Sunday 20 March 2011

The five pillars and all that - what did Ester Cotton say?

I have just been working in the garden and thinking about the on-going discussion about the spread of Ester Cotton's principles  on Andrew's facebook page. It ocurred to me that there are probably people who are reading all the comments who don't know what Ester actually said, and what the principles are, that are now being questioned.

So I have given up on the pruning and weeding ( thank goodness!) and come inside to try and find material in the Internet which might help clarify what she said.

I have found a number of documents which are based on her principles and understanding of what she saw in Budapest in the late 1960s.

The article on her visit to Peto and his institute can be found on my blog at


She later wrote another article , published in  the Journal of Mental Subnormality, June, 1968, with Margaret Parnwell, about the service she had set up using the principles, and this can be found at  

The now defunct UK Federation of Conductive Education produced a brochure  detailing the principles which has a foreword by Ester Cotton and this can be found at 

The Scottish Centre for Children with Motor Impairments has a paper on its website which also gives details of these principles which I believe they use. (I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong about this.)

These are the result of a quick search based on my memory and I am sure that a longer more thorough investigatioin would turn up others too. I do know that more items written by Ester Cotton can be found in the National Library of Conductive Education at NICE, but these won't be as easily accessed as the Internet.


1 comment:

Susie Mallett said...

Gill, thank you so much for giving up in the garden and searching this out for us.
Susie