THEORIA ET HISTORIA SCIENTIARUM, VOL. VII, N° 1 Ed. Nicolas Copernicus University 2003 Maxine Sheets-Johnstone Kinesthetic Memory This paper attempts to elucidate the nature of kinesthetic memory, demonstrate its centrality to everyday human movement, and thereby promote fresh cognitive and phenomenological understandings of movement in everyday life. Prominent topics in this undertaking include kinesthesia, dynamics, and habit. The endeavor has both a critical and constructive dimension. The constructive dimension is anchored in Luria’s seminal notion of a kinetic melody and in related phenomenological analyses of movement. The dual anchorage stems from the general fact that kinesthetic memory is based on kinesthetic experience, hence on the bodily felt dynamics of movement, and on the particular fact that any movement creates a distinctive kinetic dynamics in virtue of its spatio-temporal- energic qualities. The critical dimension focuses on constructs that commonly anchor discussions of movement but bypass the reality of a kinetic dynamics, notably, Merleau-Ponty’s “motor intentionality,” and the notions of a body schema and body image. The pointillist conception of movement and the Western metaphysics that undergird these constructs is examined in the concluding section of the paper. Luria’s Kinetic- and Kinesthetically-Informed Neuropsychology Russian neuropsychologist Aleksandr Romanovich Luria is regarded “a founding father of neuropsychology” (Goldberg 1990), lauded for his insights and meticulous clinical research (e.g., Teuber 1966, 1980; Pribram 1966, 1980). He describes movement pathologies as disturbed kinetic melodies; everyday move- ment no longer flows forth in effortless ways, or indeed, is no longer even a possibility for patients with brain lesions. In The Working Brain, Luria describes how kinetic melodies are constituted, using writing as an example. “In the initial stages,” he observes,