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Excerpt from Chapter Nine  from
"Experience in Action:
A Psychomotor Psychology"
by Albert Pesso,
New York University Press, New York, NY, 1972

CHAPTER 9

More about the Eyes

There are times when a client will move his hands over his eyes without making any comment about pain or tension in his eyes. Depending on how this is done, it can have different interpretations. Sometimes it is a gesture that looks exactly as if a tear is being wiped away and is simply interpreted as such. Of course there are times when the client is simply rubbing the corner of his eyes to remove dust or whatever, but if one monitors the gesture and the statements and the emotional tone of the client, it can often be found that he is grieving or feeling sad about some aspect of what he is describing. The indications are that if the client were to become more aware or conscious of his feelings regarding the topic of conversation or description, he would actually find that he wished to cry. Often it is not worthwhile to tell the client, "You are sad about something," for he is not yet experiencing the sadness. The therapist can note the fact that there may be sadness or grief regarding the subject under discussion and perhaps be on the lookout for some future expression of that feeling, giving it a name and sanctioning it as well, for if the client is a man, he may feel that it is not manly to cry and must be assured that to do so would not diminish his self-esteem.

The other gesture concerning the eyes is more energetic and has less obvious associations. The client in this case may rub his eyes very forcefully, virtually digging his fingers into them and then massaging them in a rotating movement. Sometimes it looks like the gesture that some people make when they are very fatigued and their eyes are aching and tired. Often, fatigued eyes may be all that is being indicated, but I have become impressed and intrigued with how often such a gesture points to or is associated with sexual guilt. I don't presume to know how such movement and such ideation come together, but it seems to me no accident that Oedipus plucked his eyes out when he learned he had murdered his father and slept with his mother.

If sexual guilt operates at all like aggression guilt, the species ego turns the energy back upon the self in order to deflect it from going out to some unacceptable figure. One might speculate that the fingers of the client rubbing his eyes represent the penis and his eyes represent the female genitals, and that the entire gesture could be a symbolic rendition of having sexual relations with one's self in order not to have it with one's parent. The other association the gesture has for me is that the eyes themselves may represent the penetrating male penis and the fingers might be used to blot them out and stop them from their penetrating drives. This gesture is observable in both male and female clients.

The idea that sexuality turned toward the self might be a species ego function to deflect the energy away from a forbidden figure makes me wonder if male homosexuals, many of whom are raised in a male-less home (giving rise to all kinds of sexual omnipotence in my frame of reference--dad is gone or weak, mom is all for me), do not include some deep-seated sexual guilt about their mothers in their personality structures. It could be stated this way: in order not to penetrate mother, the male homosexual perhaps experiences an energy deflection that points his penis toward himself via the person of another male. At least then his homosexual adjustment permits a seeming relationship with another person rather than only relating sexually with himself via masturbation.

While we are on the subject of sexual guilt, some female clients represent what seems to me another species ego function, that is the energy-drop method of restraining a forbidden impulse. This shows up more often in structures than during exploratory exercises or conversations. If in the structure the father figure for some reason becomes separated from the mother and seems even momentarily available to the daughter, she may suddenly feel the room spinning and feel that she is going to faint. I have learned to react to that by placing the good father very close to the good mother and having him state firmly and unequivocally that no matter what the daughter feels toward him (and it is all right for her to feel sexually toward him), he will never be available to her as a sexual partner. It is useful to have a male contemporary figure available for the female client so that her fiercely turned off sexual feelings, if released and directly experienced, could be given an appropriate and acceptable target. Of course it is not likely that the female client will experience sexual feelings at this time. She is very probably thoroughly terrified of them and is struggling to get them under some kind of control. As is our practice in psychomotor therapy, when there are omnipotent feelings that have burst beyond the ego's capacity to control, one can deal with this by doing a limiting structure—-in this case limiting the sexual power of the daughter. When the client is ready, and it may be some time in the future, she may undergo a structure where she attempts to seduce the father away from the mother, using all her wiles and cunning and even her aggressive attempts to pull the father away from the mother. When the daughter's sexual energy is aroused by the good father and he is safely unavailable, she can then express her feelings and have them limited and given an alternate target. Frequently the so-called sexual energy is a means of close relationship with the father in compensation for poor early relationships with a non-nurturant mother.

The Ear

The most obvious use of the ear in a session is, of course, as an organ of hearing. There are times when a group member might not want to hear what either the good or the bad parents are saying, and he might unconsciously place his hands over his ears to shut out the message. Playing with the ears or poking fingers or objects into the ears might indicate a wish to be entered or penetrated.

Little children love to share secrets with each other, and I am sure this has to do both with the reality of hearing and with the symbolism of intimacy and sexuality that is experienced around the ear. All the sense organs that are involved with a direct and obvious "taking in" of reality or the outside world or external stimuli could easily be understood by the body ego as a means of entering the self. This can be an entering that is desired and be a part of living such as the entering of food into the mouth, or any energy into any sense organ that enhances knowledge, control, satisfaction and pleasure in life. Or it can be a forced entering and be seen as an ego break, an invasion, or a rape.

If there is something that is outside that one does not wish to see, one simply closes one's eyes. It is a bit more difficult to hold out an offensive odor, for one has to breathe in order to live, but one can temporarily hold one's breath. But one cannot turn off hearing, for there are no ear flaps as there are eyelids. Sounds can only be held out by placing one's hands or some other object over one's ears.

It seems important to me to note how people relate to their organs of sensory input. For how one deals with external stimuli says a great deal about how one's body ego is functioning. How discriminating is the client about what he permits to come into himself? Is he able to enjoy tasting and smelling, or do all odors seem equally distasteful? Does he like to hear music and can he discriminate well between varying sounds so that he is not merely a glutton for sound but can distinguish nuances and derive pleasure from the variations and relationships between the sounds? That is, how articulated is his body ego as it is represented by his ear? Is the ear an organ for receiving nurturance, for receiving sex, for receiving invasion? Does he relate to the world of sound with pleasure or with aversion?

Some female clients, when they have their own contemporary who will whisper or hum into the ears, are transported with pleasure and seem to relax and enjoy the whispering. Others cannot seem even to permit the mouth of their contemporary to get very close to their ears and become tense and jerk away from the contact and the sound. The negative response to the whispering and the touch can be modified if the situation is made clear, and if the stimulus is approached gradually. It should be made clear that it is the contemporary who is whispering and not the father and that the sound will not be forced into them but extended to them only to the extent that they wish it to be.

The Nose

I remember that as a boy my age group and I had a gesture that we all understood and used when we were showing that we were ready to fight, either seriously or in a mock battle. We would bounce about with the dancing footwork of a boxer, raise our hands in the standard boxing pose and brush our right thumbs across our noses, and simultaneously make a slight snorting sound by taking in a breath. We probably had seen this done in the movies, either seriously or in a slapstick manner.

The nose still seems to be an indicator of aggressive drives. Whenever a client rubs his nose and looks warily about, I feel that he is possibly apprehensive and ready to be defensive and do battle. But there is an entire language about how one uses one's nose, and certainly I am not indicating a one-to-one relationship between nose touching and aggressive intent. When any expressive element is perceived, such as rubbing one's nose, all other elements must be looked at as well because it is the totality that contains the message, and that message is very complex. The nose also has male or phallic sexual symbolism; and this can be combined with the aggressive implications to shade the overall meaning. The nose seen as a phallus by the body ego could account for some clients' stroking their noses. In those cases the nose is stroked and sensitively caressed and the meaning seems more masturbatory than anything else. The common verbal understanding of nose rubbing includes "itchy nose, itching for a fight,'' but it could also mean itching for sex, and obviously sexuality and aggressiveness are quite intermixed.

One female client described earlier as having sexual feelings toward her mother that gave her great guilt had a habit of cleaning her nose in a very particular way that I have not seen before. She would take a piece of Kleenex and place it over her finger and then poke her finger into her nose. The usual action includes poking around up in the nose for mucous and then pulling the hardened mucous down. In her case she seemed more interested in mucous at the lower end of the nostril for she seemed to be pushing her finger forward and slightly down. If her nose had been made of elastic material she would have stretched it until it was quite a bit longer than it was. The gesture was not done gently but was vigorous, energetic and frequent. I interpreted it to myself as a possible wish to elongate her maleness via the phallic nose. However one interprets is of little consequence unless one also finds some way of dealing effectively with the phenomena or the interpretation. My response was to give her the message from the good mother that she did not have to be a boy in order to be loved and that the good mother could and would love her just as she was, as a girl.

As in many other symbolic gestures and actions the energy focuses on the organ or body part in question with little or no conscious awareness of the feeling; however, the verbal associations of the client should be noted by the group leader as they often have relevance to the action. For instance, if a male client is talking about another male and at the same time is rubbing his nose, it is possible that he may be feeling either hostile or sexual toward that male. My tendency would be to guess that the client's feeling includes sexuality if he is caressing his nose and aggressiveness or hostility if he is rubbing it forcefully. Of course, there is no hard and fast rule regarding this for it is also possible that the nose rubbing has nothing whatever to do with verbalizations that a client is making. One's nose sometimes itches with no other meaning than that it itches. However, frequently enough it can indicate the possibility of other feelings and emotions, and the therapist should monitor the client's behavior and speech in a relaxed state of mind so that any combination of verbal and body messages would not slip by him and yet not be forced by him. A therapist could suggest certain interpretations to a client and produce those feelings in the client by the power of suggestion alone, so it is important for the therapist to "stay loose" and not to push onto the client those feelings which he guesses are there and which are not in reality there. One must also keep in mind that the therapist might well be right about an interpretation even while a client might reject such notions vehemently should the therapist share his interpretation with him. Clearly, it is no easy task to glean reality, whatever it is, from the mixture of projections and guesses by the therapist, denials from a client and what might actually be felt. What is felt is also not clear, for as we learned in the previous chapter, what one experiences is not at all what one might feel on other levels. One sometimes experiences an emotion only after one behaves in response to that emotion, so that a therapist can sometimes assist a client to recognize an incipient feeling by pointing out that such and such a gesture or movement is being made by the client. The client then has the option of permitting that feeling to become overt and experiencing the emotion. There is clearly a fuzzy area where it is uncertain whether a client is experiencing an emotion because the therapist suggested it, or whether the therapist is correctly assessing a symbolic body tension or action and is really helping the client integrate this feeling with his actions.

Another way to use the information that is accumulating when a client is rubbing his nose is to ask the client to note the quality of the feeling in his fingers and nose and then to touch someone else with this same quality of feeling. That is, the client is asked to direct the interactive energy away from his nose to another person. Another possibility would be to have someone else selected by the client rub the client's nose the way he himself was rubbing it. In any event the energy is given the possibility of an external target, with the client's determining who the target should be. An entire structure can be developed from this point to find out what the energy is that is being expressed in this way, who the target is, and whether it is the appropriate one.

Sneezing is sometimes indicative of sudden and strong sexual feelings. Strangely, the feelings are not experienced genitally, but the sneeze often occurs when a male client is potentially highly stimulated. I understand the sneeze to be rather like a nasal orgasm and indicative of the potential or wish for a phallic orgasm. In this respect the taking of snuff and the subsequent sneezing can be understood as a nasal masturbation and climax. This may sound far-fetched, but often enough sneezing has directly pointed to sexual wishes that would not otherwise make an appearance, for instance, where a client might have sexual feelings toward a mother or daughter figure and might find it difficult to accept or experience those feelings directly.

Sneezing, of course, is often the result simply of dust or of cold or hay fever. Whatever it is that causes sneezing there is no doubt that the nose has a function of its own, and that is to breathe and detect odors. How one uses it on that level is just as significant as how it might be used on the body-symbolic level. Does one breathe easily or is one's nose stuffed all the time? Stuffed in this case being possibly an expression of trying to hold the world out even at the expense of not breathing. How do people enjoy or not enjoy odors? How important is the nose in learning about the world? I am reminded of an autistic boy I worked with some years back. He had the habit of smelling everything that interested him. It was as if smelling between odors was the level to which his body ego had advanced. In terms of my schema he was relating primarily at the metabolic level. Even though he was twenty years old, this patient could not communicate verbally very well and most significantly could not do voluntary movement at all. By that I mean that he could not move his body in the voluntary modality used in psychomotor therapy where a client decides how he is going to move his body and then moves in that manner with no other purpose than to have mastery over his body. This patient did not understand the concept of front, side or back, and I frequently would move his arms in various directions, naming the directions verbally as I moved him in the hope that slowly he would gain control of the behavior and concepts on a voluntary level. This he did to a small extent before he was transferred to another hospital.

This patient learned to increase his skill in working with materials in occupational therapy, and this was an important part of his progress. He did have some use of words and could recite poems he had learned when he was much younger and other sayings that were drilled into him by the other patients in the hall. However, as I said, he was fascinated most by how things smelled and was constantly placing objects to his nose and sniffing them. When I asked what one of these objects smelled like, I was startled and amused when he said "pussy." This response had been taught to him by some of the patients as a joke. It is interesting, however, that he did not use other responses people tried to teach him with the same constancy and tenacity as the word "pussy"—-a slang expression for the female genitals. I heard him say this many, many times as people frequently asked him what he was smelling. He seemed to have some idea of the meaning himself because he would often giggle after saying it. Of course, the giggle could have come from the often shocked and amused reaction his word produced in others. However, he did have sexual feelings, for the hall staff told me that they were forever trying to stop him from masturbating and pulling on his penis. When working with him, he would say that he had to "weebee," his way of saying weewee or urinate and I would accompany him to the toilet. He would take quite a bit of time urinating and much of it was spent playing with his penis.

To follow the nose-penis combination or relationship a bit further, in the animal world the nose is one of the most important sensory organs. For fish this is the most important sense for it tells where food is and in mating season where one's opposite is. In the animal world it is the nose that tells one where one's lover is and whether she is ready or not for sex. It is indeed the nose that tells the male about the female genitals when the female is in heat. It is not the female behavior that draws the male dog, but the female scent. That is, he is attracted to his mate with his nose and not with his eyes. Therefore the nose is indeed responsive to sexual stimuli. What is the function of perfume if not to arouse sexuality? Yet some perfumes make one feel like one would like to "eat the girl up" rather than have sex with her. The nose is indeed used for making food discriminations as well as for making sexual discriminations.

The Mouth

The mouth is at once the seat of the most primitive act of being and in man the seat of the most advanced act of being. The mouth is used for both eating and speaking. Let us add up the functions of the mouth: tasting, chewing, swallowing, touching (that is with the tongue or lips), breathing and speaking. For some animals one could add lifting, supporting or carrying and manipulating. Some species of fish protect their young by holding them in their mouth when a predator comes by. Birds feed their young by placing food in the beaks of their chicks with their own beaks. The mouth, then, has sensory functions as well as metabolic functions; the mouth makes taste discriminations during the beginning of metabolism when the food is chewed and combined with digestive juices in the mouth.

Other sense organs such as the ear or nose have no interactive or manipulative functions except in symbolic ways as described above, but the mouth does in fact have those functions. Therefore, the mouth has interactive energy functions as well as ego functions (ego functions in that any sense organ has a discriminating and therefore ego function). The mouth operates in all the interactive energy systems except the reflexive gravitational. It obviously operates in the metabolic system in eating; the interpersonal system in kissing, caressing and speaking (in animals cleaning and grooming); and the material system in manipulating things (including the manipulation of symbols in speech). It is as if all of the self were focused around the mouth except for the areas of sexuality, elimination and gravity (although in the first two the mouth does have functions, for instance, oral sex and vomiting).

The mouth, then, is an important part of the entire being and it can be hypothesized that all of life began with the mouth and elaborated out from it. If the skin of the self is like the body ego then the mouth is the most important aperture in the ego and that goes for the body ego as well as for the verbal-symbolic ego. I have often used metabolism as a model for further elaborations of life including thinking and now I see the organic base for that thought.

When we look at the kinds of movement and incipient or symbolic behavior regarding the mouth in structures, we must keep in mind the wide range of functions the mouth has in order to place the action in the correct frame of reference. Quite often when a new group of people has completed the species stance at the beginning of a weekend workshop, some will comment that they feel a tension in their jaws and seem to wish to bite down hard on something. When those people are given an accommodator, it becomes clear whether they really wish to bite by their response to the accommodation. For instance, if he is given a female accommodator who responds to his biting down hard, the client may find that her voice is not the one he wants to hear. If he is then given a male accommodator and that response pleases him, we go on from there and have him name the figure his accommodator represents and then learn where he is biting him.

The biting can have all kinds of meanings, from biting off the nipple of the negative mother to biting off the threatening penis of the negative father. It might also be simply a matter of holding on to either parent with the teeth instead of with the hands. It can possibly be a gnashing of the teeth in frustration with no specific target. Sometimes the tension in the jaws is a result of the client's holding on to his own feelings, that is, keeping his feelings from coming out via the mouth. That may be a way of holding in the words that he might not wish to say out loud. However, it is more likely that word retaining shows up more in tension in the lips and not in the jaw. Clients who are holding back words might also fleetingly cover their mouths with their hands, or literally hold the mouth shut with the hand or fingers.

Fingers being held to the mouth is a common gesture and regularly has a meaning associated with nurturing. In moments of uncertainty a client will put his fingers to his mouth and even make sucking movements and sounds with his lips on his fingers. The good mother is offered as a possible target for those feelings. The force of the movements of the mouth is indicative of the type of feeling that is being expressed. Sometimes the mouth is pursed as if to say "No, I won't," in a stubborn manner. At other times it appears as if the mouth is being closed in order to keep food from being forced into it. The associations that the client has about the action are important, for only then can the appropriate setting be arranged for a structure. Food forced into a child is much like any other invasion—-the child who resists is not being simply stubborn, he is fighting for his sovereignty. If the mother succeeds in breaking through his ego via his mouth, he is therefore capable of being entered and manipulated on the symbolic level as well. That kind of upbringing by the mother would make it difficult for that person to take in all other kinds of reality and stimulus.

Sometimes the mouth is moved in a way that seems to indicate expulsion. The air may be blown out of the mouth, and if the blowing is accommodated to, the client may find that he wishes to expel something from within him through his mouth. It is possible that this is the same client who was pursing his lips and is now spitting out the negative invasion of the mother. If the client receives satisfying accommodation to his gesture of blowing out, he may begin a shouting, vomiting expulsion, and the accommodator responds to this action as if being vomited on—-wiping himself wherever it seems that the vomit has landed on him. I have seen structures where there has been this type of rising crescendo of feeling and expression and where the vomiting was a violent retching, without actually bringing anything up, that left the client sweating and exhausted. The positive accommodators reassure the client that they will never invade him and that they will only feed him when he wishes to be fed. They also assure him that they do not need to feed him and that his eating is not a measure of their value or worth—-that is, if he eats, it is entirely for him and not for them. Some clients have been utterly taken over by negative parents, if not with their food then with their ideas, and these clients have a powerful wish to rid themselves of the invading ideas.

The various ways in which a client sucks on the positive mother have a striking relationship to how much he has expelled the negative mother. If he has not fully expelled the negative mother, he may not suck with any force or feeling, and one can observe that he hardly takes any part of the flesh of the arm or hand of his positive accommodator into his mouth. Sometimes the so-called act of sucking is more a means of holding out the "nipple" with the teeth than an act of hungry and interested acceptance. After he has fully retched out or expelled the negative mother, he may take in the "nipple" with a loving passion. The same kind of sequence could occur regarding the expulsion of any negative energy followed by the interested intake of the positive.

When the client is happily sucking on the positive mother, it is important that the therapist find out the fantasy that is occurring. This should be done at such a time and in such a manner that it does not disturb the level of the feelings or break the rhythm of the action. The fantasy must be checked, for it is possible that the client is not thinking of the breast and nipple of the good mother at all, and may be feeling as if the hand of the accommodator is like a penis and experiencing the sucking sexually as if fellatio was being performed. I don't mean to say that the client finds that fantasy frightening or unpleasant; it might well be that when he thinks of a woman's breast in his mouth that he finds that thought unpleasant and can only suck with pleasure when it is a penis he has in mouth and mind. The therapist must then find some way to use the energy and satisfaction that is found in sucking the penis and transfer that to breast sucking if nurturance is what is needed. Perhaps the client could start by sucking, thinking that it was a penis, and then, with the same feeling, include the imagery of a breast. Another tack would be to have the negative father, holding a rolled up newspaper or some other such symbolic object at his crotch, approach the client saying, "Here, you can get nurturance from sucking on my penis." The client may get angry at such an offer and reject the penis as a feeding organ. However, he may also feel, "Okay Dad, let me at it," and be perfectly willing to go along with the offer. If the client seems to be moving in that direction, it is preferable for the good father, holding a similar penis-like object at his crotch to say, "My penis does not give milk, I only put it into mother's vagina. I will never put it in your mouth." He might even make the gesture of pulling a symbolic cock out of the client's mouth. It is then possible that the client might feel the loss and be willing to go to the mother's breast as a substitute, accepting that as an alternative to nothing.

There are times when some clients wish actually to feel the milk or some fluid in their mouths when they do a nurturance structure. Some clients have brought baby bottles to the session so that their sucking on the good mother will produce something tangible. The use of a baby bottle has produced some interesting insights, for one client discovered that previous to the arrival of the bottle he enjoyed sucking on the good mother very much, but if he sucked on the good mother and used the baby bottle with actual milk, he found that he could not swallow the milk and that his fantasy was that the milk would taste awful or poison him. This brought out another level of trust or distrust of the good mother. He could be close to her, but he could not permit something from her body to enter him. It is also possible that further discrimination was needed between mother as a person and mother as food, for the milk could have seemed symbolically to have been the mother's blood and swallowing it would have been tantamount to eating mother herself. The milk could have been experienced as having a bad taste in order to inhibit the cannibalistic wish to consume mother, for the first mode of mouth relationship with mother can be verbalized as "relating is consuming." This type of relating can be seen in everyday reality with those people who seem literally to eat up a relationship, making it hard or impossible for those they wish to consume to relate to anyone else but them. They demand constant and total attention and if thwarted feel as if they are going to die, because they feel alive only if they have "eaten" people and relationships sufficiently. This type of behavior represents a great deficit of oral nurture and the energy that clients spend on interactions of this sort must be brought to bear on the structures where they are sucking on the good breast, to make sure that the sucking is not understood as consuming the mother. Yet there are times when a client wishes to feel as if he is literally taking the mother in so that he can feel complete. It seems worthwhile to permit temporary fantasizing on that level, for the reality experience is that the mother remains totally intact and in view, and what the client calls the experiencing of taking in or incorporating the mother may mean something else, and may be necessary for him to experience before he is ready for further discriminations.

Obviously the interactions and changes of feeling during a structure are subtle and swift, and the therapist must keep aware of them and permit and offer only those experiences that would lead toward maturation and growth. How does the therapist stop those experiences or structures that he feels would lead toward the reinforcement of negative expectations and behavior? He can interrupt the structure and point out that such and such a structure and accommodation would lead the client toward further behavior that was the very kind that he, the client, was trying to grow away from. If the client does not agree, then perhaps it is best to let him go on in whatever direction seems most satisfying to him, for he may have his own way of getting the kinds of things that would help him grow. However, if it seems over a period of time that the client is moving in a direction of pathology, the therapist must intervene and stop the process. This might lead to a showdown between the client and the therapist involving strong feelings on both sides as to what will or will not be allowable. The process of preventing the client from moving toward pathology might require a limiting structure, where the limits are placed on what seems to be the client's powerful wishes for negative nurturance and what might be called negative omnipotence. Negative omnipotence could be verbalized as, "Nobody is going to stop me from doing anything I want to do even if what I want is to hurt myself." In this case the limiting is being done both symbolically, with words, and in reality, with the leader and the client personally involved in the "now" interaction between them. It calls for the leader to be emotionally strong because he will be attacked on a personal level by the client, and even if it is understood to be only transference, the feelings that flow from the client to the therapist can be personally painful.

Kissing

One hospitalized client recounted how much she loved to kiss her boyfriends. The kissing would go on for long periods of time and never led to sex for she remained a virgin. When she demonstrated how she kissed her boyfriend by using her arms as her boyfriend, it seemed similar to how many other clients sucked on the good mother. One could conclude that in kissing she was substituting, or gratifying the need for nurturance on the infant level; however, it has seemed to me that it is impossible to gratify that oral need on the adult level by kissing. It seems easier and more effective to satisfy that oral deficit if one were to admit it and then satisfy it on the infant level with the appropriate target. The relationship this client had with boyfriends could be understood as a confusion of sexuality and nurturance and a fusion of her contemporary and her mother.

Kissing, if not used as a substitute for early oral deficits, becomes part of the tender, erotic mode of relationship that is satisfying in itself. Relating with the mouth is satisfying to the child, for that is how he survives and how he originally comprehends the world. When that level is grown out of, his mouth remains sensitive and is used to touch, caress and feel as well as speak. It not only functions to consume, but is used in an interpersonally relating mode. Placing one's mouth on the mouth of another represents high levels of trust and intimacy and caring and can be deeply satisfying.

Sometimes kissing is an important way for the expression of gratitude, for it often appears as a body impulse or wish at the end of a satisfying structure. The client, at the end of the structure, might be in the process of separating from his accommodators while still holding or touching them and looking into their eyes. He can be noted to have small movements about the mouth at those times, and he might spontaneously kiss his accommodators on the cheek. I have noted that some clients involuntarily thrust their lips forward and incline their heads toward their accommodators, and when I have said, "You look like you would like to kiss them," they have replied that indeed that was just on their minds but they felt hesitant about doing it for they didn't know whether it was appropriate or not to do so. When they have followed their impulse and kissed their accommodators, it has seemed to satisfy some need or feeling, for then they exhale with that quality that indicates to me that a structure is over.

Let me elaborate on that exhalation. One of the aims of a structure is to reach the point of satiation or gratification that permits the transition from one mode to another. The exhalation has the quality that could be verbalized as "That's good, I feel finished, complete and ready to go on to something else or to rest." It is the kind of feeling one has at the end of any good experience, whether it be a meal, sex, a good performance, the end of a job well done, the end of a party when the last guest has gone, and so forth. That kind of exhalation and concomitant body relaxation seems to be a rhythmic marker that indicates the end of a process. A structure is never entirely over until such a feeling is experienced and expressed. I have never verbalized this in my groups, for it might lead some clients to make that sound because they know it represents the end of a satisfying structure and they wish to have satisfying structures or wish to please me by having satisfying structures. But that change of breathing is always present at the end of a structure and if it has not shown even though a client might say that he is finished, I may superficially agree and behave as if the structure is over, but leave opportunities open for the client to continue the structure. Sometimes the client might not pick up those opportunities and might not finish that structure until some future time. Of course it is not possible always to finish with total satisfaction, particularly when one is working in a weekly group with only twenty-five minutes available for a structure. However, in a weekend workshop the time is longer and more flexible, and this transitional level can be reached.

The relaxation that is associated with the exhalation seems to me to be rhythmic and transitional. It marks the end of a totality and indicates a shift of experience and perspective and a readiness, perhaps following some rest, to enter something new or some new experience with fresh energy and viewpoint. Life is dynamic and seeks interaction, each interaction having its own gestalt and capacity for completion. The falling, relaxing rhythm at the end of such a gestalt should not be misunderstood as the goal and total aim of the energy expression that preceded it.

It is only with such satisfying experiences that one is capable of moving up the developmental scale. The end of one series or set of experiences seems to mark some physiological or neurological boundary that permits the next stage or set of experiences to be entered. Just as the example of the client who was not finished until she had kissed her accommodators indicates, there is a nagging suspension of closure while certain sets of impulses or satisfactions remain unexperienced or unexpressed. I believe that we as people carry about unsatisfied sets of needs from our childhood that nag at us and seek expression in indirect ways until we pay sufficient attention to them to close out their accounts via the route of pleasure and satisfaction. Certainly the capacity to postpone pleasure is indicative of maturity and is necessary for adult life, but even as adults we must experience our measure of pleasure or life loses its luster and value. As children or infants we must satisfy all of our basic needs or we might not make it through the first years.

Psychomotor therapy seems to provide an arena for the settling of unfinished accounts. All records are kept and the books are never closed until we die. Even if we are fifty the record of unfinished business is still available and can be settled by the satisfying doing of structures. Then that fifty-year-old can be rid of forty-nine-year-old past due bills and use all of his energy to be fifty years old with satisfaction.

Another Rhythmic Marker

The group leader can recognize when a client has completed the negative or fearful aspects of his structure by noting certain changes in the client's breathing and more particularly in his digestive sounds. The change in breathing might make both the client and the therapist believe that the structure was over, but although it is quieter than the excited breathing of the angry expressions in the negative part of the structure, it is not as quiet as the settled, finished breathing discussed above. With the change in breathing comes, frequently, the sound of gurglings in the stomach or even a burp. This marks an ending of fear and anger and a readiness for the positive input. It is as if the therapist were hearing the external manifestations of the switch from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous systems.

When the rhythm has changed, it is wise to work with those new issues that the client would more likely respond to rather than to bring back issues that he has temporarily left and which his nervous system is no longer geared toward. The therapist must deal with what he has in front of him and must not ignore the mood and feelings of his client, for when he follows the flow of the client's rhythm and emotions, the client knows and feels that it is his own structure and not imposed on him from without by the therapist. The matching of feeling, behavior and accommodation is then congruent and satisfying and permits the client to grow and to leave old levels of feeling and behavior. If the client has not moved toward the stage of satisfaction and positive input, the therapist must help the client find those issues and forms of expression that might be keeping him from relaxing and going on to something new. At those times a scanning of the body might show areas of tension or small action which often can point the way to what is disturbing the client. One of those small areas, for example, could have been the mouth movements of the client discussed above, who wished to kiss the accommodators. Another area of tension might appear as some small movement around the mouth and forehead of the client that would indicate that he was formulating some words or thoughts he wished to express about the figures in the structures, and he should be encouraged to express them.

When a client is about to speak in a structure, the therapist can usually note that there is some kind of preparatory behavior preceding and predicting that fact. Sometimes the lips may begin to extend as if they are about to speak, or sometimes the tongue may pass over the lips, moistening them. Sometimes the client will take in his breath suddenly and hold it in for an instant preparatory to letting it out again while speaking. Sometimes the client might exhibit a fleeting frown and narrowing of the eyes while staring in front of himself as he collects his thoughts. All of this might be fairly overt and conscious, or some of it might be quite subtle and unconscious. There are times when a client might wish to say something about himself or his circumstances which is very meaningful, which might cause him pain or embarrassment and which must be dealt with before he can go on to anything else. If the therapist has missed the clues telling him what is potentially happening, he might find the client either doing nothing or moving in his structure without real feeling. It is best to wait out the hesitations to speak at this point and to be helpful and patient until the words and feelings spill out and then the rhythm of expression can be met and maintained.

Smiling

A smile is indicative of pleasure, and since pleasure is one of the goals of a structure, a smile is useful as a gauge of congruency between behavior and accommodation. The smile can be a result of satisfying accommodation to anger and not only the result of direct pleasurable satisfaction such as one might gain out of a nursing structure. That is, when the negative figure reacts with pain or loss of balance to the blows of the client, the client might smile instead of showing anger on his face. Of course the client does not continue smiling while he goes through the rest of his anger. He may have a wide range of expressions on his face as he expresses his anger. The smile that occurs when anger is being expressed usually occurs at the very outset. The situation might be as follows: the client may be in a weekend workshop and have never yet gone through a structure. He may have some feelings in his hands or in some part of his body which indicate anger. If the accommodator offers a wide range of responses to the movement of the client, the client might not react at all until the accommodator responds as if bitten, hit, or somehow attacked by the client, and then the client might smile. The smile would indicate that a "match" had been achieved and that we were on the right track. Of course the smile could be a result of something completely unassociated with anger. For instance, a client might say that he felt like his knees were buckling and that he wanted to fall to the floor. When told that good parents might be available to give him support, he might smile and say, "That would be good," indicating an appropriate match.

Sometimes a client might smile as described above and then say, "But I don't feel angry," or whatever emotion had been ascribed to him. If it were pointed out to him that he seemed to like the kind of accommodation he was receiving, he might say that he just thought the actions of his accommodator were funny or ludicrous and that is what made him react the way he did. It does not do well to push the point, for in any case the client is not experiencing what it might appear that he was. For even if the therapist was correct in his interpretation of the client's bodily responses, the client's verbal-symbolic ego was not accepting these bodily responses as his own, indicating a distance between the body and symbolic egos. Anger or whatever emotions were being exhibited might not be a permissible word or concept to the client and therefore not real or available for experience.

This kind of knowledge has led my recent work with groups toward a more conscious effort to knit together the body ego and the symbolic ego. In the past I have seen many clients go through fantastic expressions of emotion which followed directly out of the motoric impulses and which were predictable from all the tensions and actions that were showing up on the body. Yet those clients sometimes had some difficulty making any kind of sense out of their behavior even though the therapist and the rest of the group were perfectly aware of what the issues were. That person's individual and personal system of symbols did not have sufficient words or concepts to deal with what he found himself doing, and it often took weeks of talking to pull together all the material that was expressed in a single structure. If that person had no opportunity to discuss therapy and had only a single weekend experience in psychomotor therapy, it is entirely probable that little if any of the emotional material was integrated into conscious awareness and therefore available for growth and learning.

The body ego and motoric behavior is much more concrete, clear and predictable than the verbal ego. The interpersonal, interactive motoric behaviors conform to seeming stereotypical norms built into our nervous systems, but the flexibility and variety of the verbal-symbolic systems seem to permit tremendous variety and individuality of thoughts and ideas. It seems fairly impossible to be able to predict what goes on in the mind from anything that shows on the outside, whereas one can fairly accurately predict what is going on emotionally and motorically from what shows up in body tensions. The important point is that those tensions may have different symbols and meanings for each individual who experiences it. Those differences are what make therapy continually exciting and new. Now, instead of simply facilitating the emotional expression of a tension motorically, I take time to find what it means symbolically and verbally to the client ally. In that way the conscious ego of the client is always available and working, and the experience is not permitted to slip by and simply be tucked away as a happening or a "trip." The total process seems to be one of "being yourself" in your body and maturing the body ego while accepting that being consciously and having the verbal ego become more congruent with what is felt and how that feeling is being expressed.

Hand to Mouth in Reflection

I have previously noted the relationship between metabolic functioning and thinking. There is a hand gesture of placing the fingers on the mouth and the mouth may even be making small biting or sucking movements. This gesture is not so indicative of a nurturant need as it is an indication that the client is reflecting or mentally "metabolizing," so to speak. Of course, there may be times when the client who is asked to report what he is thinking at those times might reply that he was thinking of food, but there is a type of hand-to-mouth gesture that is truly not nurturant and more indicative of the mental set of reflection. How does one discriminate between the nurturant gesture and the reflective gesture? Perhaps it is in the level of sensuous involvement. There are those times when it seems perfectly clear that the gesture is satisfying a strictly oral need because of the emotional involvement and intensity of the movement. There is also the factor of the eye focus at those reflective moments which may indicate that the client is thinking and not concerned or involved particularly with the sensation of his hand on his mouth.

Feelings in the Throat

When a person complained that he feels a lump in the throat, it has often meant to me that he feels like crying, and experience often confirms it. Sometimes people in groups say they are trying to swallow down the feeling but they can be encouraged to give way to the desire to cry rather than to suppress it. When some clients cry after expressing this sensation of a lump in the throat, they may weep soundlessly; however, this does not thoroughly express the need to cry and does not result in the throat feeling normal. There is a need to cry with sounds coming from the throat. Of course one does not force one's self to make those sounds, but rather one permits those sounds to be expressed. Sometimes when a client does begin to cry fully and freely, the pain of the crying becomes almost unbearable and the client may say that he cannot bear the anguish that he is feeling. I have encouraged such clients to continue their expression, and tell them that the pain will not kill them or burst them apart even if it feels as if it might. It seems as if one must fully experience an emotion even before it can be integrated or grown out of. Sometimes an event is accompanied by pain and the fear of the pain. Before the event can be assimilated the pain must be experienced and lived through. The lump can be described as a physical representation of the energy that must be processed at the throat. However, I must add that the extreme forms of pain and grief are not experienced simply as lumps in the throat. It is the tight feeling in the chest around the sternum that bespeaks a deep grief and need to cry that is harder to process. When a client is going through the grief experience, his breathing almost becomes choked off and the crying results in a feeling of a collapsed or an exploded chest. One client in the throes of that expression almost seemed willing to leave his body to avoid the crushing sensation, saying, "I can't stand it, I can't stand it." He was helped through the feelings, and it was found that they related to the loss of his mother at an early age and that he had never permitted himself to feel fully his emotional reaction to that loss. Following several intense sessions of expressing his grief and feelings of total loss of life, he turned an experiential corner and became more adult in a realistic and not omnipotent way, and his actual facial expressions and body sense changed in that he seemed less fragile and more "present" in his body. It seemed as if his body literally "filled out"--not that he gained weight, he didn't, but he looked more physically substantial. This situation did not arise immediately, for this client was in a group for a year before this sequence occurred.

Other feelings in the throat can indicate the need or wish to scream or shout. The screams can be in fear, rage, frustration or indignation. Whenever those feelings are permitted full and complete expression, it is startling to either the group or the client how real the emotions are. When I have permitted myself to respond to such throat feelings that indicated a wish to shout, I have found myself in the position of being a surprised onlooker to a portion of myself that is real and experiencing that feeling and yet just previously was separate from conscious awareness of it. After the first shout or cry, which is an exact replica of a child-like cry or deep sob of emotion from some previous experience of mine, perhaps long forgotten, I can explore once again and permit myself to express the feeling and see what sounds and other feelings result. It may be anguish, childish crying for help, or adult rage, and the feelings flow and with the flow comes ideation and memories that a short period of talk or reflection organizes into a meaningful whole. It has been my experience that the talk should not come too soon or in place of the expression, for then the full memory and symbolic attachments will not be forthcoming. When the process is complete and the verbal integration added to it, it becomes impossible to make those sounds again. Not because of muscle strictures or being tired, but because those complex sets of feelings and muscle tensions are no longer available to produce those very specific sounds. I am not saying that one never again can make those sounds; one simply has to feel the same emotions again, but it is impossible to "imitate" those sounds without it being apparent to one's self and to others that it is an imitation.

It can be an uncanny feeling to have such sounds come out of one's self, sounds so seemingly total and yet so unknown to one's self that it calls for much work to find a place for such feelings in one's understanding of one's self. Some clients have become puzzled at hearing those noises coming from their own throats; however, they should not be allowed to dismiss them as strange, unrelated fragments of emotion which have little or nothing to do with their "real" selves. It is possible that such clients have had lives that to others would be unbearably stifling but which they have borne with quiet resignation on the surface because they considered that this was all that life had to offer and all that they deserved. Those clients have to be led to a place where their organic or emotional rebellion against such treatment can be recognized and accepted by themselves.

Sometimes the feeling in the throat can be as if something is stuck there. At first it might feel as if something palpable were stuck there and then it often becomes an idea or feeling or expression that is stuck there. For instance, it might be an unwillingness to "swallow" some feeling or expression imposed on one by others, or the unexpressed wish to tell someone off. It might also be a wish to have something in the throat such as food or nurturance of some kind, and the client might have an ambivalent desire both to swallow it in order to be fed and therefore to be able to live, and not to swallow it because the symbolic form of the nurturance might be sexual, for example a penis, and he might unconsciously be shocked at the thought of such "food."

Obviously the therapist must not leap to conclusions regarding the origin of the feeling. He must permit the client the widest latitude of expression and ideation and help the client find what is actually going on inside himself.

Feelings in the Neck

The feeling of stiffness in the neck is associated most frequently with control and inhibition. There is no way to tell what the inhibition is about, for the neck tension does not specifically indicate any other body part. My tendency is to regard the stiff neck as an unconscious attempt to keep the feelings from going into the rest of the body. That is, I imagine it to be as if there was some process going on whereby the feelings were squeezed off at the neck and not permitted to reach the body. Frequently, those people who complain of stiff necks at the outset of a structure can go right on to have a satisfactory and satisfying expression of feelings motorically, so stiff necks do not indicate the capacity for motoric expression, but point to inhibition and restraint.

Sometimes when a client speaks of tight feelings in the neck he may mean the trapezius muscles descending from the neck to the shoulders. That is why I ask clients to point to the place when they are having the feeling. Those muscles come into play when the shoulders are raised and can indicate a wish to hide or be protected-—to pull the head into the shoulders and protect the vulnerable neck.

Feelings in the Shoulder

Feelings in the shoulders most frequently lead to use of the arms, for the shoulders cannot make much movement of their own save to raise in protection. When a client notes shoulder tension and then attempts to motorically free-associate to see what movement occurs or suggests itself, some specific memories concerning that part of the body usually arise. It might be that at one time he was hit upon the shoulder in an argument, or he may have been thrown from a car and landed on that shoulder. Sometimes it leads to associations about having something on his back like a weight which is pressing down on him. This may develop into a structure about having responsibility burdens placed too soon upon him, or a structure about concerns and responsibilities that he is straining under at that time.

Very often shoulder stiffness leads toward feelings of anger which provide strong movements of the arms. This is a bit of a puzzle to me, for the most frequent expression of a tension that points to anger is in the upper arm and forearm. For some people the tension does not seem to get that far and settles in the shoulders.

It is possible that the feeling in the shoulders might indicate a wish to be touched in that area as well as a wish to move the body in that area. The shoulders are an important place for receiving comfort and protection, and it is possible that the client might want to feel an arm or a hand on his shoulder in sympathy, encouragement, support or protection. The therapist might suggest to the client to see how it feels to have someone touch him where he feels the tension and then to note or monitor his reaction to it.

Feelings in the Upper Back

There is not much to say about the area of the upper back except that pains or tensions felt there most frequently lead toward strong arm movement such as is found in expression of anger. Once again I must note that the area of tension is some distance from the arms and could represent an attempt to repress the feeling.

Feelings in the Arms

The arms are the most common area for feelings of anger. Most clients when associating emotions with tension in the arms arrive most readily at the idea of anger. An attempt to express the anger using the arms is usually sufficient to pull up the rest of the feelings. But the arms are instruments of highly varied behavior, and it is possible that the tension might lead to many other actions. For instance, it could be that the client wished to hit, but there might be an element of poking involved in it which in the sense of penetrating could have many different kinds of connotations, including sexual. The tension might reflect curiosity and a wish to look inside some object in the room. It could also be a wish to push or keep something away from one's self and might make the client want to hold his arms stiff. Sometimes it has resulted in swimming-type movements reflecting an early experience in the water.

One hospitalized client had for the longest time a feeling that his arms were pulling out of their sockets as if they were going to pull themselves right off at the shoulders. I interpreted this as a guilt reaction to tremendously strong angry feelings which I knew that this patient had.

The arms can also express warm feelings, and tension felt there can precede a movement to embrace someone. At the first those clients might even be seen embracing themselves as they explore what their arms wish to do. The therapist can suggest to them that there may be someone outside themselves whom they can hug, and this can lead to a structure regarding their willingness to hug others or their feelings of worthiness or unworthiness as the recipient of warm feelings from others.

When a client uses his arms in an angry fashion after finding an arm tension that seems to be an expression of imminent anger, one would expect that the arm tension would reduce and yet there are times when this is not the result. The client might punch and scream for long periods of time without feeling any lessening of either the tension or the anger. This leads me to suggest to the client that there is more emotion available than he is presently able to process and that perhaps he would benefit from a limiting structure (where the group holds him on the mat as extensions of the good parents who say that no matter how angry he gets they are not going to permit him to kill anyone or himself). When the group holds that client, it is possible that even more energetic movement is produced than when he was able to move in an unrestrained fashion, and the group has to work hard physically to restrain him. If this is the appropriate structure, the client will report that he feels no more tension in his arms and is relieved that there is someone stronger than he is who can control him.

Watching a client's arms during the course of a structure can be instructive and can keep a therapist aware of the level of energy with which the client is working. If the arms fall to the side and the hands are slack, it can sometimes mean depression and hopelessness as well as relaxation, depending on the rest of the cues the client presents. Arms held away from the body seem to represent readiness for action or tension and an attitude of alert and possibly defensive awareness. When the arms drop from that position, one can be pretty certain that it represents a change to another emotional state, whether it be security or defeat. Many chronic mental patients whom I observed during research on a test at the Boston Veteran's hospital never let their arms drop. It could bespeak a constant tension and readiness for defense.

The arms are sometimes used symbolically by both males and females as a phallus. This is done both consciously and unconsciously. An upraised arm with the hand fisted can represent both aggressive power and sexual potency. I remember a gesture we used as children in Brooklyn that was a non-verbal equivalent of "fuck you." The right arm was thrust upward with the hand fisted, the arm bent at the elbow while simultaneously the left hand was kind of slap-pressed against the right biceps at the elbow. The left hand was open and was pressing against and restraining the forward and upward motion of the right arm as if the right forearm was being thrust up to the hilt only coming to a stop by coming in contact with the pubic-bone-palm of the left hand. The gesture was sometimes accompanied by a kind of kissing sound made by the mouth which in retrospect sounds like the appropriate squishing noise that would be made by a plunging phallus.

There is a gesture in vogue nowadays amongst the rebelling young that is similar to the one described except that it is not as obviously aggressive in that the fist is incomplete due to the extension of the middle finger upward and the left hand is not used in a restraining up-to-the-hilt-suggesting action. The verbal equivalent in this case is "up yours" and suggests not so much sexuality as a violation and invasion of the self. To me it includes a penetration of the ego or protective skin-membrane of the self, not so much sexual as a denial or the integrity and intactness of the object.

Another gesture that is made consciously by many males but which shows up unconsciously in some females during a structure is one that suggests the words "screw you." The fisted forearm is thrust horizontally forward while the forearm rotates making a kind of screwing motion. This can show up in any number of points in a structure; in a male who is speaking of his mother toward whom he has conscious or unconscious sexual desires; in a female who is directing that action toward her father in an unconscious wish to ward off father's overt sexual attentions by growing a screwing penis of her own in defense; in an angry female who would like to get back at her husband who is treating her harshly as an aggressive sexual object without concomitant love and tenderness.

A client can be using his arms as a protective shield when in outward appearance it looks as if he is hugging himself. In this case it is not the intention to give warmth to the self but to protect the self from outside stimulus. The arms in this case are holding the world out. This is similar to the gesture of placing the hands over the ears to hold sounds out, but in this case actions toward the self are being kept out.

The Hand

Besides the face, hands are the most expressive parts of human beings. Hands are constantly changing, emphasizing, accenting and explicitly stating what is being felt and expressed in either verbal or non-verbal communication. An entire volume could be written on the subject; hence I will only skim over the major items as I have done previously with the other parts of the body. Hands not only are expressive but are an important part of sensory input through touch. We know the world most personally by our sense of touch, by feeling the world with our hands. Certainly we have a sense of touch everywhere on our bodies, but nowhere except the mouth is it sensitive and as manipulable as with the hands. Animals "handle" most objects with their mouths, whereas humans handle them with their hands.

Knowing by feeling or by touch is very personal and close to our actual motoric, muscular, concrete selves. Smelling, hearing and seeing are all distance perceptions whereas we touch the world with ourselves, as evidenced by the statement when we are deeply moved, "that was touching."

The hands are involved in sensing and therefore are partly an ego perception function. They are also used in the process of standing, or at least as assistants in the process of learning to stand and are used in the reflexive body as righting mechanisms to throw our center of gravity over our feet or, in the event that fails, to grasp for objects of support or to cushion the impact of the falling body. Following the fall hands are used to lug us back to a standing position. Hands are important in the metabolic or eating arena, obviously to grasp food and bring it to the mouth. For the infant, hands are used to clutch the mother and to hang on as a primate infant can hang on to the mother while she swings through the branches; and, too, the baby's hands can be seen reflexively squeezing the breast as it nurses. The hand, then, is important to the stomach.

The hand is used in many interpersonally interactive ways and is the means of first social contact through the handshake. The handshake is no mere ritual; it gives us a feel of the other fellow. Is he warm or cold, is he wet or dry, is he weak or strong, does he hold on for a long or short time, is he steady or uneven? The hand can bring someone close to us or push them away. The hand can slap or punch or penetrate.

The hand is the prime manipulator of things. The hand takes things apart, puts them together, destroys and builds. The hand weighs objects and measures their relative span. Hands can discriminate shapes in a different way than the eyes do because they can assume so many different shapes themselves-—a straight line is a flat palm, a circle is a thumb and forefinger curved to touch each other, a hemisphere is a cupped hand, and so forth. Obviously the hands can move in abstract ways and are used for symbolic expression as with the sign language of the deaf.

The hands, then, work within the range of interactive energy systems as well as participating in ego functions. The hand, like the mouth, can be understood to represent the entire self. This is not to say that the self "resides" in the hand, but that the hand in ordinary living can be expressive of the self as it has from the earliest years been an active participant in the being of the self. Consider, however, the case of the Irish novelist who has only the control of the toes of one foot, with which he types out his works. Certainly he is an example of a creative self who does not need the use of hands for the expression of his artistry and being. The human self, then, uses whatever sources are at its disposal for its expression, its essential selfness residing perhaps in the brain and spirit of the person and in no particular bodily spot. This is an important issue and one with which I hope to close the book at the end of this chapter. The essential question is, "Where does the essential self reside in the human and what part does bodily expression have in it?"

To return to the hands, during a structure I watch the face and hands of the client, as well as note other areas of the body which seem energized and activated, to monitor the entire range of possibilities of expression inherent in the hands and to try to correlate that data with whatever else the client is doing and saying. This is a tall order and I cannot suggest that I do it thoroughly, but it is something I make conscious and intuitive attempts to understand. There seem to be times when the hands emphasize and accent what is being said and done and times when the hands seem to be irrelevant or indifferent to what is being said and done. How is one to make sense of all those possibilities? My solution has been to construct consciously, unconsciously and intuitively a rapid series of scenarios or gestalts which might predict an outcome, direction or structure that would unify or make sense out of the data that is being demonstrated and what I have learned about the client from previous sessions. After a while one may become proficient in organizing the data surrounding a particular client into some standard scenarios within which he can be better understood. Or one may become adept in convincing a client that he is indeed feeling what one thinks he is feeling but that limits, if not prevents, the discovery of what is represented by the speech and actions of the client. There are times when the art of watching and listening feels no more accurate or scientific than tea leaf reading or studying the entrails of sacrificial animals. Putting all such discouragements aside, there are also times when clients become practiced in listening to and watching themselves and lead themselves step by step to an understanding of what their words and actions mean.

Hands will sometimes fall open in a requesting gesture during nurturance with the good mother, and it becomes clear that it is not only the mouth which must be attended to, but the hand also. When the accommodators see a client's hand make such a gesture, they may either clasp it to conform to its shape or make their hands into giving shapes and place their fingers into the outstretched requesting hand. The hand may in similar circumstances also be seeking the firm, strong hand of the father to experience his strength while receiving warmth and love from the mother orally. The hand in that same circumstance might be held tentatively off the back of the good mother as if it cannot come to rest comfortably on her and as if it is about to be used to push someone off at any moment. The hand might be squeezing the back of the mother in rhythmic pulses as the client sucks on the "breast" of the good mother, much as infants squeeze the breast of the mother in the actual nursing experience. The hands may be holding the good mother so tightly that the accommodator might experience sharp pains indicating that more than the idea of nurturance is in the client's mind. It is possible in that event that the client is experiencing anger in conjunction with the nurturance and needs to have a way to express it more directly. The anger can be directed at the negative mother which then permits or may permit the client to relax more thoroughly with the positive mother, who can respond with the statement that no matter how angry the child gets she can handle that child's feelings and still not deny that child its love and nurturance.

Sometimes the hand may clutch at the clothes of the accommodators, indicating the possibility of fear of loss or abandonment by the parents. The good parents can respond to this by saying that they will not abandon the client. This perhaps might produce a memory of actual abandonment which can then be dealt with in the structure. Sometimes a client might be seen stroking himself while he is in a structure and this can lead to an inquiry as to whether he would like someone other than himself to stroke him or whether he is directing toward himself a tenderness that he wishes to but does not dare place on some other.

There is a hospitalized patient whom I see whose hands are constantly relating to one another with intensity and apparent feeling but which go dead the moment they touch someone else. It is clear that this person is unwilling and unable to place feelings via the hands on anyone but himself. In this case the fingernails of one hand can be seen digging into the flesh and skin of the other hand and one can almost imagine seeing interactive energy flowing across from one hand to another which should be placed on outside people.

Often, those clients who are experiencing guilt about their angry feelings will be seen pounding one fist into the palm of another when a nearby pillow or mattress would take the impact better than themselves. Those clients say that it feels better and possibly more relieving when they hurt themselves than when they direct their anger at others.

Sometimes a client can be talking preparatory to doing a structure and his hands can be seen picking pieces of dust off himself and throwing them away or brushing invisible specks off his clothes. This could be interpreted as a grooming mechanism or could be seen as an attempt or wish to be rid of something, possibly dirty, that is on one's self. Clients in those circumstances sometimes report that they wish to throw away bad feelings rather than feel them and identify them as legitimate parts of themselves. This can also be understood as a wish to throw themselves away, too.

Sometimes hands are clasped in a gesture of contentment and self-repose. At other times the hands are clasped tightly and with self-control, holding feelings in and feelings out. Sometimes a hand might show that peculiar gesture of the fingers being crossed. This can happen in a support or nurturance structure and some experiences have shown that the client has been holding on to himself and not daring to trust others or invest himself completely. This is not done intentionally, but more often looks like the middle finger is lightly rubbing or "interested" in the nail of the index finger. In a way it is sort of magical gesture which protects one from possible pain in an emotional investment by pretending "I really didn't mean it; I had my fingers crossed all the time."

Another magical use of the hands is demonstrated by a hospitalized client of mine who shows her love for others by knocking on wood in sets of threes in order to protect her friends from evil or hurt. There are also many kinds of religious and magical gestures, too numerous to mention, that have come down through time which have protection value. Whenever I see a client make a gesture which I have not seen before, I question him about it to see if it is done consciously and within the context of his religious symbol system. Sometimes the gesture might have been done unconsciously, and when it is brought to his attention it brings back long-forgotten but suddenly vivid memories of religious experiences that somehow are pertinent to the present set of feelings and circumstances.

One female client suddenly began to scratch vigorously at the fleshy base of her thumb while talking about her mother. Thumbs are often used phallically in structures, and it seemed to me that this client had sexual feelings of a masculine or phallic nature toward her mother. In this particular case I mentioned this to the client (she had already let it be known that she had homosexual feelings toward women) so that her relationship to her good mother would be more clearly nurturant and minimally sexual. She grew annoyed with me for my interpretation but said with a smile on her face, "Can't I just scratch my thumb because it is itchy?" Then, as she resumed talking, the middle finger of the hand she was scratching bent upward in the classic position of digital vaginal entry, an action and position of which she was not conscious and which she had not heretofore demonstrated. Of course she could have been "putting me on," but I do not think so for her hands were fairly relaxed in her lap except for that middle finger.

There seems to be a series of gestures which naturally follow sexual feelings and thoughts in some people, and I would like to enumerate a few. Some clients seem to have finger intercourse, one hand with the other, for one or sometimes two fingers can be observed rhythmically and sensually pushing into the partially closed opposite hand while the client is talking. The significance of this is highly varied depending on whether the client is male or female and what the client happens to be talking about and to whom at that moment. The point is that the significance has to do with each individual moment and is not to be understood as a blanket assessment of that patient's state of mind for all time.

Other female clients sometimes stand while holding in one hand two fingers, the middle and the index, of the other hand for long periods of time without moving. This seems to suggest to me that there is a support need or a need to hold onto themselves instead of having someone else to hold onto. My conjecture includes the possibility that it is daddy's penis that they are holding onto as a symbol of his manliness and capacity to protect them. The penis in this event would have more meaning as a symbol of strength than as a sexual symbol.

Sometimes clients both male and female will point their index fingers at each other and bounce the tips of these fingers together lightly while all the other fingers are curled under. This has suggested to me that those clients are experiencing a kind of homosexual wish or relationship with the father, whether they be male or female. That is, they seem to be wishing a penis-to-penis relationship, with the father seen as peer or equal and with an undercurrent of sexual relationship with neither of them playing the female. Of course this can be simply a figment of my own imagination, but that frame of reference has often seemed valid in understanding certain client's relationships with their fathers.

The very same clients described above also can be seen to make a gesture or shape their hands in their laps as if they are making the shape of a vagina. At those particular moments those clients, when asked to verbally associate, frequently are experiencing a wish to be receptive.

Monitoring hand gestures sometimes offers fascinating clues to otherwise confusing and contradictory expressions. I find that if I trust the motoric statements, even without openly or directly interpreting them, I can keep in touch with the essential material and meaning of a structure and help the client realize his other levels of meaning. This is a subtle and peculiar business and one can easily, as I often have, be led astray by one's own excited imagination especially if the client is willing to play along with all kinds of interpretations for want of anything else that makes sense to him about his psyche. But that is not the way to growth and maturity. It is best to play down the spectacular and creative insights until one is quite sure that what one thinks he has seen can be believed. And even then the meanings are anything but certain.

The point of all the information gathering should be to assist the client to integrate motorically and emotionally and cognitively all that he is, so that those expressions that are covert and symbolic and which should be part of his active behavior can gain the energy that has been shunted off into other areas. That behavior can then be developed and helped to gain the appropriate targets and ends.

Feelings in the Stomach

Feelings in the stomach naturally have much to do with the needs of eating and eliminating, that is, the metabolic system, but they can also refer to the procreative process. This makes sense, for often eating and becoming pregnant, eliminating and giving birth, can be associated or confused with one another.

Pains in the stomach can also be associated with general tension and anxiety that is not strictly associated with either eating or sexuality. Some emotions can "upset the stomach" just as if they were kinds of food, and the body responds as if it is having emotional indigestion. Those emotions, when either processed and integrated or catharted in the sense of being eliminated, no longer make the stomach feel queasy; that is, the pains go away when the feelings are dealt with. If angry feelings are upsetting the stomach, one can understand the difficulty that the stomach is having, for how does a stomach act angry? The chemicals and nervous stimulation that would produce angry behavior in the skeletal muscles, behavior such as punching and hitting, has little or no way to be processed in the stomach. When that energy is permitted the normal expression in the normal channels, the stomach accumulation of energy and tension is processed muscularly and effectively, and the distress is no longer experienced.

Clients complaining of pains or uncomfortable feelings in the stomach often begin to recall feeding and eliminating problems which they experienced during childhood. Some mothers force their children to eat everything on their plate before leaving the table, and sometimes the pain is associated with that. Other times clients recall endless enemas of their childhood and remember with pain and discomfort the distended stomach feeling while they held the water in as they headed for the bathroom. Some clients associate the full, distended stomach with being pregnant, and fantasies about a baby coming out of their anus ensue. Obviously, some clients have difficulty eating because they may fantasize that eating would make them pregnant. The pregnancy associations are so complex that it is impossible to do justice to all of them, but it is not infrequent that the real identity of the client's self is tied up with the ideas of the infant they imagine they are carrying. I have observed in many structures the combination of expressions that occur around the straining to eliminate, the straining to give birth and the straining to have feelings come out. Sometimes all these actions and feelings are going on simultaneously. It is as if they are indeed giving birth or experiencing the labor of giving birth, but it is themselves that they end up giving birth to!

When a child feels that his mother pays most attention to him by the consistent giving of enemas, it might seem to the child that the anus is more important than the mouth as a receptor for nurturance. The primary mode of relating and emotional interacting then revolves around the feelings of being penetrated and ministered to anally. The confusions about this are obvious, and the structures attempt to sort out the feelings and behaviors, with the good mother saying, "I do not feed you through your anus, I feed you by giving you good milk from my breast to your mouth. I do not feed you with an enema tube and I will not penetrate you or be interested in you sexually." It is not all that simple, for no doubt the client has developed some sexual feelings associated with the enemas either consciously or unconsciously, and those feelings must be permitted to surface and then be shunted or utilized in direct sexual expression.

Surprisingly, the feelings about the anus are among the most repressed feelings that are dealt with in psychomotor therapy. Most people have little shame discussing most sexual matters these days, but the anus connected with sex or anything pleasurable seems fairly taboo. The mouth is attended to and understood, and the genitals, too, but the anus is the site of dirty feelings. Perhaps this is why sex-—dirty sex, that is-—is called smut, because somewhere it still has anal attachments and associations and the anus is where the really dirty stuff is.

 Pains in the stomach can also be associated with feelings of hunger and deprivation; however, the means of satisfying those feelings can be a combination of sex and nurturance and the problem of the structure is to help sort out those feelings with the appropriate figures.

The issue of toilet training is strongly involved with stomach feelings. Around this issue develop many concepts about productivity connected with approval and love, invasion of the self and the attempts to keep intact in the face of such invasions. Invasion in the sense that the parent who toilet trains the child forcefully is experienced as violating the integrity of the self when he or she demands that something within the self is to be expelled on command. Resistance, stubbornness and holding on become intensified in such encounters, for that is the only defense that the child has for maintaining his wholeness and integrity. Unfortunately, these traits may have long lasting tenacity and be manifested long after such self-threatening situations have passed and the child has become an adult. This type of situation is often reflected in clients whose body reports include lower back pain.

Lower Back Pain

Experience has led me to associate lower back pain with stubbornness and passive aggression. For whatever reason, those clients who consistently report lower back pain seem to have a conscious or unconscious wish to defecate on the world. Perhaps it is because their parents invaded them and made them defecate on command, perhaps it had nothing to do with toilet training but had to do with other types of invasion of the self, but a vengeful and forceful wish to aim the anal cannon at the target, press down on the gut and the lower back and let fly, often surfaces in such clients. It sometimes seems to me that those clients can get nowhere in structures or in a motoric type of therapy until they let that wish and behavior surface with the appropriate accommodation of the entire group wiping themselves. For if those clients do not overtly express such behavior they defecate on the group symbolically and indirectly instead. Nothing the group does or the therapist does can affect them. They make the group fail, make the therapist fail and make themselves fail.

However, if they can find some way to let their anger go in a vengeful and aggressive way, they turn from sad, down-in-the-mouth creatures to laughing, squatting imps who delight in the discomfort of the accommodators as they defecate in the accommodators' faces and see them drown in it. When those clients express the anger on a skeletal muscle level, it leaves the arena of organ expression which cannot properly handle that emotion. When such a client first talks of lower back pain and then when it comes to his turn, which is usually toward the very end of the session, I have built up a set of negative expectations. Often I am "sucked in" by my wish to help, and I become easy meat for a passive aggressive who will arouse my sympathy with his problems and then prevent me from helping by thwarting all my attempts to reach him. I will, in a testing fashion, sometimes put out a feeler and say after a few attempts, "Gee, I am stumped, I don't know what to do to help you." If the client, who might previously have looked glum and disconsolate, perks up and smiles at such a statement, I know with whom I am dealing.

Sometimes clients will deny that they take pleasure in thwarting and will discount the smile on their faces by saying that it seemed like a silly remark and that is why they smiled. But one can note that even as they are saying that they often are in a squatting position or are on their knees leaning forward.

Sometimes a passive aggressive client will thwart the group to such a degree that the group then attempts to turn on him and to dump on him, and that sometimes seems to produce the desired result. He might seem to take a perverse pleasure in and negative nurturance from this response. This perhaps is a way for him to make up for the guilt he feels about his own wish to dump on others. That is, it can become a kind of species ego response—-in order not to defecate on others, he ends up in a sense defecating on himself by making others do it on him. What does lower back pain have to do with all this? The pain and the muscles around the pain area are involved in the process of straining at the stool. When the client can mobilize that area he is on his way to becoming motoric and to resolving his dilemma. Everyone has some passive aggressive aspects in his personality, but those for whom passive aggression is a major character trait have to work hard and diligently to permit themselves more overt expressions that provide resolutions to their problems.

Feelings in the Thighs

The feelings in the upper thigh have often seemed to me to be accompanied by sexual or incipiently sexual feelings and behavior. Frequently a client who is seen rubbing his hands on his thighs can be understood to be about to have a conscious sexual thought or feeling. When this occurs, I watch the client carefully and listen to the verbal content if he is talking and then wonder how to introduce to him the possibility of sexual material. Of course simply telling the client that he might be feeling potentially sexual is enough to encourage sexual ideation, but often it is more easily forthcoming because there is already an inclination in that direction. Experience shows me that those clients who are having difficulty in the sexual arena, for example with sexual drives that they cannot deal with or accept, do indeed pay more attention to their thighs by stroking and rubbing them, than do clients without sexual problems.

The surprising thing is that the rubbing may easily precede any conscious feeling or thought about sexuality. The question is how much real feeling is actually there and how much do I produce by applying sexual meanings to the movement? Another question is why the feeling doesn't arise directly in the genitals and why it shows up in the thighs and hips. I can answer this only by suggesting that sexual behavior includes the action of moving the hips forward and back and the thigh muscles, which are attached to the front of the hips, are very involved with this motion. Perhaps before the actual genital sexual feelings are involved the pre-motoric tensions are experienced in the thigh muscles.

When the action occurs, the point is to permit the further expression of the emotion overtly and consciously, and this often involves the clarification of who the target figures are. If the client is, for example, thinking or talking of his mother while he is rubbing his thighs, the therapist must reveal the underlying sexual meaning of that movement, clarify the target, and then permit the energy to flow more freely to the appropriate contemporary target. When this is done it might further develop that the loving, sexual relationship with the contemporary with whom he can move his hips and genitals freely is not sufficient to fulfill his need and wish for the mother. This can be dealt with by distinguishing the client's sexual needs from his needs for nurture and thus allowing him to express each of them more directly and therefore more satisfyingly.

Some female clients might have some inhibition about moving their hips strongly or sexually because they have been told by their parents that it was not "ladylike" to feel or move that way. The good parents in a structure might give a counter description of that behavior, telling the client that it is normal and good that they both move that way with each other. This demonstration by the good parents can sometimes free the sexual behavior of the female client so that she can permit herself to move that way too.

Legs Apart, Legs Together

Monitoring the position of a client's legs can be instructive, for sometimes the legs are doing or saying something contradictory to what is being dealt with overtly. For instance, a client who is in a nurturant structure with the good mother may not be curled up and in a position to take milk from the mother's breast but might be lying with her head on the mother's lap and with her legs apart. It makes one wonder if the body is not implying that the opening between the legs is where the attention should be paid. The same posture might be demonstrated by a male client, and the question then becomes whether he wants his genitals rubbed or whether he is being anally receptive. The anal receptivity shows up markedly in some structures where the client unconsciously turns his hips toward the person from whom he is ostensibly trying to get away. For instance, the male client might be recalling or re-experiencing an event where the father was being threatening, but instead of pushing the father away or running away from him the client turns his hips toward him in a seemingly receptive manner.

Sometimes a female client might be in a structure which involves her being recognized as a female sexual figure by the parents, and she may demonstrate a tendency to finger her dress or skirt while standing with her legs slightly apart. When given the opportunity to follow the movement out completely, it sometimes results in a movement often made by little girls who pick up their dresses and show everyone their belly buttons. My thought is that they are really demonstrating their little genitals for approval. This is the approach that the good parents can take in such a structure. They can respond to the client, if that is what she wishes, that indeed she is a girl, that they can see that fact and that they approve of her femininity.

The Knees

The knees call attention to themselves in two situations, when a client feels fear or the need for support. Trembling knees tend to indicate the desire to flee, collapse, or both. At the outset of a weekend workshop or at a demonstration where a new group is asked to do a species stance, there seems to be a high frequency of comments regarding feelings or tremblings in the knees. Fear in this case is a result of uncertainty about what will happen next and about how one will respond, and a concomitant wish to escape the situation. When clients are allowed to express their fear directly, some will run in place or run out of the room and some will collapse to the ground. The ones who collapse can be offered the support of the good parents and the structures can be developed from there.

There are those who feel tension about the knees but show no wish to collapse instead. They want to lock their knees strongly. This has proven to be a result of a defensive response to the need for support in some people. Rather than feel the vulnerability and dependence of support needs those individuals have learned to become extremely self-reliant and show no inclination to have anyone take care of them. Of course those individuals sometimes have a greater need for support than those who can more readily ask for help.

The Calves

Calves are not too frequently noted in my experience but sometimes seem associated with a desire to flex the foot as one does when one is stamping or digging the heel into something, much like the movement of putting out a cigarette on the ground with the heel. It seems to accompany angry feelings that result in a wish to squash somebody as well as a wish to penetrate phallically with the legs. Sometimes clients who describe tension in the calves end up doing violent jumps upon a pillow with the feet driving forcefully down on the pillow in a crushing manner.

The Feet

For some reason the toes are actively involved in both nurturant and sexual structures. When a client is doing a nursing structure, he can often be seen curling and uncurling his toes. Many people note that their feet become active in this way during sexual intercourse.

The toes at times seem to become phallic symbols as is true of any protuberance of the body. There have been structures during which the toes seemed to wish to enter or penetrate the mother for sexual reasons or in order to re-enter the womb for security.

 Here I will end this sketchy tour of the body. Obviously, there is much that has been left unnoted and unsaid, but the field is enormous and needs much attention.

Writing this book has not been a logical pre-determined process. The book slowly gave birth to itself and at times even I was uncertain about what would be included. However, the twists, turns and speculations that developed in the course of writing might be instructive to the reader in showing how my ideas developed and then were applied. The end of this writing leaves me with a profound respect for the human psyche-—its creativity, its capacity to survive, and its fantastic complexity. The question foremost in my mind for the future is how to locate and describe the essence of being. There seems to be the human capacity to protect the core of being, to disguise it, hide, bury, kill it, and yet somehow secretly maintain it so that it might someday once again manifest itself even in those seemingly psychically dead and hopelessly insane. Because man can live symbolically as well as concretely, he can ascribe to various parts of his being or mind those features which are what he essentially is. It is as if the essential self is sometimes like an exiled, disguised king who is sometimes seen in one region and when the enemy forces arrive, is nowhere to be found but is rumored in some distant place. The job of psychomotor therapy and of all therapy and education, is to restore the king to the throne, openly and in contact with all the regions of his being. When the self makes an appearance in the body, it should be encouraged to remain by making it welcome and unthreatened. Then, perhaps, little by little, with both action and symbols the entire self can emerge in broad daylight and a human being, undisguised and unafraid, can be seen living himself in the world.

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