Excerpts from Moving Psychotherapy,
Brookline Books, Cambridge, MA 1990:
"...my work with patients has changed: taking on a more positive, more creative, and more life-encouraging form. Among the advantages offered by PS/P is the vividness of experience when the unconscious is enacted and not simply described..." "...my work with patients has changed: taking on a more positive, more creative, and more life-encouraging form. Among the advantages offered by PS/P is the vividness of experience when the unconscious is enacted and not simply described..." Staging the Unconscious; PS/P and Psychoanalysis, by German Psychoanalyst, Tilman Moser.
"Critical life issues, both historical and current, are revealed in their effects through this simple, brief, non-threatening exercise (the Reflex Relaxed Stance). It provides us with a precise readout of an individual’s current adaptive level and specific vulnerabilities, often prior to the onset of more serious symptoms. PS/P therapy then gives us magnificent tools with which to repair the damages we have found. "Childhood Loss and Postural Insecurity," by Psychologist, Gus Kaufman.
"PS/P, when used in conjunction with 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon, is the treatment of choice for those recovering from the lasting effects of being raised in an alcoholic family." PS/P Treatment and Recovery for Adult Children of Alcoholic Families, by Psychologist, John Crandell and Family Therapist, Gail Hagler.
Excerpts from the chapter by Augustus Napier, Ph.D., 1990, "The Missing Link in Marital Therapy" in the book edited by Florence Kaslow, Ph.D., Voices in Family Psychology, Newbury, CA: Sage Publishers
"The main requirement for this "missing link" in couples work (or work with any adult client in a family) is a method which allows control in staging and re-staging key family dramas--without requiring that the family of origin change dramatically. In the work of Albert [and Diane Pesso], whose approach I have described in more detail in The Fragile Bond (Napier, 1988), I have found such a method, and it offers exciting potential to this latter stage of family of origin work."
"The Pessos' system is a complex one with its own training and certification process, and it has been used principally with groups of therapists who work on their own issues while being trained. The Pesso System bears some similarity to gestalt and psychodrama approaches, but it is unique in combining a sophisticated "externalization" (through role-playing) of the individual's ego psychology, which is expressed in exteremely powerful "body language." The most appealing aspect of this system is its emphasis on emotional "truth", as revealed in bodily states."
"The Pessos' sensitivity to body tension and expression allows them to bypass intellectual defenses, while the therapist's tight control of the work, including the creation of physical restraints, facilitates a sense of emotional safety. In this work, the client often makes startling discoveries about his or her feelings, and is usually able to accomplish discharge of primitive negative emotion, and to risk vulnerable healing experiences with ideal figures."
"...I have found it possible to incorporate certain of these techniques into the couples treatment format, and I have found them extremely useful. Not only do they permit an expression of primitive affect related to childhood experience, but they also help both partners develop the beginnings of more positive parental models, which can then shape anticipation of more positive responses from each other. These shifts can also pave the way for more constructive resolution of conflicts with the actual parents. Rage and the desire for reprisal are thus handled in a symbolic experience, while the actual relationships with the parents are approached with the hope of rebuilding them as adult-to-adult relationships. Discharge of negative affect toward the parents may also improve both spouses' parenting of their own children"
Comments from a German Therapist in Training
"When I began the structure I felt ready to touch some deeper emotions in me. I was in a life span where I felt very often desperate and alone and was fed up with somatizing so much. I trusted Al a lot out of my experiences in former structures with him. To be able to trust a person specially a male therapist is a very important point, because of my history with my unpredictable father. I knew that I could rely on Al's precisenesss and differentiated view on my unconscious body gestures and that he would not overstep me but discuss every next step with my pilot. All that gave me the feeling of being in a safe situation where deeper feelings could eventually come up.
According to my history I never felt really save although our family life was very stable viewed from the outside. The things that would cause fear or un-safety were lying in the atmosphere and therefore very difficult to grasp.
I had the feeling that it took me a long time in that structure before I could allow figures to enter the scene. The most helpful intervention was when Al clarified the two levels of child part and adult. That reassured me that I could go "down" to the terrified child and be sure not to lose the adult personality that functions also as a helper to have survived.
With that I could for the first time really touch and process what Pesso calls "nuclear energy". Energy that was loose in my body, I think specially in my infected intestine by holding me together for such a long time and which I experienced in this structure as a very deep fear of falling apart and having no save hold from the outside. I allowed the contact figures to hold me together and so I could go into those so far disconnected feelings. Being hold very tight was important and this corresponded to the depth of that fear feelings.
After the structure I was very glad to have literally survived that experience and that gave me an incredible amount of strength. The idea that I no longer need to dissociate my feelings and that there is a possibility to handle it, had an imprint on my whole life afterwards. I felt more alive and I dared more to express myself.
When I think of that structure and how everything went on I know that it opened the door to feel more aggressive towards life in a positive way. And using the picture of my history it opened the door towards the loving and tender aspects for my father and I also dare more to validate and take in the love, maybe of an ideal father, without being afraid that this opens every door and leaves me vulnerable. So I could built up an image of a nourishing, respectful and shelter giving father.
It also had an impact on my relationship to men. I'm not only the victim of "intruding" men that I must counter-fight but started to develop my femininity.
In the next structure I did with Al I worked on how to express my love to a "peer" man and leave the old map place of a mother that was full of fear of life and depression and whom I had to help to shelter from a very emotional husband -- a place that was safe but also dull and loaded with heavy feelings of too much loyalty."
Comments from Clients
"Aspects of Psychomotor that I value, and which seems to be difficult if not impossible to find in some other forms of therapy, are these: respect for the client, work with the body, polarization, and accommodation. First, as a client, I have appreciated the good faith Psychomotor therapists have in a client's potential to change. Unlike some other therapies, Psychomotor has never made me feel sick or inferior or ashamed of trying to grow, and this affirmative attitude has made more work and growth possible. Second, I appreciate the way Psychomotor attends to the body, both as a discrete functioning unit and as a part of a larger physical and social space, and lets the body say what speech too often cannot express..."
"I have found Gestalt Therapy appealing, and Primal; I am strongly drawn to Jung and still find some Freudian tenets sound. I feel Psychomotor combines the attractive components of all these and takes care of the aspects I like least."
"Psychomotor is the best method I have found to enable people to learn how to live; with themselves, with each other, at peace, with joy, and with continuing growth."
"Why Psychomotor? I have seen Gestalt, Bio-energetics, theater techniques, Jungian therapy, and Psychomotor. Psychomotor seems to be the most balanced. Bio-energetics doesn't include the support of the Psychomotor structure. This limits the movement of the psyche into the archetypal realm. Jungian therapy doesn't touch the potential of the body. Gestalt seems to be taking place, and is, in its essence, very like Psychomotor. Theater techniques are fine for short term, but they seem irresponsible to me. 'I'm going to show you how tight you are', rather than, 'I can help you open.' Psychomotor is a good solid therapy."
"I have experienced real growth and healing through my own individual and group therapy. As I've grown more whole, I find myself instinctively moving to use the awareness -- the listening to body language and to the parent archetypal patterns in the lives of my family and my friends -- helping ways."
"In the family therapy group with my husband and me and four of our six children, I have seen startling growth changes in each of us."
"The mother and father roles are effective in polarizing energies and help people to get in touch with both their need for and resentment of authority. Psychomotor works beautifully and gives a sense of completion that is too often missing in straight psychodrama and bio-energetic work."
See also What People Say about PBSP.
To add your own quote/comment about PBSP to our pages fill out the PBSP Quote Form
