Philippe Tissié’s Psychopedagogical Conceptions of Physical Education: Franco-Swedish Hybridity (1886–1935)

Abstract

Swedish gymnastics has been reduced to a directory of progressive analytical movements intended to form the basis of what is known in French physical education as a global gymnastics. This article explains how Philippe Tissié was inspired by Swedish gymnastics in his development of a hybrid vision between the Swedish method of physical education and the French model that was largely derived from the works of Jean Saint-Martin Amoros and Philippe Sarremejane. The paper demonstrates how Tissié’s French gymnastics was not only limited to analytical movements but also included the practice of sports. At the same time, it explains how the creation of this hybrid model meshed scientific findings from life sciences (biology and physiology) with human and social sciences (psychology and sociology). Between 1886 and 1935, Tissié’s appropriation, thus, enabled him to structure his conceptions of physical education and to move from the Swedish to the Franco-Swedish method.