions of attention on the landscape or on all that has nothing to do with my cycle-movements.
The behaviour of motion of animals is always motion in centric positionality. That has, also with humans the characteristics of a safe and secure progress, as if goes automatically. And that is also explainable from the organisation of behaviour of the brain, which we’ll discuss later in point 3.
Those characteristics get lost with movement in eccentric positionality. When I move in eccentric positionality there is an I-function which doesn’t absorb in the function of motion. There is an I-function which controls the movement itself. Then there is really a ‘motor apparatus’ which is controlled as if it were an instrument with which motion targets are realized.
You just have to think for example of someone walking with a very painful foot to recognize this eccentric control. In that case full attention is given to the walk-movements themselves in an attempt to execute these movements in such a way that they cause as little pain as possible. Pain-experience is only an example, though very important in this context. However, the more general headword is here: experience insecurity. The fact is that an eccentric control-position comes compulsively into being as soon as ever the situation is appraised as being insecure. This evokes a watch-function in all behaviour of motion at once. This needn’t necessarily disturb a healthy functionality of motion, on condition that it is limited to momentary interventions, in specific concrete functions, on account of acute function-demands owing to transitory situation-features. However, if such an experience of insecurity is not limited to momentary actions, it often results in a permanent watch-function which causes that the subject cannot approach the normal movements in centric positionality. This is called persistent eccentric positionality. Such a persistent eccentric positionality ends basically in a great many dysfunctions of the body, not only in posture and movement. Painful complaints may easily become chronic. Under the next point (about functions of the brain) we’ll come back to that dysfunctionality