Awareness is not on their menu . . .
Professional organizations have an agency problem: they limit knowledge and action.
Professionals and professional organizations have a vested interest in keeping knowledge of the limitations of their work away from their potential clients. And they have an interest in limiting competition and negative information about their practices past and present. - Ryan Nagy
Are you familiar with the agency problem? The agency problem is the divergence between the interest of an “agent” (such as a lawyer, stockbroker, medical doctor, and practitioners of many kinds) and that of their clients or students.
An example of an agency problem would be a lawyer who charges by the hour and who inflates her time to charge more. A lawyer or other professional could also offer complex legal solutions that cost more but are no better than simpler and cheaper options.
Likewise, a stockbroker can recommend unnecessary trades to make more commissions. Doctors can order unnecessary tests and surgeries, or worse, surgeries that have no chance of working.
(If you want to see just one example of how billions - literally billions of dollars are spent yearly on surgeries that have no chance of working, see Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery (that is an Amazon affiliate link).
My Feldenkrais TMJ program that I first released in 2010 came from an agency problem. I was physically sickened when I realized that TMJ surgeries were being prescribed to patients when they had virtually no chance of working. Why do surgeons recommend surgeries that have no chance of working? Because they make great sums of money doing so.
However, the agency problem is not just an issue with white-collar professionals.
It can also happen with plumbers, mechanics, and other service providers. I think nearly anyone who has driven a car for any length of time, has taken the car to the shop and been doubtful whether a repair was really necessary or should have cost so much. If you do not have knowledge of how a car works, how can you tell what really needs to be done?
Let’s move up a level from individual practitioners of a profession to groups of individuals that are sometimes called professional organizations.
Professional organizations in many fields offer more and more “levels” of certifications and status. Some of the certifications are of limited value and do not help the public or practitioners. But they do make quite a bit of money for those who have the right to offer the certifications.
It takes more than 20 years to become a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Trainer. Do new practitioners really need 20 years to become certified?
Of course, not.
But who does the long certification process benefit?
It benefits the current Feldenkrais trainers. It limits their competition and artificially raises the prices for the public. And this is done under the guise of “protecting the work” and “maintaining standards.
The agency problem is an awareness problem.
The issue is that one person or group of people has an awareness of what needs to be fixed or changed and the other person (the client or student) only has partial information.
For example, in the Feldenkrais Guild System, starting with Moshe Feldenkrais and continuing to this day, people are told that the work is not about improving movement but about improving awareness. That is why, the verbally-guided work is called, “Awareness Through Movement”.
My contention is that the awareness that is taught is drastically limited by both design and cultural factors.
For example, could increasing your awareness of how your body moves, give you an awareness of something that happened in the past of the Feldenkrais method? Not likely. You would have to have access to records of past events in order to study and have some hope of understanding them.
The agency problem with Feldenkrais is different than the structural limitations of doing Awareness Through Movement. The agency problem is when sources of knowledge are covered up or not spoken about. For example, when was the last time that you heard a Feldenkrais Trainer criticize Moshe Feldenkrais or his work or ideas? Do they bring their awareness to the limitations of the man or the work? Do they talk about past events that conflict with their narrative of “what Moshe wanted”?
It rarely happens.
Why?
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