When I qualified as a doctor in 1971 I felt very much at a loss because my studies had made me loose faith in scientific medicine which appeared to me as an oversimplification with an extremely limiting theoretical basis. I seriously contemplated to change my profession but decided not to and started to work in child psychiatry. Child psychiatry seemed to be the least “scientific” branch of medicine and as such the least prestigious one, preoccupied as it was mainly with the mind at a time when the mind was nothing more than the effect of molecules and nerve impulses. I worked in child psychiatry for more than three years. In 1976 I started my specialist training in general psychiatry .

In 1975 I had taken part of a study group to the Soviet Union visiting Leningrad , Moscow and Tbilisi to study Soviet psychology and psychiatry. We had the opportunity to meet one of Soviets leading psychiatrists responsible for the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes, Professor R Nadzharov. He aroused my interest in this subject that I began to study when I got home. I wrote a pamphlet and many articles about it and visited Moscow several times to interview victims of abuse and finally published a book about it “Opposition – a mental disease?” I smuggled psychiatric reports and even a copy of the Chronicle of Current Events to the West.

In 1978 I proposed that The Swedish Psychiatric Association should condemn the Soviet abuse of psychiatry. The proposal was almost unanimously voted down with only four votes in favour. After four years during which my book was published and I had been working together with Amnesty International and Swedish solidarity groups writing numerous articles in order to expose Soviet abuse and the standpoint of Swedish psychiatrists, The Swedish Psychiatric Association changed its position and decided to condemn Soviet abuse.

In 1984 I joined a two year training program in clinical hypnosis. Among the teachers were several prominent clinical hypnotists from UK and the USA . Peter Blythe, the founder of The Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology was one of the principal teachers of hypnosis. Besides courses in hypnosis I attended a course in primitive reflexes and learning disability.

In 1985 I was introduced to Kerstin Linde, a self-taught body therapist without formal medical education. She was working with rhythmic movements inspired by the movements infants do before they learn to walk. I had been told that she had very successfully treated children and grown-ups with severe neurological and other kinds of handicaps. When I met her I very much needed to do something about my own motoric difficulties caused by polio in my childhood and I enlisted as her patient. Her treatment method had a very strong impact on me and I asked to sit in on her treatments, which she generously allowed. I especially followed her work with children who suffered from neurological handicaps such as cerebral palsy and saw the most incredible improvements that contradicted all my medical education and experience. I also followed her work with Alzheimer patients and people with psychosis and other psychological and emotional disturbances. Even in these cases I was stunned by the positive effects of her treatment. I decided to write a book about her treatment method and started to interview parents of handicapped children who were treated by Kerstin Linde.

In 1982 I had finished my specialist training and started to work as a psychiatric consultant at a psychiatric out-patients clinic. 1986 I introduced the rhythmic movement training of Kerstin Linde at my clinic both for neurotic and psychotic patients with excellent results. We even saw amazing recovery in some cases of protracted schizophrenia. The patients were very grateful and happy for the treatment but when my superior heard about it he forbade me to continue this practice. I refused to oblige and in order to stop me he had no other alternative but to report me to the National Board of Health and Welfare and an investigation was started in 1988.

In his report to the National Board of Health my superior had argued that he had forbidden me to use this treatment method because “it was not based on reliable experience and scientific evidence and moreover was not accepted or especially well known.” I wrote a fifty pages report with 10 case studies documenting the effects of the treatment and some twenty of my patients wrote to the National Board to express their appreciation of the treatment. Representatives for the National Board of Health and Welfare also inspected the out patient clinic where I worked. In its formal report the National Board of Health and Welfare established that the treatment was “experienced very positively by many patients” and that the “movement treatment was a worthwhile contribution in a situation that had appeared to be deadlocked or stagnant.” The Board concluded that “if every element of the treatment should be called upon for a full scientific documentation the psychiatric treatment would probably be sterile which would totally contradict the humanistic values and expressions that psychiatry also had to defend.” In the report I was strongly urged to assist in the initiation of a scientific examination of the treatment method. The Board concluded its report by criticizing my superiors for the lack of cooperation between treatment of in patients and of out patients and requested a report from the medical superintendent about what measures had been taken to improve this cooperation.

The conflict between me and my superiors lasted more than a year before I was exonerated by the National Board of Health and Welfare and by then I had been effectively ostracized by my superiors. My work situation had become impossible and I decided to resign.

In 1989 I started private practice and a colleague invited me to introduce the movement training for some severely ill chronic schizophrenic patients, most of them hospitalised for ten years or more at the psychiatric hospital where he worked. I worked with this project two days a week and in my private practice the rest of the time. In 1991 this work developed into a research program supervised by a professor of psychology at the university of Umeå . The research program was designed to continue for five years but was unfortunately interrupted in 1994 when I had to quit my work at the psychiatric hospital for private reasons. However, after two years a report was compiled in 1993 dealing with “short term changes in chronic schizophrenic patients treated with rhythmic movement therapy.” The report was an examination paper by two students of psychology. They concluded that “the study indicates that the patients treated with movement therapy had displayed the greatest positive changes…Among other things the changes manifested themselves in the fact that these patients to a greater extent were able to take part of social activities, participate in occupational therapy and their daily tasks in the ward. They had also become more interested in their surroundings”.

In 1990 I started to work once every two weeks as a psychiatric consultant at an anthroposophic special school for mentally handicapped youths between 15 and 21 years.

I still work at that school. Some of the students are mentally retarded, others suffer from autism or ADD. I introduced the rhythmic movement training at this school in combination with movements for inhibition of primitive reflexes taught by Peter Blythe(See above!) and his institute. Some of the therapists at the school have learnt these methods, which are now being offered to those students who are considered to benefit by them. Our experience of this work has been, that students with movement disabilities, with learning disabilities due to ADD, with psychosis and to some extent autism are the ones that benefit the most from the rhythmic movement training.

In my private practice I used the rhythmic movement training in combination with movements for inhibition of primitive reflexes. This approach was especially beneficial for patients who as children had suffered from dyslexia and/or ADD. But all patients who agreed to do the rhythmic movements benefited since these movements stimulate the therapeutic process and especially the dreams of the patients.

After quitting my part time work at the psychiatric hospital in 1994 I started to work full time in my private practice. I now got time to start writing the book about the rhythmic movement therapy that I had planned to write since 1986. My purpose was among other things to account for the effects of these rhythmic movements both in respect of the improvement of motor ability and in respect of stimulation of dreams and psychological development. The book included case histories of treatment with rhythmic training, an attempt to explain its mode of action and a general discussion of the theoretical basis of scientific medicine. The book was finally published in 1998 by a small publishing house specialising in books about learning disability and similar subjects.

Since 1990 I have given many lectures and courses in rhythmic movement training for therapists, teachers and nursing staff. After the publication of my book these courses increased in demand. The last years I have taught courses frequently and regularly. At an institute for positive learning mainly addressed to remedial teachers I usually give four or five two day courses about primitive reflexes and movement training every year. The emphasis of these courses has been on learning how to help children with dyslexia, ADD and more severe motor problems. At a study program for Montessori preschool teachers I teach a course in infant motor development and rhythmic movements once a year. During the last three years I have taught many courses in Rhythmic Movement training abroad, in Finland , Poland , The United States, Singapore , Malaysia and Hong Kong .

During the past four years I have attended several courses in primitive reflexes and life long reflexes taught by a Russian specialist, Svetlana Masgutova. She teaches a method of kinesiological integration of primitive reflexes that has proved to be much more efficient than Peter Blythe´s method and has become a very valuable addition to the rhythmic movement training especially for adult patients and older children. I have integrated her method in my work and also use it in my teaching about primitive reflexes.