Dr. Kostrubala and the Invention of Running Therapy: Festschrift commemorating his 90th birthday, in four languages: English - Español - Français - Deutsch

By Wolfgang W. Schüler

Dr. Thaddeus L. Kostrubala, an anthropologist, doctor and psychiatrist (retired) from Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a pioneer in the field of running therapy and founder of the related therapy approach known as Paleoanalysis. In particular, he is known for his work "The Joy of Running" (1976), which became a bestseller and a classic in the US running and international running therapy movement. It has been translated into multiple languages, and was recently reissued and expanded by the author. This text by Wolfgang W. Schüler, M.A., Germany, traces the visionary Dr. Kostrubala's running therapy path - which sometimes resembles a Greek tragedy - from its beginnings to the present day. It is being published on the occasion of Dr. Kostrubala's 90th birthday in September 2020, in English, Spanish, French and German, in the form of a book with historical and current photos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Apr 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9783347044791

Book preview

Wolfgang W. Schüler

Dr. Kostrubala and the Invention of Running Therapy

Festschrift commemorating his 90th birthday

Preface

The occasion for this Festschrift is the 90th birthday of Dr. Thaddeus Lewis Kostrubala on September 22, 2020. This work is intended to recognize the honoree’s accomplishments in the field of running therapy, which he created. The American physician and psychiatrist, born in 1930 in Chicago, Illinois has achieved a great deal in his professional life overall. Again and again, he took innovative paths and built new things – even in the face of initial resistance. The results proved him right.

His greatest accomplishment can be seen in the area of movement psychotherapy. Running therapy, which he initiated and helped further develop in the 1970s/1980s, was considered visionary. From its theoretical basis and practical design to the training concept and institutionalization, Thaddeus Kostrubala saw the big picture and tackled it. He provided foundations, guidelines, and inspiration – and as the present day shows, they endured well beyond the formative years and spread across national borders, even continents.

This is particularly true for his book The Joy of Running, which was first published in 1976, translated into multiple languages, and reissued in 2013, and has now become the classic work on running therapy. When the English-language version fell into my hands in the mid-1990s, I didn’t immediately realize what a treasure I had found. Its significance was not apparent from the book’s title, and I had never heard the author’s name before. Having been educated in Germany in the 1990s and working as a running therapist since 1985, I was completely blown away by the content. Something like this existed – had existed decades earlier, even, in the United States?! Why was it practically unknown here?

We know that a clever book is an indication of a clever mind. What fascinated me about The Joy of Running, though, was not just the specialized information, but also the way in which Dr. Kostrubala talked about things in a lively, outspoken way. As I read, I was carried along as a passenger on his journey of discovery. As if talking to a good friend, he revealed his earlier existential crisis as well as various doubts about his new enterprise. The book and its author grabbed me and would not let go.

Where did this Dr. Kostrubala live? I wanted to meet him. But my repeated searches over the years remained fruitless. Was he even still alive? But then, in the fall of 2008, I made a discovery while I was googling: www.kostrubala.com. The website must have been set up not too much earlier. There he was! I sent him a message and received a reply right away. In our correspondence, I got to know a very open, friendly, humorous, mentally vibrant man in his late seventies with a wide range of interests. We caught each other up on the current state of developments in the field of running therapy in Germany and the United States.

We have been emailing each other for 12 years now – I call it our Webside Story. In 2012, I visited him at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Our collegial relationship has long since grown into a friendship. And I am proud of another thing: the regular articles I published about him, starting in 2000, have contributed to his current prominence in Germany’s running therapy scene – and he has now been given the place in history that he deserves here, too.

I hope this Festschrift will give people some insight into the life of Thaddeus L. Kostrubala and his work, the field of running therapy. It is a revised and updated version of an article that I published in German for his 80th birthday. To make it available to an international audience as well, it has been translated into various languages for this book, namely English, Spanish and French. I hope it will also spark and/or further strengthen people’s interest in reading the honoree’s original writings.

Wolfgang W. Schüler

Born in 1958

Social Education Worker (Diploma), Educator (M.A.)

Works for the Department of Social Services (Amt für soziale Arbeit) in Wiesbaden

A runner since 1967, all long-distance races up to marathon length (sub- 3 hrs.)

Running therapist DLZ/GER, 1994, running therapist IART/USA, 2011, running guide for visually impaired and blind runners LbB/CH, 2014

Running therapy instructor DLZ, since 1995, Running therapy instructor IART, since 2013

Founding member of the Verband der Lauftherapeuten or Association of Running Therapists (VDL/GER, 1994) and its representative for international contacts (since 2011)

Founded an evidence-based running therapy program for children and teens with behavioral problems (1985-2014)

Author and editor of numerous books on health-conscious running and running therapy

Wiesbaden, Germany, Spring of 2020

Dr. Kostrubala and the Invention of Running Therapy

The Kostrubala family history is just as exciting as the honoree’s own life story.

His paternal grandfather, Anton Kostrubala, came from Zamosc, Poland, where he was a member of the underground in the Czarist Russian-occupied country. When his house was raided, a bullet narrowly missed him. He escaped out the back door, was smuggled out of the country, and moved to Chicago. His family – a wife and three sons – had been arrested and deported to Austria, but followed him a year later.

His father, Dr. med. Joseph Kostrubala (physician), embodied the dream of the American Way of Life. He rose out of impoverished circumstances to achieve professional recognition and prosperity. He started with a degree in dentistry, then medicine. He then made the move from family doctor to plastic surgeon – one of the first in the country. He also taught courses on facial surgery.

Dr. med. Thaddeus Lewis Kostrubala, born on September 22, 1930, in Chicago, and his parents’ only child, is the best-known member of this generational succession. Professionally, he followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming an accomplished doctor and psychiatrist, and was so successful that he was admitted to the Alpha Omega Alpha, a medical honor society for American doctors. However, he did not become known outside his professional circles or beyond national borders until he challenged the basic rules of the psychiatric establishment: he was a therapist who jogged and sweated alongside his patients, who claimed that such activities were a serious form of treatment for mental illnesses. Still, it didn’t take long for his ideas to be confirmed by running studies in other places. Kostrubala became a figurehead for the emerging US jogging movement; in the press, he was considered a kind of high priest of long-distance stepping (New York Magazine) and the father of running therapy.

Professional advancement

After the Korean War broke out in 1950, Thaddeus Kostrubala – hereinafter referred to as K. – became a Marine (as Second and then First Lieutenant). However, instead of being sent to the war zone as expected, he was stationed in Virginia. There, with an academic degree in anthropology already under his belt, he began taking medical courses. He pursued his medical studies at the University of Virginia, where he was granted his doctor’s degree in 1958. After that, he added a specialization in psychiatry.

In 1959, at the age of 29, K. returned to Chicago, where he opened his own practice. In 1963, he became the city’s Director of Mental Health, a role in which he set up clinics for ghetto residents, advised the police, and publicly criticized psychologist Timothy F. Leary (1920 – 1996), the guru of the hippie movement, who advocated free and general access to mind-altering drugs.

But as K.’s reputation grew, so did his waistline. The only sport he had ever played was tennis – in high school. K.: It was big-city time. He drove a red Jaguar XKE Roadster to his office, located on the 14th floor of a building on South Michigan Avenue, from which he could see the prestigious Chicago Yacht Club – a spot where he had docked his own 34-foot sloop. But he was not satisfied with his life.

At the age of 39, just beginning his third marriage, he moved to Portland, Maine, where he opened a new practice. He also introduced a community psychiatry program for the town. When he met Dr. Stuart Brown, then the Director of Psychiatry at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center in San Diego, at the national psychiatry convention in Washington, D.C., he learned that Dr. Brown’s clinic was looking for someone to expand its public mental-health care. K. applied for the position and got it, moving to San Diego, California. He established offices to provide psychiatric care for external patients, and introduced a variety of educational programs. When Brown retired, K. took over as the director. He also had teaching assignments at medical schools and in related branches at various universities, including a professorship in Clinical Psychology at United States International University, and University of California, San Diego.

Existential crisis and the start of his running practice

Despite his success, K. was still not feeling any better. All his professional and material accomplishments looked flat in light of his physical and emotional state. K.: I was a successful physician and psychiatrist. I had even been called innovative, charismatic and brilliant. But somehow I was a failure and I knew it. I felt that there was no way out of the path I was on. (…) Alcohol had become my drug of choice. I was tense, fat; and I somehow knew, when I cared to see, that I had lost contact with those things that refresh the soul. When