These four steps in the processing of events formed a schema that paralleled an earlier paradigm that Al had formulated: energy--> action--> interaction--> meaning/internalization.
An implication of the new sequence of steps is that it is not enough to become aware of buried feelings (to experience them), nor is it enough to express them toward an appropriate target; besides both of these it is essential to have a new kind of experience that can counteract or provide an antidote to the hurtful experience of the past so that the old map can be put aside as a "program" for behavior and a new one created to take its place. It is ideal figures, most often ideal parents, who provide the interactive experiences on which this alternative map of what the world is like can be constructed.
Looking back now on my experiences then as a trainee I am impressed both by the extent to which present-day PS/P understanding had already evolved at that time and the degree to which practices during the 1970s differed from what they have subsequently become. Some videotapes from this era are striking in the differences they reveal. In 1979 Al commented on three 1974 videotapes, indicating what he would do differently some five years later. Since during recent years Al and Diane have only rarely played the roles of ideal parents, it now seems strange to see how often they did so in the past. At that time there still was some improvisation when accommodators responded to a structure enactor, and I recall learning to curb my own tendencies to invent what seemed like splendid responses from whatever figure I was roleplaying at the moment. This was a criticism Al now made of his own former behavior: that he would no longer make statements as an accommodator that had not been requested or agreed to in advance by the structure enactor, nor would he heedlessly mix in statements he was making as himself, Al, or as a therapist.
Another contribution I believe I had something to do with during this period related to derolling. One of the 1974 videotapes showed the enactor at the end of his structure being embraced by his ideal parents and then giving a deep sigh of contentment. They stay there a few moments more and then someone says, "Shall we go get something to eat?" Everyone arises and begins to leave the room as the tape ends.
It seemed to me that having accommodators ceremoniously give up their roles and resume their own identities would highlight the important passage between the symbolic reality of the structure (with all its transferences) and the everyday reality of the here-and-now to which the enactor must return. Accordingly I believed, and Al and Diane agreed, that this transition should be marked by a ritual divestment of roles that would be faithfully performed at the end of every structure. Negative figures and the cushions representing their extensions were derolled first, while ideal parents were the last to deroll, doing so in unison so that their "child" would not be left in the company of just one of them.
A new technique that Al developed during the period when Gus and I were being trained consisted of having a resistance figure for the structure enactor to push against, when there were indications of a need to push but the target figure was still unclear. The therapist often assumed this role in order to provide a neutral target for the enactor's energies. In the process of pushing, the enactor was likely to recall some figure or event from the past. This would clarify whether the resisting figure was positive or negative and who the figure was, at which point a negative or ideal figure could be substituted for the one initially offering resistance.
Al had worked out by this time a rather complex scheme consisting of magical, counter (or defensive), symbolic, and literal sexual organs. He theorized that, apart from the functional real or literal organ, each psychologically healthy person has internalized both a symbolic male and a symbolic female organ. Extrapolating from the first as a thrusting, penetrating organ and the second as open and receptive, it was his view that healthy persons of both sexes have the ability to assert themselves appropriately and be aggressive in their own defense, and also, under other circumstances, to be open, sensitive, and able to permit the other a place in their interior life. On another level, whatever bodily parts protrude, whether they belong to a male or a female, can be symbolically phallic; whatever is an opening or an indentation can serve as a symbolic vagina. The eyes are of special significance because they can function both ways: the eyes receive impressions; on the other hand their gaze can be penetrating.
When a parent is absent because of death, divorce or separation, military service, illness, workaholism, or other forms of psychological withdrawal, a child is likely to be drawn into the parental role that has been vacated. If a father is the absent parent, the child (whether a boy or a girl) is likely to develop a "magical penis;" if it is the mother who is absent, the child tends to develop a "magical vagina." These magical organs are not present in the consciousness of the boy or girl, but the child`s behavior indicates the unconscious presence of the magical organ, which confers an exciting feeling of omnipotence on the one hand and a frightening sense of erotic arousal on the other. The appropriate PS/P response is to have ideal figures (and their extensions) limit and contain the energies of the magical organs.
Counter organs serve to defend the child from the impact of a parent who is too much present, who does not respect the child's boundaries, or who is intrusive or invasive. A counter-penis is developed by the boy or girl when the father is the invasive parent, while an invasive mother is warded off by a counter organ resembling hers -- a counter-vagina. An ideal father responds to his child's counter-penis by actions and words that signify, "You can keep me out", while an ideal mother responds to her son`s or daughter`s counter-vagina by making it clear that she will not let herself be swallowed up by the child.
To the best of my knowledge no other theory of psychotherapy has arrived at this formulation, which impresses me as both subtle and profound. Diane says that she plans to work with Al on further description and clarification of these concepts in the future.
Al Pesso's formulations often go by fours. What he now calls "symbolic operations" he referred to during the '70s as "metaphors" -- the ways in which a child acquires and possesses the qualities of another person, typically a parent: by Eating, Merging with, Marrying, or Murdering. There is, however, one trio of concepts: to Predict, Produce, or Recognize. Ideally a structure enactor (or the energies of an enactor) can predict what will yield the satisfaction that is sought, can produce it; at the very least can recognize the action that will yield satisfaction when it is suggested by the therapist. These concepts presuppose a basic unity of life, that life is an organic process in which the parts are related to the whole as in a hologram, where the smallest part of the organic process has information about all the other parts and about the whole.
Research
In 1964 Dr. Charles Pinderhughes, then director of psychiatric research at the Boston V.A. Hospital, had received funding for a five-year research program designed to explore the use of PS/P exercises and structures with hospitalized psychiatric patients, most of them chronic schizophrenics. Dr. Leo Reyna, one of the developers of behavior modification and formerly a teacher of Joseph Wolpe in South Africa, was another member of the research team. Al recalls that through his association with Pinderhughes and Reyna he had the benefit of seeing the work he and Diane were engaged in both through the eyes of a psychoanalyst and through the eyes of a behaviorist. As he began to understand these two ways of thinking about data and of organizing concepts he became clearer in defining and organizing his own ideas, which he sees as being influenced as much by behavioral psychology as by psychoanalysis. Reyna's careful attention to each detail of behavior, as well as his understanding that change occurs in small steps, were especially influential (Note 2).
The nature of the research, which had originally been quite broad, was progressively narrowed to one specific goal: studying the species (reflex/relaxed) stance as a diagnostic instrument. A research report was prepared but never published.
Gus Kaufman (1981) completed a dissertation that was both theoretical and experimental: Body signals of childhood loss: How relational deficits and stress lead to tension and postural insecurity. A summary of his research is included in the present volume.
Melvin L. Foulds and Patricia Hannigan (1974, 1976) conducted research on students at Bowling Green State University's counseling center. In each study one group was composed of students randomly assigned to be a waiting list control, while the other group was involved in 32 hours of PS/P exercises and structures as described in Movement in Psychotherapy (Pesso, 1969). PS/P participants showed increases in positive perceptions of themselves and others as compared to control subjects, significant results which were maintained during retesting 6 months later (1974). Changes were also examined using Rotter's locus of control and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability scales (1976). PS/P participants became significantly more inner directed, and their increases in sense of personal control of life events remained on 6 month follow-up while the control group was unchanged. PS/P participants showed significant changes on the Marlowe Crown scale toward decreased social desirability (p=<.01> which was maintained 6 months later, again with no change having occurred in control group scores. The authors conclude that
Psychomotor group therapy may be an effective method for facilitating change in the self-descriptions of growth-seeking college students in the directions of increased internality and a decreased tendency to present oneself in a socially favorable (but probably untrue) light (Foulds and Hannigan, 1976, p.87).
Another research study of PS/P was carried out by a Boston University doctoral student in psychology, Robert Sokolove (1975): Verbal and motoric styles of therapy: An outcome study. Three therapy groups and a control group were compared in this research: a Psychomotor (verbal and motoric) group conducted by a certified Psychomotor therapist, Jane Hollister; a body movement (motoric only) group, and a verbal therapy group. Thirty-one subjects were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. Subjects who rated high on the pre-post measure of autonomic arousal did better in Psychomotor therapy than in verbal or body movement groups.
Dissertations and theses on PS/P have been completed by Oelman (1978), Ellingsen-Greenwood (1978), Levenson (1981), Meyer-von Blon (1986), Scott (1987), and psychology students in the Netherlands and Sweden. Dutch Pesso therapists publish Het Pesso Bulletin, which contains articles on Pesso therapy.
Glenn Sheehan has also undertaken research by collecting descriptions of their experiences written by people who have done PS/P structures; these too are included in this volume.
Travels: European Acclaim
During the summer and the fall semester of l973 Al and Diane scheduled an ambitious program of travel to various parts of the United States, Canada, and Europe. Certain events had laid the groundwork for this trip. Al's first book, Movement in Psychotherapy (1969), had simultaneously been published by the New York University Press and by the University of London Press, which made it available in Europe. (Later it was translated into Dutch). An American psychologist named Jacob Stattman had heard the Pessos' presentations at meetings of the Association for Humanistic Psychology and had attended a number of PS/P workshops. He had been conducting programs at European growth centers, and began to use PS/P exercises and techniques in his own presentations. These presentations, along with Al's book, aroused a great deal of interest. The Pessos began receiving letters from Amsterdam, London, and Paris informing them that they already had a following there and asking when they would be able to present their work in person.
Faculty and students at the University of Groningen who had a special interest in movement therapy had formed a study group to practice the exercises. When they learned that the Pessos were coming to Amsterdam they enthusiastically signed up to attend the program.
Al and Diane received a warm welcome in the places where they described and demonstrated Psychomotor therapy. Their presentation for Quaesitor in London was followed by a sympathetic write-up of their work in the English journal Self and Society, (Francis, 1973). Also through Jacob Stattman they made contacts at the Tavistock Clinic. Subsequently they learned that in England twelve therapists had formed a study group that met weekends to learn about Psychomotor, while a similar group had been formed in Paris. Meanwhile the group of therapists in Groningen continued to meet. For a few years after their first visit Al and Diane returned three times a year to meet with these groups.
It was an advantage in the work they did abroad, the Pessos were told, that they were virtually unique in being a couple from America who were still married to each other after more than two decades! Whatever the reasons, they won immediate acceptance from many leading psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, and others as peers and indeed as important innovators in the field of psychotherapy.
A psychologist on the faculty of the University of Groningen in the northern part of Holland, one of the group who had started teaching themselves PS/P exercises, was so strongly impressed with the Pessos' methods of working that she arranged to come to the United States to spend some months with Al and Diane in Boston during l975. This was Han Sarolea, who subsequently became one of the first Dutch therapists to receive certification and helped organize training programs in the Netherlands. Subsequently, she and Tjeerd Jongsma provided supervision for certification training groups in the Netherlands, and then in Belgium, Switzerland and Norway. Han has made several visits to the U.S. since that time for additional training and has exerted a strong influence in helping to establish and maintain high standards for training and certification both in Europe and in the United States.
A psychiatrist trained in psychoanalysis, Tjeerd Jongsma, who headed a therapeutic community for treating drug addicts, was another of the first Dutch therapists certified in PS/P. He found the use of Pesso therapy with drug addicts to be very effective, commenting that it brought about a marked change of mood toward greater trust. Han and Tjeerd were also active in establishing the Vereniging voor Pesso Psychotherapie (Association for Pesso Psychotherapy). These two have since advanced to the status of trainers in Pesso therapy, while others among those certified are moving into the intermediate rank of supervisors, planning in due course to be trainers as well.
During the late 1970s Al and Diane decided to concentrate on developing their training program in the Netherlands, rather than in Paris or London, since -- because of the multilingual skills of the Dutch and their high enthusiasm -- the opportunities for widespread acceptance and application of PS/P in the Netherlands, and eventually in Europe, seemed to be much greater.
The first certification of Dutch trainees in Pesso therapy occurred in 198l. It was arranged that I should travel to the Netherlands with the Pessos and, in my position as chair of the Psychomotor Institute's training committee (whose other members were Al and Diane), help determine who among this original training group had adequately mastered the task of learning how to be a Pesso therapist. Five people were certified at that time: Han Sarolea, Tjeerd Jongsma and his wife, Nel, Els van Bodegom, and (conditionally) Hans Shurink. Candidates for certification were asked to provide a videotape of their work and also a transcription in English. These were then evaluated with reference to criteria that Al, Diane, and I had worked out.
During the course of the first training group, and thereafter as well, the requirements for training and their content and sequencing became increasingly clearly specified. Certification training groups met with the Pessos (sometimes just Al and not Diane) three times a year for three to five days each time. They also met with each other in so-called intervision (peer supervision) groups, and with supervisors. In addition, many trainees have traveled from Europe to the Pessos' base in Franklin, NH, for further training or for structure work.
Several three-year certification training programs in Pesso therapy have been completed in the Netherlands, so that by now a great many hospital psychiatry departments, clinics and other mental health treatment programs have at least one trained Pesso therapist on their staff. From the Netherlands interest has spread to Belgium, where a training program was set up and coordinated by Willy van Haver in which several Dutch and Swiss as well as Belgian therapists were enrolled. Swiss psychoanalytic supervisor Niko Roth, who had been in the Belgian group, stimulated interest in PS/P among Swiss psychiatrists; this led to the establishment of a new training group in Switzerland which was coordinated by psychologist Martin Howald.
In Norway, Jens Stranheim, administrator of a drug and alcohol treatment facility, sponsored several PS/P workshops which paved the way for the formation of a certification training program. This was subsequently coordinated by Lois Reiersol. Al continues to conduct workshops in Israel, though a certification training program has not been officially established there. In Denmark, BODYnamic Institute is sponsoring a one year program. By and large the European training programs attract about 35% psychiatrists and about 40% psychologists, the remainder being social workers, movement therapists, etc.
A good deal of interest in PS/P methods was aroused in West Germany. A vivid account of the Pessos' work, written by Marie and Heik Portele (1978), was published in Integrative Therapie. (This has been translated into English by my daughter, Dorothy Prickett.) An early staff member (and continuing Board member) of the Psychomotor Institute, Arthur Cobb, contributed a chapter on Psychomotor to a German book on body therapies (1977). German interest in Pesso therapy has been greatly stimulated by the publication in l986 of Tilmann Moser's translation into German of the majority of Al's two books, combined into one.
The annual conferences of the International Congress on Psychomotricity provided an important platform for Al in presenting his and Diane's approach to therapy. In June, l984, his plenary session address was entitled "Touch and Action -- The Use of the Body in Psychotherapy". This conference was held at the Hague and was preceded by a reception for Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, with whom he enjoyed chatting about PS/P. Two years later Al was asked to give another address when the conference on Psychomotricity was held in Nice, France; this time his topic was "The Image of the Body."
A recent letter (Note 3) from Dr. Charles Pinderhughes described his visit a few years ago to a back ward of a mental hospital in South Africa, where he had been sent as a member of an American Psychiatric Association committee to investigate mental health care in that country. He was surprised and pleased to encounter a psychotherapist who had been trained in the Netherlands, making use of Psychomotor (PS/P) therapy!
Developments in the United States
Al's and sometimes Diane's travels within North America also succeeded in stimulating greater knowledge of and interest in PS/P. They had done some traveling within the U.S. before 1973, but after that year Al went further afield, conducting workshops at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, Houston, St. Louis, Denver, Boulder, Winston Salem, Columbia, Tampa, Orlando, and elsewhere. Workshops in Minneapolis were coordinated by Will Larson and by Helen Gilbert. Al and Diane did several two-day Institute programs for the American Academy of Psychotherapists and the Association for Humanistic Psychology. In February, 1990, they conducted a two-day Institute for the American Group Psychotherapy Association.
Their first visit to Atlanta took place in 1969, with a workshop at the Adanta Center. Staff here were Henry and Jean Harsch, Earl Brown, Irma Shepard and Joen Fagen, all well-respected psychotherapists in the Atlanta community and associated with the clinical psychology doctoral program at Georgia State University. It was at Henry and Jean Harschs' center, An Open Space, Limited, where the Pessos first met Gus Kaufman, Jr. By then Diane and Al had begun to use videotape; this was to become an indispensable tool for supervision as well as for orienting new people to PS/P. The location for PS/P work then shifted to the Pine River Center, where most of the workshops were led by Al and coordinated by George Taylor and then by Jackie Damgaard, who went on to become certified in PS/P. Currently the coordinator of training programs in Atlanta, is Gus Kaufman, Jr.
Atlanta continues to be a place where PS/P is held in high regard. Each January Al gives a one day program for graduate clinical psychology students at Georgia State University. For quite a few years PS/P has also been included among the schools of psychotherapy graduate students learn about in the doctoral program in clinical psychology. As part of this program students at the University read up on and then impersonate Al and Diane as part of the series of "Master Psychotherapists" whose work they are studying.
Leading psychologists and other psychotherapists in the area have enrolled in workshops conducted by Al Pesso, and many individual clients, including people training to be therapists, have had PS/P experience either with the Pessos or with therapists trained by them. Besides the persons already mentioned, numerous others have been strong supporters of PS/P over the years, including the family therapist Gus Napier, whose book, The Fragile Bond (1988) contains two engaging and graphic descriptions of PS/P structures.
Gus Kaufman has recruited therapists for the first "European model" training program to exist in the United States; its first graduates are scheduled for certification review in 1990. In addition several trainees who had been enrolled under the earlier U.S. plan continue to work for certification. The most recent PS/P therapists to be certified in the US are Carl Clarke and Joel Rachelson, both from the Atlanta area.
Other groups around the country also have developed an interest in the Pessos' ways of doing therapy and have taken various steps toward establishing training programs or, at the very least, toward arranging future visits from Al, Diane, or other PS/P trainers. Active centers of interest in PS/P have existed (and many still exist) in Northern California, where three therapists have been certified, including trainer Robert Beloof; San Diego; Minneapolis; Chicago; Albany, N.Y.; South Carolina; North Carolina; Virginia; New Jersey; and New York City.
Another place regularly visited by Al, and sometimes Diane, during the 1970s was Lake Grove School on Long Island, N.Y., a boarding school for troubled adolescents. Michael DeSisto, the director there, who was especially enthusiastic about PS/P, then left to start a similar school in western Massachusetts, the De Sisto School, where PS/P continues to have an important place.
In 1975 it became clear that Al's hopes for the Psychomotor Institute in Boston were not going to be fulfilled and that it would be wise to think about alternatives. Al then discovered a beautiful place on Webster Lake in Franklin, New Hampshire, 94 miles north of Boston, that he felt would be a wonderful setting for residential PS/P training workshops and for a home base. There was a sizable farmhouse attached to a big barn, complete with silo -- and with a strongly supported hardwood floor in the barn. There was a sandy beach, a tennis court, a boathouse and gazebo, a comfortable four-bedroom house part way down the hill, and a trout pond, all set in about 200 acres of woods, with lots of lawn. The former owner, George Alpert had created a lovely 3 hole golf course. His son Richard (Baba Ram Dass) and his followers resided summers in the woods and fields. In the early summer of 1976 Al and Diane ran their first workshops there. Strolling Woods has proved to be a wonderful setting for the training programs, but a burdensome set of financial and management problems for Diane.
Meanwhile I had embarked on private practice as a newly certified PS/P therapist, having found a large office suite in an old building in Copley Square where people would not be disturbed if there were loud sounds from time to time. Since the Psychomotor Institute had been incorporated in Massachusetts and most of the Board of Directors lived in the Boston area I offered to house the Institute in my office. Besides being the Board's Clerk I now became the Institute's Registrar, Training Committee Chairperson and Boston Director, keeping copies of trainee applications, logs of training hours completed, and other records. Mostly the Institute's relocation was an "on paper" shift, since the main center of PS/P activity had now moved to New Hampshire with the Pessos.
During the late '70s Al and Diane tried out various plans for scheduling and organizing the summer training programs. During a couple of summers I recall that Gus Kaufman and I were recruited to take over the training during weekends to give the Pessos respite from the full weekdays they had scheduled for themselves. This was a period when the total group was divided in half, so that Al and Diane each worked with a group of about six people, located either in the cottage or in the barn; then on occasion the whole group would meet with both of them.
Robert Beloof, a poet and professor of rhetoric at the University of California in Berkeley, was first introduced to PS/P at workshops organized by Roger and Peggy Mastrude in Aptos, California. He started to attend the summer sessions in 1976 and was eager to be helpful in the development of the training program.
One proposal Robert made was to have Diane give instruction in the PS/P exercises as part of the training. Quite evidently the exercises formed an important part of the requirements for certification, yet no time had been put aside for teaching them; this then was rectified. During some later years Diane conducted weekend sessions that were devoted just to the exercises so that the trainees could have access to this experience.
Robert, and I spent many hours during much of 1978 and '79 struggling to work out a coherent set of requirements for PS/P training, which I then negotiated with Al and Diane. This was now divided into three sections that clarified some confusing aspects of the training modules they had previously outlined.
Provisions were made in this training brochure for some credit to be given for watching videotapes. No tapes had as yet been edited for this purpose, however, and current work was not being videotaped on the equipment the Pessos had purchased in early 1974. Videotaping by 1979 made use of cassettes that recorded in color. Before long the Pessos had acquired more up-to-date equipment and the old black and white reels were put away and forgotten. They and the transcripts remain, however, as an impressive historical record of the changes (some of which are clearly the result of Diane's influence) that occurred in Al's ways of working during this five-year period. They also testify to his ability to keep learning and improving and his unflinching honesty in self-criticism, as the following examples show (Pesso, A., 1980):
First, with a male client:
I skip a couple of steps. I don't ask him to choose an ideal father. I simply step into the role and feed him the lines immediately.
I touched his head too soon...He moves his head forward and I touch him without asking him. I'd prefer that there was someone else other than me to tell him to wait even if his head is moving forward, to find out if he wants to be touched there, also to find out what the significance is of the touch.
I find myself to be more active than I now like to see.
A figure that I didn't have available then and wish I could have used was the negative voice because he's constantly coming in with his doubtings, and his confidence-eroding voice. It's probable that I was trying to become his positive voice. I'm encouraging and encouraging, and I'm suckered into becoming his positive voice instead of being simply an ally to his positive voice, which is my stance these days...So if we had the negative voice out there, then I could follow the true line of his positive voice rather than trying to encourage him beyond where any interior voice is taking him.
With a female client:
Clearly the reason the accommodators freely ornament their responses is because I give them such a good model. I say just what she says and then I do her one better and add my viewpoint. I would prefer I did not do that... but I didn't make any distinction then between my role as ideal father and myself... This is an important distinction that should always be made.
She got to a level of pain that I don't think she should have been asked to handle by herself. She needed contact. She started grabbing for a part of herself which was possibly gripping up and tightening up as an attempt to either hold the pain down or to give herself the strength to fight it off, which highlights the need for some support. She's also stiffening the back of her neck which could be a counter hardening to offset the hardness coming towards her. Surely she needs contact, and rapidly.
It's painful to watch her telling me by self-self contact, without my knowing it then, exactly where she wants to be touched. I'm wanting her to express everything and I think I'm doing the right thing...
It seems now that she's getting the support, the fullness of the pain can come. Seemingly my earlier notion of getting all the pain out and then getting the support is contradicted. This support seems to release some of her pain without her feeling that she might die of loneliness while she feels the pain.
She's now embracing the ideal mother and she's needed to do that, really, from the beginning... She needs a lot of that mommy contact. And I've noted that each time before she gets it I somehow manage to interrupt it... She looks absolutely right cuddling with Diane as the ideal mother, and I'm waiting to see whether or not I will tolerate not being the only center and the only giver... At that time I was unable to recognize that condition of jealousy... Only now that I've solved some of it does it make it possible for different interventions to become available.
In these excerpts a number of further developments that occurred during these five years of PS/P's evolution can be noted. One was the far greater clarity that had been developed in assuming a role and distinguishing between statements of the role-played figure and one's self. Another was the introduction of the "negative voice", a voice that the structure enactor hears as if it were his or her own inner voice and may only later identify as having had an external origin. Externalizing the negative voice by having it roleplayed by an accommodator makes it easier for the structure enactor to deal with such a voice.
The reference to self-self has to do with the distinction between self to self contact and self-other interaction to which Diane first called attention. Often a person trying by him- or herself to satisfy some need will touch a part of the body related to that need. This can supply information about what a wished-for interaction would consist of if another person, such as an ideal parent, were there to satisfy the need. There is evidence here, also, of Al's awareness of the female client's possible defensive use of her male "counter" organ.
I find Al's forthrightness in criticizing the way he led these structures very impressive. He recognized how he sometimes ignored the client's own process and timing and imposed his own; he criticized the formula he had previously followed, that a client must first be alone while experiencing pain and only later be given support and corrective messages. All of these changes point to his greater understanding of how to show respect for the client and how to trust and follow his or her process rather than his own. Finally he talked about his inclination to be "the only center" and the feeling of jealousy that had made it hard for him to allow a literal female, in this case Diane, to nurture a client when he wanted to do the nurturing himself. It is clear that important progress was made during the late 1970s in rendering PS/P techniques much "cleaner" than they had been before.
Al and Diane came of age in the post-World War II era, a time marked by strong efforts to return women to their place in the home so that jobs they had filled during the war could provide employment for returning veterans. Until well into the 1970s -- and, for many people, still -- women were seen as subordinate to men, and wives, especially, as subordinate to husbands. It was a wife's duty to contribute self-effacingly to her husband's achievements in the world and not call attention to accomplishments of her own nor to the assistance she had given him. Diane certainly performed this wifely duty for a long time without complaints that reached my ears. As the years passed, however, both Diane and I found our consciousness being raised, and it began to seem important to raise Al's as well.
In the introduction to his first book Al does say, "The core of the motor and spatial sensitization techniques grew out of my long experience performing and teaching dance with my wife, Diane Pesso." His second book makes no mention of her except on the dust jacket, where PS/P therapy is noted to have been founded ten years earlier "by Albert and his wife Diane." Al's 1966 paper referred to "much discussion and argumentation... between my wife and myself which contributed greatly to the development of the ideas that followed." He added that when he used the pronoun "I" the reader should understand that he meant to include Diane (1966, p.9).
Over the years Al did become increasingly sensitized to the issue of sexism and began not only to give Diane more credit for the part she had played but tried to make sure that others did so as well. Currently he maintains that the contributions each of them has made are so thoroughly intertwined that it is almost impossible to disentangle the portions that came from each of them. Both agree that neither one of them alone could have produced this system of psychotherapy. Since Al currently does the major part of the teaching as well as writing about PS/P, however, many people tend to give him sole credit for being its originator. In this account I have tried to redress the balance by calling attention to some of the contributions made by Diane.
PS/P in the 1980s: A. Training, Organization
In the early l980s the Pessos acquired new Sony video equipment for use during their training weeks as well as for supervision and certification. Having a video record of certain of Al's lectures -- for example, his discussion of the meaning of body parts -- enabled trainees to go over this material on their own and spared Al from having to present the same material over again too soon. This was especially important because people who attended the training weeks generally ranged from old timers like me to people who were having their first experience of PS/P work. Also, some came only for the first of two training weeks, others for the second and some for both weeks. (Summer training weeks have since been expanded to four.)
In 1983 Han Sarolea paid a visit to Al and Diane in Franklin during the period when training was in progress, and so did Gus Kaufman, Jackie Damgaard, and I. It seemed like an excellent opportunity to plan for the future development of PS/P. Every spare hour we could find was devoted to conferencing by the six of us.
Han was concerned that requirements for certification were less rigorous in the United States than in Europe and hoped to see changes made so that U.S. methods of training would correspond more closely to the European model. According to that model, at least three fifths of the training was to be done by Al and Diane and up to two fifths by other designated trainers, who would also provide supervision. In addition the group of trainees would periodically meet with each other for a certain number of "intervision" hours. Applicants for training would need to commit themselves to continue the training for a full three-year period.
The European model required fewer hours than either the Pessos' original modules or the specification of the modules that Robert and I had worked out. While the latter required eight hundred and fifty credit hours for certification training, the three-year European plan called for four hundred and sixty eight hours: nine six-or-more-hour Pesso days per year, six of which could be during a training week in Franklin; six days per year with another trainer; three additional days of supervision; and nine days per year (six days the first year) of intervision. Less emphasis is placed on trainees' own structure work, and there is a definite sequence of topics, planned out in advance, that are to be covered during the training days.
Another decision of the summer meeting in 1983 had to do with levels of training. These were now to be expanded; there would be an adjunct level training, marking roughly the halfway point on the way to certification training; beyond the latter would be two additional levels, first that of supervisor and finally that of trainer.
A year or so later another, Level One category was added, with primary emphasis on the exercises. This required two hundred credit hours -- a number that seemed to make it possible for Fielding students in clinical psychology to count this much of PS/P training as fulfilling a requirement at that time of mastering a new modality of therapy. With its emphasis on the exercises, this first level of training was an early step toward establishing something like the European model in the Boston area.
Al had previously made presentations to the Fielding Institute and was an adjunct faculty member. There were other connections through Gus Kaufman's Fielding coordinator, Jackie Zilbach, M.D., a training analyst and psychiatrist who attended a weekend with Al each January, along with some of her current and former students. I also served as a Psychology faculty member at Fielding for a few years in the 1980s and co-led occasional seminars with Jackie that used PS/P structures as in vivo illustrations of psychoanalytic and developmental concepts. Jackie joined the Board of Directors of the Psychomotor Institute in 1987.
In 1985 I set up a "Level One" training program for Boston area Fielding students. The group completed the program, which included four days in New Hampshire with Diane, and reported that they found it valuable.
Early in 1984 I moved (still providing a home for the Psychomotor Institute) from my Copley Square location in Boston to a small office condo unit of which I was now the proud owner, near Central Square in Cambridge. Equipped with numerous couches, a full bathroom, a half bath and a tiny kitchen, this was also a place where PS visitors, occasionally including Al and Diane, could be put up for the night.
A major change in the Pessos' lives occurred when they purchased, in late 1984, a computer. Both Al and Diane took to it with the greatest of ease and enthusiasm, and before long their PS/P mailing list, correspondence, financial records, and much else had been entered on the computer's hard disk. A couple of years later Al acquired a portable computer which he could take with him when he traveled. Not only has this helped him to keep track of what has happened when and where, it has also boosted his writing output significantly.
Carl Clarke, an Atlanta psychologist/minister who had been attending Pesso workshops since 1975 and who also trained religious leaders in a program of marriage enrichment, arranged in l986 to start bringing his video and audio equipment to Franklin during the training program. He had set up a non-profit organization, the Telles Institute. With the help of this organization, he hopes to have all of Al's lectures transcribed so as to be available in typed form and as both audio and video cassettes. Tapes of structures may be available to the structure enactor for a rental fee. Carl also, along with the Rev. Armen Hanjian, has been coordinating a PS/P training group in New Jersey; he records sessions of this group during Al's visits, as well as some sessions in Atlanta. Since Carl has largely had to rely on volunteer efforts to prepare these materials it has been difficult to make them accessible.
Meanwhile, having acquired improved printing equipment, Al and Diane themselves have begun putting out a number of Al's writings as publications of the PS Press. Their earlier newsletter, first The Sketch Pad, then PS News, and most recently PS/P News, has also become something they publish themselves.
PS/P in the 1980s: B. Concepts, Techniques
People whose only contacts with PS/P occurred prior to the 1980s would be surprised to return to a session with Al in the early `90s and find him speaking of the possibility sphere, the center of one's truth, the true scene, shape and countershape, ego wrapping, the witness figure, containing, contact, and comfort as well as resistance figures, to say nothing of numerous fragment figures or voices, plus a pilot.
Some of these designations derived from efforts on Al's part to let trainees know more about the thoughts and feelings he himself experienced -- and had trained himself to experience -- in the course of working with a structure enactor. The aim was to help trainees become more fully attuned to what was happening in the client's mind and body. One concept of this sort was that of the possibility sphere, which Al considered applicable to any sort of psychotherapeutic work and not just to PS/P.
The emptiness of the possibility sphere is welcoming; it says, "Here living is possible." The client is surrounded with something potentially fertile; metaphorically the possibility sphere represents a womb which is there to help the individual realize possibilities. It provides an accepting, nourishing, life-supporting arena in which to work, and it is conducive to the birthing of the unborn parts of the self into reality and consciousness. It offers a safe "holding environment" where clients can become aware of how they actually experience their lives in the present moment; can explore painful, submerged parts of their personalities, and can experience the symbolic satisfaction of previously unmet basic needs. Al's paper on "Ego Development and the Body" (1988), revised for this volume, includes a more extensive discussion of the possibility sphere.
The negative voice was the forerunner of what in the late 1980s became one or several voices that were given more specific designations, such as the voice of shame, the voice of family tradition, the voice of caution, the voice of negative prediction, etc. Like the original negative voice, these voices often represent the structure enactor's resistance to the therapeutic process. Having the voices be role-played so that the person hears them from outside rather than just from inside helps significantly in dealing with such resistances. These voices are referred to as those of fragment figures.
Their use is in line with a principle Al derived from his work with Leo Reyna: to proceed in small steps, in small increments. A client may recognize that an inner voice is saying "Don't make a fool of yourself!" but not yet realize that this voice of warning represents an internalized negative aspect of a parent. Fragment figures let the sources of early programming about how to conduct one's self in the world be externalized, perhaps becoming part of the true scene, well before the client is ready to ask someone to role-play this aspect of a parent.
It is much the same with the ego wrapping figures. To the earlier resistance figure there have now been added figures providing comfort, contact and containment. These similarly become available to the client at an early stage of the therapeutic process, often before he or she is ready to accept the emotional reality of a pair of ideal parents. The same is true of the witness figure whose perception, naming and assessment of the client's emotion gives it external validation. These figures supply other portions of the information needed for constructing the true scene. Creating a witness figure also furthers the Pessos' aim of reducing transference as far as possible: with a group member playing this role there is someone other than the therapist who is available to perform this essential, and basically parental, ego wrapping function.
The positive voice whose messages supported the structure enactor's best interests can probably be considered a forerunner of another recent development, that of the pilot. The pilot exists within the client and can be trusted to steer that person's actions and guide his or her understanding, thoughts and feelings toward a positive outcome. The pilot must, however, have adequate information about early programming, about the old map that had been formed. When this information has been made available by constructing the true scene, the pilot can then make decisions that lead to a positive outcome.
Diane (Note 1) says she knows nothing about the "pilot"; Al responds that on the contrary, she has always known about the pilot, has always trusted in and helped people to discover that inner wisdom of the body which enables structure enactors to find their way to a positive outcome. In my already quoted 1975 interview with the Pessos Al spoke of being filled with wonderment at the wisdom of the body: that "we always had a positive outcome, so long as we stayed with the body... Truth was in the body."
In the '80s much of Diane's time was taken up with managing Strolling Woods, although she traveled to Europe eighteen times to lead certification training programs with Al. One of the most meaningful things that she did was to help her mother combat cancer. After the funeral of her eighty-year-old father, her seventy-six-year-old mother informed her that she thought she had breast cancer, which had been growing for three years. Within a week her mother was operated on and they learned she also had far advanced bone cancer.
Diane did some quick reading up on breast cancer and decided there might be an emotional component to the problem, as there had been with the chronic atypical pain patients she had worked with earlier. The main similarity seemed to be in the inappropriate ways they handled anger. She asked her mother if she wanted to work with her in trying to fight it, in addition to following the advised medical treatment. Her mother was game, and moved to Strolling Woods for many months of work. They did simple physical exercises together each morning plus a playful cathartic anger discharge exercise Diane had designed. In the afternoons there were sessions in which they dealt with certain aspects of her early history through PS/P exercises and some simple structures. The day usually ended with the exercise in which anger is playfully discharged. Staff, friends, trainees, her son, grand-daughter, anyone on hand was semi-humorously enrolled as "negative, nasty, cancer cells." Her mother's assignment was to "kill them off" in a variety of ways. Both Diane and her mother felt the work enabled her to live longer than her physician had anticipated.
All sessions were videotaped and someday will be edited and shared with others who would like training in the techniques Diane devised. Most of the videotaping was done by Tia Pesso, who had the unique experience of being with her grandmother as she relived and redid parts of her history through structures. There were times when four generations were symbolically in the room: the role-played negative aspects of Tia's great grandmother; Tia's grandmother, sometimes feeling like and remembering herself as a young child; Tia's mother, Diane, sitting nearby and encouraging her mother to follow what came up and to get assistance from the "ideal" alternative mother; and Tia herself, a caring grand-daughter. One of the fortunate by-products of the work was that Diane's mother became more truly herself -- warmer and more loving.
My notes from a training session during the summer of l988 also include a statement by Al that from the beginning he and Diane had searched for the truth of what was going on in a person they were working with, and in themselves.
Another way of working that was new in the early 1980s was sometimes to have positive figures partly restrain a structure enactor when he or she was having difficulty expressing angry feelings toward a negative role player, with the latter responding as if smitten by the client's words or blows. Previously the client's anger had either been expressed toward ideal parental figures who limited the anger or toward a negative target who accommodated with sound and movement. Now both could happen at once.
The idea of ego wrapping adds a new emphasis to the earlier paradigm of energy --> action --> interaction --> meaning/internalization. Not just any interaction suffices to create an ego that suitably surrounds the soul or core self; rather, it needs to conform precisely to the shape of the core self that is to be comfortably contained within it. Yet this idea, too, had been basically a part of PS/P from the beginning. An example Al often used in describing how positive accommodation should fit what the structure enactor needed was that of the fit between the mouth of a hungry infant and its mother's breast.
The emphasis on shapes is not new. In connection with Leo Reyna's influence, Al remarked in the 1975 interview that he (Reyna) "was always aware of the shapes of the behaviors and of the shapes of the programs, and I think of a metaphor as a shape." In all likelihood the concern for matching shapes can further be traced back to the Pessos' involvement with dance and choreography.
Al's early interest in science found some expression during the 1980s in his collaboration with Han Wassenaar (1987), a neurobiologist at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, whose interest in Pesso therapy led him to work on constructing a new model to depict the functioning of the central nervous system.
As another decade begins, PS/P seems solidly established although still not widely known. About one hundred therapists are currently enrolled in certificate training programs in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, and the United States. Numerous other therapists are enthusiastic about the method and use its techniques even though they may not have chosen to complete certification training. Large numbers of former clients also have warmly positive feelings about their experience with PS/P. The future seems bright.
References
Cobb, A. L. (1977). Transference and Systematic Psychomotor Therapy. Ubertragung und das Pesso-System der Psycho-Motor-Therapie. In Petzold, H. (Ed.), Die neuen Korpertherapien (The New Body Therapies). Paderborn, West Germany: Junfermann.
Ellingsen-Greenwood, C. (1978). Psychomotor: A Psychotherapeutic Approach. Submitted in candidacy for the degree of Master of Social Work, George Williams College. (Unpublished).
Foulds, M. L. & Hannigan, P. S. (1974). Effects of Psychomotor group therapy on ratings of self and others. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 2, 351-353.
Foulds, M. L. & Hannigan, P. S. (1976). Effects of Psychomotor group psychotherapy on locus of control and social desirability. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, l6, 2, 81-88.
Francis, M. (1973). Psychomotor. Self and Society, London.
Kaufman, G. B., Jr. (1981). Body signals of childhood loss:How relational deficits and stress lead to tension and postural insecurity. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Fielding Institute.
Levenson, R. (1981). Psychomotor Therapy. Proseminar paper for Master of Education degree in Counseling Psychology, Cambridge College. (Unpublished).
Meyer-von Blon, M. (1986). Pesso Psychomotor Therapy: An Apologia. Position paper for Master's Degree in Human Development, St. Mary's College. (Unpublished).
Napier, A. Y. (1988). The Fragile Bond. N.Y.: Harper & Row.
Oelman, R. (1978). Object relations theory and experiential psychotherapy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Union Graduate School.
Pesso, A. (1963). New Perspectives in the Generation of Movement: With implications Important to Dance Composition, Criticism and Appreciation. (Unpublished).
Pesso, A. (l966). The Development of a Theory of Psychomotor Therapy. Submitted to Goddard College Adult Degree Program. (Unpublished).
Pesso, A. (1969). Movement in Psychotherapy: Psychomotor Techniques and Training. NY: New York University Press.
Pesso, A. (1973) Experience in Action: A Psychomotor Psychology. NY: New York University Press.
Pesso, A. (1974). Appendix for Grants and Chapter for Ed Smith Book.(Unpublished).
Pesso, A. (1980). Pesso System Psychomotor Therapy Video Tape Annotations. Transcribed by Robert Beloof.
Pesso, A. (1984a). Introduction to Pesso System/Psychomotor.Transcribed by C. Marchessault. Franklin, NH: PS Press.
Pesso, A. (1984b). Touch and Action: The Use of the Body in Psychotherapy. Fifth World Congress of Psychomotricity at the Hague, the Netherlands.
Pesso, A. (1986). Image of the Self and the Body. Seventh World Congress of Psychomotricity, Nice, France.
Pesso, A. (1986). Dramaturgie des Unbewussten: Eine
Einfuhrung in die psychomotorische Therapie. (Dramaturgy of the Unconscious: An Introduction to Psychomotor Therapy), T. Moser, (Ed. & Trans.) Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Portele, M. & Portele, H. (1978). Eindrucke und Erfahrungenmit der Psycho-Motor-Therapie von Al und Diane Pesso. (Impressions and Experiences with the Psychomotor Therapy of Al and Diane Pesso), Integrative Therapie, 5, 123-129. (English translation by Dorothy Prickett, unpublished).
Psychomotor Institute Newsletter (1973). Vol. 1, No. 1.
Reid, C. (1969). Groups Alive - Church Alive. NY: Harper &Row.
Scott, P. (1987). The Ego in Psychomotor. Submitted toIndependent Study Program, Lesley College Graduate School, as documentation for Master's Degree in Psychology. (Unpublished).
Shurr, G. & Yocom, R.D. (1949). Modern Dance: Techniques and Teaching. NY: A.S. Barnes and Ronald Press.
Sokolove, R. (1975). Verbal and motoric styles of therapy: An outcome study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University.
Wassenaar, J. S., Bolhuis, J., Reynders, K., & Pesso, A.(1987). Van Indruknaar Afdruk: naar een sensor-psycho-motor model. (From impression to expression: Toward a sensor-psycho-motor model). Bewegen & Hulpverlening, 3, 239-250.
Notes
Note 1. Pesso, A. & Pesso, D. (1989-90). Personal communication.
Note 2. Pesso, D. & Pesso A. (1975). Personal communication.
© Copyright Albert Pesso and Diane Boyden Pesso 1997 all rights reserved
