ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the backdrop of nonverbal behaviour research within which the Kestenberg Movement Profile (KMP) is increasingly contributing a distinctive perspective. It also describes theoretical perspectives anchored in Janet Kestenberg Amighi’s original developmental observations that continue to kindle research inquiry. Nonverbal behaviour studies are relevant across the age-span. The chapter reviews movement theory as anchored in Rudolf Laban's original concepts, along with key elaborations of human interaction patterns, and studies of psychological variables found to be correspondent to movement patterns. The KMP valuably adds to discourses and research endeavours, bearing on embodiment, self- and interactive-regulation, and evolving psychoanalytic and neuropsychoanlaytic concepts of self-development. A KMP researcher would possibly inquire regarding relative degrees of concordance/discordance across movement patterns of mother and infant, and the clinician might employ the KMP to identify resonant ports of entry, possibly through those patterns showing sufficient concordance.
