Augustus Y. Napier, Ph.D.
752 Houston Mill Road N.E
Atlanta, GA 30329
To whom it may concern:
I am a family therapist, the author of several widely-read books in my field, and Director, The Family Workshop, a private institute in Atlanta which offers training and supervision in family therapy. I have worked with and been trained in Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor for approximately the past ten years. Not only do I find PBSP a complex and powerful approach integral to my practice of marriage and family therapy, but I feel that it holds exciting potential for the entire field of psychotherapy.
I enclose with its letter a copy of an article which I wrote several years ago and which outlines the way in which PBSP addresses a vital link in the process of working with family issues. This “symbolic re-parenting” approach allows the adult client to work expressively and very effectively with negative feelings about family of origin figures, feelings which often contaminate current relationships -- with children, partner, and friends. These charged and guilt-laden conflicts can often be worked out in symbolic role plays in PBSP without traumatizing older parents or risking rupturing these important relationships.
PBSP also adds the vital dimension of helping the client construct symbolically certain “ideal” experiences which “compete” with the client’s real-life hurts and disappointments. My clients find their “ideal parent” enactments almost miraculous in their capacity to heal and to inspire hope. Hearing from role-play figures the wished-for words and feelings which were not present in childhood can change the way the client feels about all intimate relationships. Where there was betrayal there can be nascent trust; where parents were injurious, healing can occur.
PBSP is a complex therapeutic system which taps potential for personal growth which more conventional systems overlook. It utilizes the wisdom and energy of the body, thereby uncovering and allowing expression of emotions which are concealed, denied, or avoided by many “defended” people. It capitalizes upon the healing and energizing power of the therapeutic group; and it works creatively with the human drive to symbolize, to repeat, and to re-cast the human drama. In a safe and controlled context, PBSP allows peal the chance to “re-live” their emotional traumas, this time more support and power than when they were children, and with the careful guidance of the therapist. Thus what Freud termed the “repetition compulsion,” or the need to re-play the past in order to “master” its damage is satisfied in a creative and controlled setting. This system also draws upon the universal human yearning for the “good outcome.” PBSP helps clients construct in the therapy group a symbolic family where love, justice, fairness and compassion can be visualized and experienced. It thus allows the client to create a tangible “model” for a more satisfying world, one which when experienced provides a guide in finding such experiences in on-going relationships. Since they occur in groups, these enactments also open up new possibilities in other group members, and they encourage deep levels of empathy within the group.
I feel that almost every area of therapeutic need could benefit from this exciting system, but the potential of PBSP is especially appropriate and effective with individuals who have experienced emotional and/or physical trauma. The combination of cathartic expression of feelings in a safe context followed by healing “ideal” experiences gives this approach a unique advantage in helping victims of many kinds of abuse and neglect. I would especially like to see PBSP’s effectiveness studied objectively in this context. I believe it would prove itself to be the important therapeutic vehicle which an increasing number of us are convinced that it is.
Sincerely yours,
Augustus Y. Napier, Ph.D.
