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Training in Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor - PBSP®*
International Curriculum - Version May 2000 
 

Training in Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor

International Curriculum  

First year: Basic Training

Second and third year: Advanced Training

Inquiries

Psychomotor Institute
Lake Shore Drive
Franklin NH 03235 USA
Tel: 001 603 934-5548
Email: contact@PBSP®.com or PBSP®1@aol.com
http://www.PBSP®.com

Dutch Association of PBSP®
Frans van Mierisstraat 95
1071 RN Amsterdam
Tel: 0031206735234
Fax: 0031205736687
Email: LPerquin@wxs.nl

Training in Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor

International Curriculum

Version May 2000

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First year: Basic Training

Second and third year: Advanced Training

All Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor (PBSP®) Training Programs conform to the standards established by the Psychomotor Institute, Inc.*  Albert Pesso and Diane Boyden-Pesso founded Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor  (PBSP®) in 1961 and they hold the rights to the use of the name Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor Therapy (PBSP®).  In 1972 they established the non-profit Psychomotor Institute, Inc. and licensed it to be the steward and responsible organization to maintain and oversee the standards and certification in Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor, PBSP®, and Psychomotor Therapy.

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INTRODUCTION TO PESSO BOYDEN SYSTEM PSYCHOMOTOR

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Why a body-based psychotherapy?

Recent research on emotion, memory and brain-function, as well as the current understanding of the consequences of physical and sexual traumatization, demonstrates that psychological disturbances manifest themselves in actual life both as mental representations and as bodily experiences, sensations and motor behavior. This underlines the growing interest of clients and psychotherapists in those treatment modalities that take the body information into account in a professionally organized and methodical way (Damasio 1999, van der Kolk 1996).  

Many psychological problems can be understood as the consequence of deficits in the satisfaction of basic developmental needs in early childhood. The need for nurture, support, protection, limits and a sense of a place in the world, have to be fulfilled concretely and symbolically at the right time and in the right kinship-relationships  -- all experienced in well-fitting 'countershaping' interactions. When these interactive events do not happen, the child cannot sufficiently mature into its adult true self, as it has suffered damaging consequences on three levels: biological, psychological and existential. Psychotherapy should strive to assist people in re-discovering and becoming who they really are, to help them to broaden their consciousness, to trust their body as a reliable source of   information, to express emotions in a safe environment -- and further, to have more positive life anticipations resulting from the integration of new, alternative mind-body interactive memories. All this requires the need for an articulated body-based psychotherapy. 

Why Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor?

Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor therapy represents the coming together of psycho-dynamic, cognitive-behavioral and system-oriented principles, along with client-centered attitudes, in one integrated philosophy. This unified method is supported by the latest information on both the psychological and physical evolution of human beings. It facilitates the clients' need for fulfillment of long standing deficits in psychological development. Body/mind information and experiences are utilized applying well-defined principles and techniques which are offered to clients in a way that empowers them to stay in charge of their own therapeutic process.

Albert Pesso and Diane Boyden-Pesso have been developing Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor therapy (PBSP®) since 1961. Their mind-body approach derives in part from their experience as dance-teachers and choreographers as well as from comprehensive knowledge of working psycho-dynamically. During their work with professional dancers they discovered that the inability to perform certain expressive movements was often related to repressed historical emotional events. The development of therapeutic exercises to support professional dancers to manage these emotions more consciously, was the start of a new form of psychotherapy. 

The method has been elaborated upon the treatment of psychiatric patients in the McLean Hospital and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Boston. After acquiring 15 years of expe-rience both with therapy groups for clients and workshops for professional helpers, Albert Pesso has concentrated since 1977 on training psychotherapists in the United States and in Europe.  In addition to the programs given in eight states in the US, Albert Pesso, Liesbeth de Boer PhD, Tjeerd,  Jongsma MD, and Lowijs Perquin MD-PhD offer training programs in Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and the Czech Republic. 

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How does Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor work?

Exercises

Clients prepare themselves by means of a series of exercises which enhance their sensitivity to sensory-motor and emotional information. Physical complaints and symptoms shift from being alienated phenomena to being a source of valuable information. The exercises promote the group's cohesion by paying attention to both individual differences and to universality of human needs. The distinct format of the exercises fosters the client's faith in the possibility of change. The group members are trained to apply 'accommodation', a role-playing technique characteristic for Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor therapy.

The technique of 'polarization', using distinct accommodators representing negative and positive aspects of the same historical person, helps with the disentangling of ambivalence-conflicts. The method offers the client a unique opportunity to experience a broad range of feelings from deep grief to unbounded hatred within a safe limiting symbolic context. 

Structures

A structure is an individual session in the group, supported by the other participants. The therapist assists the client by emphatically tracking affective expressions, bodily states, verbal statements, core belief systems and internalized prohibitions and commands, to make this information more accessible to the client's consciousness. The actual inner mind-body state, the inner screen, is enacted outside the client with the help of group members, accommodators, in clearly defined roles representing e.g. inhibiting inner voices or supporting functions. This external stage, created in the arena of the therapy-room, facilitates emotional reactivation of unresolved conflicts from early historical developmental phases. Actual expression of bodily feelings in interaction with role players who represent historical figures, helps the client to process stagnated emotions and to grieve about unfulfilled needs and traumatic experiences. In addition the therapist focuses on the client's proactive efforts to bring about those experiences needed in order to heal. The client 'choreographs' the moves of individual group members enrolled as wished for caregivers. They provide alternative symbolic interactions that counterbalance historical events. Though this corrective experience takes place in the present, it is experienced and internally recorded as if it had actually taken place in the past. From these gratifying symbolic interactions -the antidote experience- the client integrates new sensory-motor, kinesthetic and auditory-visual memories, which are stored alongside the original imprints. The availability of alternative synthetic memories will generate more realistic perspectives on self and others and prosper more optimistic expectations and behavior, leading to more pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and connectedness in current life. 

Who can benefit from Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor?

• Who ever wishes to achieve more pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and connectedness in life. 
• Who ever is curious to discover their personal resources and who wants to enlarge their range of potential and interpersonal talents.
• Individuals searching for better understanding of mind-body connections.
• People who tend to rationalize, somaticize, and dissociate from feelings and emotions.
• Clients who feel that mere verbal therapy doesn’t offer adequate resolution.
• The safe therapeutic working-climate and the attention paid to providing limits make the method appropriate for clients who carry the consequences of early parental loss and neglect.
• The cautious manner in which the body is involved in the therapeutic process, the attention to the expression of emotions without applying pressure, and the focus on ego-integration, all offer clients who have been physically and sexually traumatized a safe working-method.
• Clients who are able to distinguish between symbolic experience and reality.

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BASIC TRAINING IN PESSO BOYDEN SYSTEM PSYCHOMOTOR

Curriculum of the first year

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Who may apply for the first year of the training?

If you wish to expand your psychotherapeutic range by integrating bodily aspects into your daily work, both in individual therapy and in group-settings, you may subscribe to the first year of the PBSP® training as an independent module. You are prepared to study the relevant training-literature, to participate in local intervision-groups and to bring in therapeutic work for supervision. 

In case you wish to continue with the advanced training (second and third year) the first year will be preparatory. The three years all-together form the route to become a Psychomotor Institute certified PBSP® psychotherapist. Admission to the second and third year will be in accordance with the requirements of the Psychomotor Institute (see supplement).

What is the goal of the first year of the training?

The goal of the first year is to make you familiar with basic principles of PBSP®, to help you to become more acquainted with the body in psychotherapy and to expand your knowledge and awareness of the non-verbal aspects of communication in a verbal psychotherapeutic setting.

• You will be trained in to use PBSP®-exercises in a group-setting and in an individual context.

• 'Structures', individual therapeutic sessions in a group, will have an experiential goal in the first training year as a means to help you further to discover your own resources.

• You will be trained to offer a safe therapeutic climate, in which group members feel respected and are allowed to experiment and to discover hidden aspects of themselves. 

• You will learn how to assist the client to understand bodily sensations and impulses as important sources of information, like changes in voice-modulation, facial expression, body-posture and movement 

• You will be trained how to help to awaken and stimulate the observing, integrating, and executing part of the client's ego (Pilot Ego). 

• You will receive support in accessing your own bodily information as a source of therapeutic knowledge about what is going on within the client.

The training is practice-oriented: 

• demonstrations will support your understanding of theoretical lectures; 
• you will master new interventions and exercises on an experiential and a technical level;
• you will enlarge your experience as a therapist by practical training in duos and subgroups of colleagues; 
• video feedback, supervision by the trainers, case-discussions and homework in intervision groups are elements for evaluating your learning process.

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Overview of the curriculum of the 1st year

A.    13 training-days 

B.    Intervision-meetings

C.    Leading a PBSP® exercise group 

D.    Studying literature

E.     Evaluation

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A.   13 training-days in the 1st year 

The first year consists of 13 training days. These days will cover: 

• theoretical introductions and lectures 
• explanation of the theory by demonstrating PBSP®-exercises by trainers
• experience-oriented learning in structures; each participant one structure in the first year
• training in therapeutic attitude 
• training in observing verbal and non-verbal communication
• training and supervision on PBSP®-exercises 
• studying and discussing literature

General principles                                                                                                                

• The mind-body dichotomy: philosophical, cultural and therapeutic implications
• New research on the brain, memory, body, emotions and consciousness 
• The inner pressure to enjoy the fruits and rewards of living: pleasure, satisfaction, meaning, connectedness instead of pain, frustration, despair, alienation
• Affect, emotion and body sensations as sources of information
• Physiology of organismic satisfaction following completion of basic needs
• Basic emotions: disgust, fear, anger, curiosity, pleasure, love
• The world seen by the 'lens' of internalized interactions in the past
• Other therapeutic viewpoints: resolution in the therapeutic relationship; offering insight about the past; resolution in present relationships; parenting the 'inner child' 

Therapeutic attitude

• The therapeutic relationship: safety and responsibility
• 'Possibility sphere'; how to provide a psychological space to clients and how to understand body language that becomes apparent in that space
• Micro-tracking: how to see and name affective states and emotional expressions
• How to hear and playback verbal statements which are the foundation of personal values and life strategies  
• How to let the client explore 'Inner screens' and develop 'External stages' 
• Motivation, Contract, Relationship
• Confrontation, interpretation and clarification; respect for resistance
• Life-history seen from a physical and development-psychological perspective
• Understanding limiting patterns: 'Old Maps'
• Developing possible alternative experiences: 'New Maps'

Terms and theory of PBSP®

• History and development of Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor 
• Event - Record - Experience - Expression – Map
• Interactive energy 
• Genetic nature requirements: 
• Basic developmental needs: 
• place, nurturance, support, protection, limits
• stages of need satisfaction
• deficits of need satisfaction: an alternative diagnostic schema

• Integration and unification of polarities of being; understanding what is required to gain greater mastery of all aspects of one's physical and emotional being 
• how to own and harmonize genetic, neurological, sensori-motor, behavioral and symbolic polarities  
• deficits of integration and unification of polarities of being
• consequences of early parental loss
• literal, symbolic and magical bonds
• Development of consciousness: naming the outer world; internalizing meaning
• Development of the 'Pilot', the highest order of consciousness: the observing, decision-making and executive ego
• awareness of the Pilot about Soul and Ego information
• the need for autonomy and responsibility 
• Realize uniqueness and potentiality: how do we become who we are?
• the genetic push for self-realization in service to self and others 

• Modalities of movement: reflex, voluntary and emotional movement
• Self - Self interaction
• 'Shape - Counter Shape'
• The True Self, the Ego and the Self 
• Energy - action - interaction: satisfaction, validation, internalization of meaning
• Interaction, accommodation and polarization: positive, negative, ideal figures
• Overview of structure sequence:  Possibility Sphere, Center of Truth, True Scene, Historical Scene, Antidote
• Internalizing new experiences, re-mapping memories, changing perspective

Practical skills and exercises

• Structured exercises to increase the physical sensitivity and awareness of therapist and client
• Exercises for observing body-language: concrete and symbolic meaning of body-posture and motor movement
• The influence of body-posture and body-position within the therapist-client relationship
• Handling ambivalence by polarization techniques

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Group-directed and individual exercises:

A.  Modalities of movement

1.  Reflexive Movement

Reflex-relax stance (Species Stance)

Fall-catch exercise

2.  Voluntary movement

Conscious voluntary movement exercise (arm raise exercise)

Voluntary patterns in the service of interest and curiosity

3.  Emotional movement

Breathing exercise

Emotional movement exercise

B.  Spatial exercises

Exercises concerning spatial placement

Circle diameter exercise

Gesture exercise

Controlled approach

C. Interaction exercises

Interaction with objects

Interaction with self

Interaction with others

Face telling, Body telling

Self-self, Self-others

D.  Accommodation exercises:

How to precisely provide -in a role played procedure-, those anticipated responses to emotional needs that give maximum satisfaction

Positive accommodation exercises

Negative accommodation exercises

Ideal parent exercises

Expressing own sensations and imaging the accommodation wanted

Limiting exercises

Organization of a PBSP® exercise-group

B.  Intervision meetings

At the end of the second training-block of the first year the group will work during one day as a self-organizing entity, supported by a protocol of intervision guidelines. 

Depending on geographic situations, two or three intervision-groups will be formed to meet three days to practice PBSP®-exercises. This as a follow up of the demonstrations given during the training days. 

An instruction book containing a detailed description of the exercises, and the guidelines for optimal work within an intervision-group will be available. 

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C.  PBSP® Exercise therapy-group 

During the first block of training days, therapist-pairs may be formed with the aim of starting an experience-oriented exercise group with clients. During the last 4 months of the first year, this group will get together on six to eight evenings for two or three hours. The sessions of these exercise-groups will be videotaped for the purpose of supervision within the training-days. 

D.  Study of Literature

In total 400 pages of literature will be studied. Three readers will be available as part of the training. Two books on PBSP® have to be bought by the trainee.  

E.  Individual evaluation at the end of the first year

The first training year is concluded with individual evaluation. During the last training block, each trainee either directs a PBSP® exercise with the participants of the training group or shows an PBSP®-exercise on video within a client-group. Based on concretely described criteria, the trainee receives feedback concerning therapeutic attitude, clarity of instruction and technical direction. Trainers will give motivated advice concerning suitability for the second and third training-year. The progress during the basic training will form part of the assessment.

In general, recognition as a psychotherapist according to national standards is handled as a prerequisite for participation in the advanced PBSP® training. A limited number of candidates, who are not registered as such, may be accepted for the subsequent training, based on their experience, a specific affinity or suitable previous schooling.

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EVALUATION CRITERIA LEADING PBSP®-EXERCISES 

Lowijs Perquin, Diane Boyden Pesso, Albert Pesso, 1994

General

1.  The therapist creates a possibility sphere in which the group members can feel   safe to explore their conscious and unconscious emotional and physical states    1   2   3   4   5

2. The therapist communicates basic hope and trust    1   2   3   4   5

3. The therapist is comfortable with leadership in a quiet way    1   2   3   4   5

4.  The therapist is comfortable with the range of emotions in the group and the emotions expressed in the PBSP® exercises    1   2  3   4   5

5.   The therapist pays attention to 'pre-exercise stuff' like motivation, contract, group issues and transference    1   2   3   4   5

6.    The therapist is able to observe the body and to communicate these observations therapeutically    1   2   3   4   5

7.  The therapist proves to have basic knowledge of PBSP®    1   2   3   4   5

Instruction to the exercise

8.   The instruction for the exercise is correct and complete       1   2   3   4   5

9. The instruction is convincing and stimulating                          1   2   3   4   5

10. The instruction gives clear goals                                              1   2   3   4   5

11. The instruction gives clear role and task definitions 1   2   3   4   5

12.  The therapist helps the clients to link the instruction of the exercise to future therapeutic or structure work                                                      1   2   3   4   5

Guiding the Exercise    

13.  Guiding the exercise the therapist pays attention to technical aspects, 

  like formation of a circle or precise accommodation                  1   2   3   4   5

14.  The therapist gives attention to the individual group members without losing contact with the group as a whole                                           1   2   3   4   5

15. The therapist does not permit negative outcome or negative reconstructions                                                                                                              1   2   3   4   5

16. During the sharing the therapist listens attentively and communicates    

  respect and awareness about what the clients report            1   2   3   4   5

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ADVANCED TRAINING IN PESSO BOYDEN SYSTEM PSYCHOMOTOR

Curriculum of the second and third year

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Who may apply to the second and third year of the training?

You have a clear identity as a psychotherapist, trained in a recognized form of psychotherapy. You completed the first training year in Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor successfully.  You are motivated to be trained to become a PBSP® psychotherapist, who will be guiding structure groups. You want to further expand your therapeutic possibilities by integrating bodily aspects into your regular work. You are prepared to study the relevant training-literature, to participate in local intervision-groups, to set up a PBSP®-structure group and to bring in therapeutic work on video tape for supervision purposes. 

What is the goal of the second and third year of the training?

The goal of the second and third year of the training is to assist you in deepening your insight with basic principles of PBSP®. You will learn how to assist the client to do self-monitored spontaneous emotional expression with satisfying, appropriate interactions provided by role players. You will be enabled to guide a PBSP® Structure-group with a colleague. 

The training curriculum is in accordance with the international training regulations. Completion of the training provides access to membership of the National Association for PBSP® psychotherapy. Certification will recognize you as a PBSP® therapist on an international level.

• You will be systematically trained in applying the steps of a therapeutic session (structure). During the training days you will practice how to lead segments of structures co-leaded or supervised by the trainers. Video-fragments of parts of structures are discussed within the training group to answer your technical and theoretical questions.

• Two more structures for your self-experience are guided by the trainers during the training days. You will discuss the content of these structures with the trainer and the group members for learning purposes. 

• You will learn how to set up intake talks for a PBSP®-group, how to collect biographical information in accordance to PBSP® and to developmental insights, how to establish a treatment-plan with the client and how to introduce the method within a group. 

• You will be trained in guiding an opening go around, handling group-dynamics, supporting clients in applying therapeutic experiences into day-to-day life and in organizing regular evaluation of the therapeutic process.

• The learning-therapy for your self-experience, regular meetings with your intervision group, and guiding your own therapy-group under supervision, will contribute to your in-depth training in practice.

• In the last training-block you will demonstrate a video-recording of a structure. This forms the conclusive evaluation.

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Overview of the curriculum of the 2nd and 3rd year

A.    Training-days

B.    Learning therapy in subgroups

C.    Intervision meetings

D.    Leading a PBSP® structure-group

E.    Supervision

F.    Studying literature

G.    Evaluation

Schedule for the 2nd and 3rd year:

The above schedule is explained in detail in the following paragraphs: