Article by
Albert Pesso
for Holes in Roles Workshops (Excerpt)
© May, 2003
My work with
individuals, couples and families over four
decades has lead me to believe that human
infants enter the world genetically supplied
with an innate template that prepares them to
automatically recognize and intuitively respond
to the various, familial, kinship figures they
will encounter as they grow up. Furthermore, in
addition to this innate ability to "see and
react to" those kinship roles, I have discovered
that children seem to have the innate,
rudimentary potential to "take on" and "act the
part of" each and every one of those kinship
roles as situations seem to require in the
family settings they grow up in. I call those
categories of capacities "stem selves" which
seem to be cultivated by external circumstances
to the kind of role function seemingly called
upon by the outside world.
If a child has
had the misfortune of learning and experiencing
that their parents were wounded, due to apparent
neglect those parents must have experienced in
their childhood, that appears to awaken the
child’s little heart and compassionate soul
which innately knows that all children need and
have an inner expectation of experiencing care.
This immediately awakens the unspoken, perhaps
also unconscious, but deeply felt wish that his
or her parents could have been better cared for.
Clients who have
unwittingly filled the holes in the roles of
their parents maturational needs, have distorted
their own personalities, leading to
dysfunctional patterns in their own adult lives
and adult partner choices. In PBSP presentations
I demonstrate this phenomenon and teach how to
release clients from those burdensome roles thus
enabling them to live more satisfying lives in
their partnerships and within their actual
family structures.
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Article by
Albert Pesso
for Holes in Roles Workshops (Full
Version)
© May, 2003
My work with
individuals, couples and families over four
decades leads me to the notion that human
infants enter the world genetically supplied
with an innate template (model) that prepares
them to automatically (instinctively) recognize
and appropriately (intuitively) respond to the
various, familial, kinship figures they will
encounter as they grow up. Further, as well as
having an innate tendency to see and react to
those kinship roles, they also seem to have the
innate, rudimentary potentiality to take on and
act the part of each and every one of those
kinship roles as situations seem to require in
the family settings they grow up in.
In other words, infants arrive with an in-built
knowledge of, and preparedness to meet, all the
different familial and relational roles such as
mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers,
aunts, uncles, siblings, mates, and peer
figures. Also, they have within themselves
albeit in rudimentary form, regardless of their
sexual gender an innate capacity to act as
(take on the functions of) mothers, fathers,
grandmothers, grandfathers, etc. One could call
those innate categories of capacities stem
selves which could be cultivated by external
circumstances to reproduce, or take on every
single kind of role function seemingly called
upon by the outside world.
I
posit the notion that there is an innate
neurological and biological time-line for the
ripening of each one of those potential roles.
It is optimally useful, evolutionarily speaking,
that one becomes a husband or a wife when one
reaches the age (and capability) of adult peer
responsibility and contractual reciprocal
partnership. This implies that one best becomes
a parent when one is a sexually and emotionally
mature person, fully capable of being a parental
care-giver and taking on the serious
responsibilities of that role. All children
have the innate template and potential
temperament to become a husband or a wife,
though they may have not yet ripened
sufficiently to take on those adult tasks and
roles. They know that their parents were once
children and that their parents should have had
their parents taking sufficient care of them.
Children do not mature well or even become fully
human when born in isolation from other humans,
e.g., feral children. We are a social species
and come to maturity in optimal condition when
we are reared in need-satisfying interaction
with large numbers of well-functioning relatives
and other effective community figures. Since
the present is driven by memories of the past,
we are preter-naturally curious to discover the
history of what has happened in our family line
before we were born in order to optimally deal
with the immediate present and successfully
anticipate a satisfying future. Thus, it seems
clear that it would be evolutionarily useful if
we were made to live not only with a recognition
of the varying kinship relationships in our
family history, but also with a consciousness
that in the future we will become active role
representatives and role-players in reflection
of and in relationship to that history.
Just as research studies in linguistics and
brain organization tell us that every human baby
is born with a neuronal organization that
includes an innate readiness to recognize
different kinds of words (nouns, verbs, numbers
regardless of differing languages and symbolic
forms) as well as an innate sense of grammatical
structure, I posit that future research will
show that children come to this planet also
pre-set and ready to discover and understand
that there are kinship categories such as
mothers, fathers, parents to those mothers and
fathers, siblings of that mother and father as
well as siblings of one's own. I believe this
immanent readiness for social structure and
social relationships prepares them to make sense
of those external realities the instant they
encounter them in the world at large. As
naturally as children are able and ready to hear
and understand nouns, verbs and adjectives and
the sentences that include them, I believe that
they are similarly able and ready to experience
and act appropriately to the complexity of
kinship relationships with all its implications
and variations.
Children seem to be neurally prepared to
perceive and behaviorally prepared to act
appropriately as a member of a family. They
come knowing that they are someone's child; that
there are such categories and roles as mother
and father (and later, prepared to know that one
is a husband and the other is wife, with
culturally or innately determined role
differentiations) and even if there were not
siblings born before them that there are such
things as sisters and brothers (with the
implication that they come knowing there are
such things as gender differences). They
understand at once, when they encounter those
occasions, that their parents also have had
siblings and accept at once the special intimacy
that comes with relationships with aunts and
uncles. They come prepared to eventually
recognize (at the appropriate level of
consciousness) that their parents have also had
parents and even before they are conscious of
the reality of that category, they come fully
poised to experience and relish the special
relationship that seems to instinctively exist
between grandparents and grandchildren when they
first encounter those doting figures.
If a child has had the misfortune of learning
and experiencing that their parents were sorely
wounded due to the neglect that their parents
experienced in their own rearing -- innately
knowing that all children need and have an inner
expectation of experiencing such care -- their
little hearts and compassionate souls
immediately awaken the unspoken, perhaps also
unconscious, but deeply felt wish that their
parents could have been better cared for.
Children also seem to quickly recognize that
their own maturational needs are less likely to
be met as a consequence of their parents'
childhood deficits of satisfaction of their
needs by the genetically anticipated kinship
figures at the genetically anticipated right
age. This state of affairs starts a process of
childhood parentification that has two different
origins. One origin is the compassion that the
child feels for their wounded parent. This
compassion is long-lasting, often even life-long
lasting. The other origin is the (often
shatteringly disappointed) belief that their
efforts at filling the holes in the roles that
have produced deficits in their parents
maturational processes will somehow result in
their parents finally being able to parent them.
Their compassion drives them to try to replace
the missing kinship figure with a portion of
their own beings. My speculation is that they
construct out of their stem selves, coupled with
their inner knowledge of kinship relations and
their functions, a virtual mother for their
mother. A mother entity, living within the
child's body and utilizing some of the child's
life energies (however that is measured and
determined libido, life force, whatever)
totally separate and serving a different host
that the rest of the child's energy systems.
The natural host of the child is its own soul,
so to speak. That part of the self that is
worthy, valued, deserving of respect and with
rights to move with self interest in tandem with
the world at large. This compassion-born entity
draws energy from the child that would
ordinarily fall in its own soul's jurisdiction
and uses it in the service not of the self, but
of the other, the mother or father in need.
Thus there are then two masters living within
that child. One a soul that has a time-line of
maturation and life expectations in its own
service and the other, an entity which draws a
line of credit draining the resources from the
rightful owner of being that is called by that
child's name.
But that hard-working child doesn't give up hope
that it will get its own needs met.
Unfortunately however, it is willing to go on
that life-long detour of propping up the
crippled parent in the hope that the parent will
someday grow up and be able to return the favor
and become the wished-for, longed-for parent to
themselves they were expected to be in the
first place.
I
have seen so many adults in psychotherapy
sessions, who, when they are in the presence of
someone representing that injured, but
deeply-loved part of their real parent, well up
with sympathy, pity and compassion that is both
heart-warming and heart-wrenching to observe.
Heart-warming because it is usually in stark
contrast to the bitterness that such adult
clients feel to some other aspect of their real
parent. And also heart-warming to see any human
being so moved and motivated to help by the
plight of another. Heart-wrenching, because
they cry the cry of a little child who is sorely
burdened with the task of ameliorating the
wounds of the adult who was supposed to take
care of them.
It is no wonder that remembrance of and
respect for ancestors exists in virtually
every society on earth. Positive and negative
information of the details of family member's
lives in the past powerfully (automatically and
unconsciously) influences what parts (roles) we
will play and with whom in the realization of
our own destinies.
In this workshop we will review the notion of
Holes in Roles and see how the clients who have
unwittingly filled the holes in the roles that
should have been the suppliers of their parents
maturational needs have distorted their own
personalities and led to dysfunctional patterns
in their adult lives and adult partner choices.
Most importantly we will demonstrate and teach
how to release clients from those burdensome
tasks thus enabling them to live more satisfying
lives in their partnerships and within their
actual family structures
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Stages and Screens: Psychoanalysis Revisited
by Albert Pesso, co-founder of Pesso Boyden
System Psychomotor PBSP*
Grand
Rounds Lecture delivered at Boston University
Medical School in November of 1999
When we revisited psychoanalysis, we brought
with us two gifts, first: the inclusion of the
body, not the simple use of the body as the
vessel for the concrete expression of feelings,
but more powerfully, the body as the vehicle of
symbolic expression of emotions and interactive
relationships. In this way we expanded the
realm of symbolic expression beyond mere words
to include the wide range of symbolic motor
expression of all human passions. Second: we
brought the knowledge that the use of the body
required the experience of satisfaction and not
only frustration. Satisfaction of needs, not in
the here and now, for that would be acting out,
but satisfaction of the needs in the symbolic
realm of the vividly recalled, there and then.
More of that later.
First a bit of background to trace how we
learned what to do about body expression. I
began my professional career as a modern dancer,
was a teacher and choreographer, and then became
a tenured Associate Professor and director of
the Dance Department at Emerson College. My
wife, and life partner, Diane Boyden-Pesso was
also a dancer, teacher and choreographer and was
an Instructor in Dance at Wheaton College,
Sargent College and also at Emerson College.
We met as dance scholarship students at
Bennington College in 1949. Diane had been a
student of Jose Limon and I a student of Martha
Graham.
We knew, and believed as only young romantics
could know and believe, that we were going to do
something important in dance together. Little
did we know then that our passion for each
other's company and our passion for honest,
profound, emotional expression would result in a
life-long journey of exploration and learning
far beyond what we could have ever imagined. We
struggled to understand and gain control of the
powerful forces that shaped our lives and caused
disturbing and unwanted events to occur with the
force of destiny. We naturally turned to our
ever-deepening knowledge of emotional movement
accumulated in our professional lives as
the primary means of gaining relief of pain and
greater control of the fulfillment of our hopes
and wishes for the future.
Our dance classes became the laboratory where we
explored the relationship between inner states
and outer expression, in service of the goal of
helping our dance students become finer and more
effective artists. And then, surprisingly, we
saw that some of our exercises and procedures
resulted in profound and long-lasting emotional
changes in our students' lives.
Over a seven year period of constant exploration
and experimentation, we slowly shifted the
emphasis in a selected number of our classes
toward therapeutic, rather than artistic ends.
This resulted in founding a new, very young,
seedling of a therapeutic process in 1961 which
we called Psychomotor Therapy. Psyche, for mind
or soul, and motor for movement and the body.
While we continued to teach dance per se in our
dance-only classes, we did so with greater
knowledge of the psychological power and
consequences of what was involved in this way of
looking at and teaching emotional movement for
artistic ends.
In our Psychomotor groups, we did not dance or
teach dance in any form, but worked with
emotional expression in its essential, primary,
motor form. We attended to emotional movement
as it rose directly from feeling with clear
therapeutic goals in mind. Do not be misled in
thinking that we were focusing simply on
emotional and motor catharsis, for even this
early on we had already established the need for
constructing symbolic healing events which
attended to deficits of maturational needs.
We were incredibly fortunate in having our early
work come to the attention of some very
influential figures in the medical and
psychiatric fields. First was my dear mentor,
the late Dr. Charles Pinderhughes. At that time
he was the Chief of Psychiatric Research at the
Veteran's Administration Hospital in Jamaica
Plain. The second was the late, Dr. Ellsworth
Newman, then Administrator of Mass General
Hospital. Charles saw immediately the
implications and usefulness of what Diane and I
had developed and, bless his dear heart,
arranged for me to have a grant at the VA where
I worked for five years as a Consultant in
Psychiatric Research to examine Psychomotor
therapy. I had the pleasure of working those
years in a team with Charles in conjunction with
Dr. Leo (Seb) Reyna, who had been the teacher of
Wolpe in South Africa. During those years at
the VA I absorbed psychoanalytic theory and
practice from Charles and osmosed behavior
therapy theory from Seb. Their disciplined and
scientific minds helped shape my thinking and
re-kindled my own fundamental scientific bent
had I not turned to becoming an artist at
seventeen I would have continued my education in
science, physics and math.
Ellsworth Neumann was a neighbor when we lived
on Beacon Street in Boston and was a member of
one of the earliest groups we had led. He was
convinced of the value of the work from his own
personal experience and introduced us to Dr.
Eric Lindemann, who at that time was chief of
Psychiatry at Mass General. Ott, as he
preferred to be called, stayed in the
background, but I am sure eased the way to Diane
and I working at McLean Hospital in Belmont. I
began working on the staff at McLean Hospital as
a Psychomotor therapist in 1965 and continued
doing so for eight years, until 1973. Diane
also was director of Psychomotor therapy at the
Pain unit of the New England Rehabilitation
Hospital in Woburn for one year at the unit
established by neurosurgeon. Dr. Nat Hollister.
Nat and his wife Jane were then in training with
us to learn Psychomotor therapy.
Fast forward to the present. The process is now
known as Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor therapy
and we have long term training programs in nine
countries, US, Norway, Denmark, Holland,
Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, the Czech
Republic and Brazil. I have written two
American books on the subject, co-edited one
American book and co-authored two German books
and one Belgian book. We have had four
international congresses on PBSP.
Now about psychotherapy in general and PBSP in
particular in the present.
PBSP is now not a simple or single thing. It is
a comprehensive psychotherapeutic process that
consists of: self-diagnostic exercises to
develop sensitivity to non-verbal communication;
a body of theories regarding human development
and maturation; powerful verbal and non-verbal
psychotherapeutic techniques and interventions.
All together these elements are aimed toward the
reduction of pain and to enhance the probability
of success in achieving a productive, creative
and fulfilling life to those denied the
conditions for normal psychological development.
What does PBSP have to offer psychiatry and
psychotherapy in general? First, PBSP in its
presently evolved form is a comprehensive
psychotherapy and not only a body-based
psychotherapy. Thus it has theories techniques
and interventions that include all information
available from the client, verbal and
non-verbal.
The
essentials of PBSP:
-
Creation of a
working atmosphere.
-
Establishment of
a PBSP working relationship and contract
with the client.
-
Micro-Tacking
Consciousness.
-
Linking memories
of historical deficits/abuse to the present.
-
Construction of
new synthetic symbolic memories.
-
Use of body
sensations and impulses in the therapeutic
process.
-
Controlled
interactions in role-play.
-
A special stage
with a movable time line and innumerable
figures with precisely defined kinship
relationships.
What are we in the helping professions trying to
accomplish?
I
presume we are all devoted to doing our utmost
to help our clients live a better life. Lives
of more pleasure satisfaction, meaning and
connectedness. Those wonderful states that we
human beings are capable of experiencing and
which we endlessly strive to gain and maintain.
What else did our Founding Fathers mean when
they wrote of the pursuit of happiness. Pursuit
I suppose because we find ourselves breathlessly
running after them when they appear to be
further and further from our grasp. Such
frustration can easily lead one to believe that
those states are an illusion an earthly
glimpse of the hereafter where those treasured
states would be the constant norm.
A
way not to fall into that trap of despair and
stoicism is to remember that our nervous systems
are perfectly wired to deliver us those
desirable flesh and blood experiences.
Flesh and blood, there's one answer treat
the client by directly addressing his/her flesh
and blood. Brain chemistry, imbalance is the
problem. The assumption is that the brain is
ready to deliver, but its chemistry is off and
can be set to rights by medication. That avenue
offers much hope and is attractive as it places
ultimate trust in the client's system to right
itself with a little bit of help provided by
just the right dosage from the outside.
But why is that brain deficient in balancing
itself chemically from the inside? What put it
off? Or did it start off in the first place?
That may be so in some limited cased, but
certainly not all. If not all, then what has
occurred in that client's life that resulted in
his/her brain chemistry imbalance? Clearly,
something must have gone awry somewhere,
sometime in that client's life that resulted in
diminishing his/her brain's capacity to
regularly deliver happiness shorthand for
pleasure, satisfaction meaning and
connectedness. Maybe it was the ingestion of
some toxic element that got into the blood
stream, maybe it was the absence of some
important ingredient in the diet. That could be
discovered and put to rights.
But the brain and other organs make their own
pharmaceuticals, peptides and proteins that are
precisely engineered to fit receptor sites in
the brain, which we then learn to copy and
deliver from the outside. But who and what
controls and influences that interior chemical
production or causes the lack of it? One
obvious answer is that the emotional state of a
person mightily influences the constituents of
blood chemistry. Every emotional experience
leaves its signature in the bloodstream.
So there must be good experiences which result
in good states and unhappy experiences which
result in unhappy states. Surely the brain
knows the difference between what is good or bad
for the individual and reacts accordingly.
If that is so, then a task of the
psychotherapist would be to simply create good
experiences for the individual and voila, there
would be good brain chemistry at least at that
moment. But what would happen when the client
would leave the office and then bad experiences
would occur? Would the client be able to stave
them off and still hold onto the good
experiences remembered in the office? That is a
good question for several reasons, not the least
of which is that this question introduces the
element of memory. That is, past experiences
at least the memory of them influence the way we
process and take in present experiences.
Let's put memory aside for a moment and consider
the therapeutic value of teaching clients ways
of producing good experiences and thus
influencing their brains to produce happiness
chemicals. Probably most therapeutic
interventions, chemical, experiential or
behavioral include a large part of this
component by triggering the placebo effect
which is probably the basis of most healing
processes. Dr. Herb Benson teaches that the
relaxation response, his words for the happiness
feeling, resulting from Transcendental
mediation, can be aroused from all kinds of
belief systems and can be consciously evoked by
clients. This kind of approach certainly has
value.
But let's now return to the memory question.
We're right on the intriguing spot of looking at
the relationship between consciousness of the
present and memory of the past. Intriguing
because brain research demonstrates that what we
call consciousness is first, made up of
so-called working memory. and, that our various
sensory cortexes in response to present sensory
events immediately call to mind similar,
remembered sensory events from the past. This
makes it clear that the act of being conscious
of the present includes a lot of non-conscious
recalling or remembering the past. In the
normal, the past, that is memory of the past, is
deeply embedded in the experience of the
present. Obviously that is so because the
richness of our experience is evident not only
in our consciousness but also in our
personality. Rob someone of their experiences,
i.e. memories of pasts events as
Alzheimer's does and you rob them not only
of their consciousness but their personality as
well. We speak correctly when we say we ARE our
memories. We don't speak correctly when we say
we WERE our memories, unless we speak of
ourselves as no longer alive. Another way to
put it, our memories are very much present in
our conscious experience of NOW. Memories drive
consciousness. The past drives the present.
So let's look at what kinds of memories, what
kinds of pasts do we and our clients have to
contend with. Just to remind us of the original
topic, our experiences in the present result in
complex chemical production and some chemicals
lead to happy feelings and others to unpleasant
and destructive states. Our goal is to do work
that leads to relatively constant and
consistently happy states.
Simply looked at one could then say that all we
psychotherapists have to do is to make a string
of good memories. But we humans are not an
arbitrary or random organism. Speaking of
strings, look at the marvelously organized
string of DNA chains our genes are composed of.
What incredible timing is involved in the
maintenance and maturation of the human self.
Time is a factor here. Things have to happen in
the right time. There has to be coordination
which includes a timeline. Certain things have
to happen at certain times in order for other
things to follow. Those new things can happen
based on what has been established before.
Facts have to be laid down in order. That is
events i.e. interactive experiences have
to be laid down in memory in appropriate order.
There is a template for that. It is not
arbitrary or random. Evolution has kept a good
memory for what works and what doesn't and gives
us the present of a present that is livable, so
long as its conditions are met.
Now there's a challenge. What then are
evolution's conditions? Should we learn them,
we would be able to develop not random memories,
but very organized specific memories in line
with evolutionary requirements. So it begins to
look like this. Yes indeed we all have memories
that influence our present and some of us have
memories which result in a pretty decent present
and some of us have memories which result in
pretty miserable presents. Why the difference?
Our assumption is that those of us with
individual or personal memories more in line
with embedded evolutionary records (memories) of
what should happen in life gain the organismic,
felt, payoff of considerable pleasure,
satisfaction, meaning and connectedness in our
present lives. Those unfortunates who have had
below par memories, far from the norms
anticipated by our genes, suffer less happy
lives. History is destiny in this equation.
If that is the case, then pharmaceutical
intervention is certainly in order for the
inside conditions in those clients are not right
for the release of blood chemistry happiness.
Placebo effect is also in order for short term
release of happiness states. Making good
memories in the present and holding on to them
in the future can also make inroads. Memories
of a good today can bring hope of a better
tomorrow. Practice in holding bad memories at
bay and willing good states is also a way out.
These are ways of making a good life in the
present in spite of bad memories of a poor,
insufficient past.
Let's now bring in another aspect that of
unfulfilled needs and the consequences of that
in the here and now. Some people so deprived
seem never to get over wanting those needs met
now from every and any person seemingly disposed
to do so. Or even from those obviously not
disposed to do so. What can we do for and with
those people? In dynamic therapies those needs
show up in the transference and the therapist's
strategy is to help the client see those futile
attempts and to help them grieve the loss of
those possibilities. Other kinds of therapists
attempt to become the provider of those needs in
the here and now. Sometimes that seems to be
effective and other times those attempts have
disastrous consequences for both the client and
the therapist.
Why doesn't it work and why are some people so
perversely committed to endless, yet futile
attempts at making it work?
That evolutionary history requirement is still
pumping out its demands, but the time is long
past for its satisfying fulfillment. The
timeline is wrong. And not only that, the
relationship is wrong. What was needed then was
the right kinship relationship to optimally
satisfy those needs and that has to be attended
to somehow. We have found, or at least are
committed to the belief that the needs have to
be met not only at the right age, but also
within the right kinship relationship. Both
conditions arising from templates embedded in
genetic organization at least that is what
we have come to think. Future research may tell
whether that assumption is true or not, but we
already have enough clinical evidence to
strengthen that belief.
To jump ahead, our almost forty years of
exploration, experimentation and clinical
practice have led us to the following
conclusion:
Newly constructed hypothetical as if old
and experienced long ago memories can be
made out of present events carefully constructed
in a client controlled setting. These symbolic,
synthetic memories provide clients with a
sensory-motor, kinesthetic, experience using
role-played figures who represent the correct
kinship relationship as if they had occurred in
the correct timeline required by
evolutionary/genetic organization preset for
optimal maturation of the human individual. Now
that's a mouthful.
Yes, that is what we have learned to do: the
science and art of making maturationally
satisfying new memories and storing them as if
they had taken place in the appropriate timeline
with appropriate kinship relationship figures.
New memories created with an eye to the effect
they would have on a client's consciousness and
experience of the present.
How do we determine which kinds of memories to
create that would influence the client's
present? We first carefully attend to the
client's present consciousness using a process
we call micro-tracking. That is, we track
present emotional states and cognition, helping
the client to make visible the organization and
architecture of their consciousness of the
present moment. We track minute shifts in the
client's expression as she speaks of what is on
her mind as she attends to her life issues or
reacts to what is going on immediately in front
of her. We do this using a witness figure - a
hypothetical, caring, individual posited in the
present, who sees and names each emotional shift
and places it in the context of the client's
verbal report. The acuity of the reading of the
facial expressions is not left to chance or to
an untrained eye. The exhaustively trained PBSP
therapist makes the assessment of what mercurial
emotion has flashed on the client's face and
checks its validity with the client before
having the role-played witness figure make a
statement such as: I see how humiliated you feel
as you recall the way your boss put you down
last week.
You notice the construction of the statement is,
I see how followed by an affective term, in this
case humiliated followed by a description of the
context using only the words the client has just
used in describing the recalled event, the boss
put you down in front of your colleagues last
week. Nothing new is added by the therapist
except the use of the term humiliated to
describe the look on the client's face and
placing it in the context of what the client is
describing. This being seen in their truth from
the outside facilitates the client's
consciousness and ownership of their emotional
state and also places that emotion in the
perspective of that event. Yes, indeed she may
feel, I truly was humiliated then.
She may respond with feeling and gratitude for
the recognition of her feelings by the witness
and then say, Well, he's the boss and he can get
away with that and I can't do anything about
it. That is her cognitive assessment of that
situation. The PBSP therapist remembers that
statement, word for word, and suggests that
there could be an external figure who could
speak that assessment back to her as if it were
a fundamental truth. For indeed our thoughts
are assessments which we record and use for
thinking about future events and possibilities.
In many ways, our minds react to our thoughts as
if they were hypnotic suggestions, for we
regularly find that people live out the
implications and formulas embedded in their
thought processes.
With the client's agreement a figure,
representing the voice of truth says to her the
same words she has just spoken as her thoughts
but puts those words as if they were commands or
laws. For instance, Well he's the boss and he
can get away with that and you can't do anything
about it. You notice the change in the pronoun
from I to you. If the figure had spoken using
the word I she or he would be acting as if she
or he was the client and that would have a very
different effect than the one just described.
Or, the therapist, perhaps being a Rogerian,
might say, I hear you say that he is the boss
and that there is nothing that you can do about
it. That would also be effective but it would
not have the power of a command as if given from
the outside, rather than a reflection mirroring
back what she has just been heard to say.
With the use of these two kinds of figures, the
witness to track emotions and various kinds of
figures who track values and rules of behavior,
the client begins to see the patterns and orders
embedded in their present consciousness.
Patterns and orders that are recognizable from
past events, which events then tend to push the
envelope of consciousness and rise as vivid
memories of events which memories are the
foundation of present consciousness.
Before going further in my description of how
this therapeutic session will proceed I must
first establish another set of frames so you
will more easily see what the PBSP therapist is
using as a guide for the next interventions.
Stages and
Screens
When monitoring the client during micro-tacking
I work with, three stages and three screens.
The first stage I want to refer to is the stage
of the present moment occurring in the therapy
session. I like to refer to that stage as the
stage of the apparent here and now. That name
because the present moment always includes
non-conscious stirrings of memories of similar
moments which non-conscious stirrings
endlessly color and modify the way we apprehend
and experience the present.
This is the stage upon which the therapist, the
client, and the group members are physically
present. Physically on that stage but I remind
us: all of our perceptions and behaviors are
influenced by the out-of-sight, unseen screen of
non-conscious and conscious associations and
projections flickering and flashing in every one
of the players' minds, including the therapist.
Thus we have now before us the outer stage of
the apparent here and now of the therapy room
with all its actors alive and experiencing the
present moment. Again, we know that this
present moment is constantly modified by the
inner, screen of non-conscious remembering and
associating, doing its neuronal best to supply
us with content and information from the past to
more effectively deal with the present and
emerging future. That's what those parts of our
brains are doing for us, whether we like it or
not.
Now for another interesting stage. The stage of
the body itself: the platform upon which our
emotions play. For instance, the stage of the
face, where the movements of the eyes and mouth
and the direction of the gaze are very visible
actors to whatever outer audience happens to be
interested in watching that show. The inner
owner of that face might, or might not, be
consciously aware of what that troupe on the
face is announcing to all who would care to see.
But the face is not the only place on the body
that the emotions play upon. All of the body,
inside and outside is the never-closed
playground for affects. And most of that is not
visible to the outside and, though sensed on the
inside by each individual, is not always
consciously linked to inner or outer events.
That play, that dance is done on the owners
stage without the owner having to decide to
produce or direct it. Again, the content of
that drama might be totally out of awareness to
the owner of that mobile stage. I speak now of
the range of sensations, of heat, cold, tension,
pain, accelerated heart, shortened breath,
trembling, moisture, numbness, etc. that
accompany all affective shifts. All the
physical sensations of our body that we are heir
to are not only there to let us know what is
physically going on in our body but are the
emotional responses to inner and outer events.
The strange thing is that though many of those
sensations are the precursor to emotional
expression, those emotions may never reach
consciousness and therefore never be expressed
openly and outwardly as emotional states, though
they certainly modify how our body moves or is
held in space.
One of the tasks of the PBSP therapist is: to
alert and educate clients to the subtle plays
that are staged on their bodies; help them to
become conscious, knowing actors in those silent
hidden dramas; help them take the lead in the
show and use the energy of those sensations to
produce the motor-actions of the body. That way
the drama playing in the interior becomes
outwardly visible and innerly conscious.
The first screen is the screen of the actual
eye. That is what we see when we are looking at
the world in the present. But of course as I
said above, that perception is always influenced
and modified by what we have seen before.
The second screen is the screen of the mind's
eye. When someone consciously thinks of another
person about whom they have feelings, that
person is visible in the screen of their mind's
eye. They can see that person with all their
attributes, and, incidentally, their bodies
react with all the affect connected to that
person. The above-mentioned inner dancers
spring into action and all the visceral shifts I
mentioned above occur, with or without
consciousness. The screen of the mind's eye may
be operating unnoticed during a here-and-now
occurrence, in the apparent here and now of the
therapy room.
The important difference is that at the moment
of conscious recall, a person knows they are
remembering and that the screen of the mind's
eye is on. In ordinary perception of reality
that screen is not consciously turned on but is
nevertheless supplying information (which is, as
I said before, always accompanied by affective
shifts) which influences the experience of the
immediate present.
Now for the final stage and I will bring in one
more screen a bit later. This is the structure
stage. A structure is the name given to the
type of work done in a PBSP therapy session.
This is a stage built upon the stage of the
apparent here and now in the therapy room. This
stage is constructed by the PBSP therapist in
collaboration with the client. It is both a
real stage and a virtual stage. Real in the
sense that real events will be played out in it,
but virtual in the sense that the time of those
events and the people in those events will not
be those present in the here and now. The
purpose of the structure stage is to accumulate
there, bring into play there, all the
information, action and drama that is going on
in all the other stages and screens. The
structure stage is a place of focus and
consciousness. An energy and meaning
accumulator, so to speak.
Here's how the work begins. We are in the
apparent here and now of the therapy session. A
client has decided to take a turn for a
structure. She begins to speak, and the
therapist is prepared to micro-track. Emotions
show on her face as she speaks and a witness
figure is enrolled to say the phrases mentioned
earlier. The witness is posited in the actual
here and now. The witness is seeing the client
in the moment of the present and noting what is
danced, so to speak, on the face of the client,
and includes some of the thoughts of the client
referent to that state. The witness, though on
the virtual stage of the structure, always
remains in the here and now, seeing the client
in the here and now.
Then a thought might arise in the client and the
voice figure can be enrolled to say those
statements back to the client as commands. That
figure too is posited in the here and now on the
structure stage.
Inevitably, the stream of feelings and thoughts
leads to conscious memories of similar events in
the past and the client recalls someone in that
event who had a leading role in what occurred.
For instance her father who would ridicule her
at the dinner table. The screen of the mind's
eye is on and the client has vivid recollection
of the attributes of that father along with
affective reactions on her body. That is a
moment when the PBSP therapist can say, you are
seeing your father so vividly in your mind's
eye, would you like to choose someone in the
group to represent him and enroll as that part
of your father in your structure?
That is the invitation to pluck someone out of
the apparent here and now stage of the group and
place them in the structure stage of the virtual
there and then. For now, though the witness and
the voice figure are in the here and now, the
new figure is placed in the past. The structure
stage is flexible in the time line, thus the
moment is going on in several levels. The
client knows she is in the group room. The
witness and voice figures anchor that, but the
structure stage is now the experiential
equivalent of the inner screen of the mind which
is flashing an event that took place in the
past. The past and the present are taking place
at the same time on the virtual stage of the
structure. The inner theater and outer theater
are identical. What is going on in the
structure is what is going on in the mind. This
is not role play where something is acted out by
role-playing group members inventing their
role. This role-player is instructed by the
client only to say or do what she sees and hears
on the inner screens of her mind.
To review for a moment. The client started in
the here and now, and having had it
micro-tracked sees patterns which awaken
memories linked to the topics spoken about.
That memory is now made visible in the room.
That is called the historical scene and it is
taking place on the virtual time variable and
figure flexible stage of the structure.
As the scene evolves, the client becomes aware
of shifts in affect, sensations dancing on her
body which are in direct relationship to what is
being seen both in the screen of her mind's eye
and on the structure stage with her actual
eyes. Stereoscopic vision so to speak. The
dance and action playing on the stage of the
body is also allowed to become conscious overt
expression on the structure stage. The visceral
concomitants of fear, anger, joy, sadness or
whatever, dancing on and in body surfaces is
invited and allowed to be born as full motoric
expression of conscious emotions. The inner
stage of the body and the outer stage of the
structure are united for stereoscopic experience
and expression so to speak.
As the structure proceeds, patterns of deficit
of respect and validation and the pain and anger
associated with that emerge. The grief, anger
and what you will connected with those losses is
allowed its interactive expression, enhanced by
specialized role-playing, called accommodation
that provides satisfaction of all emotions.
This scene provides both therapist and client
with information regarding what has been missing
and longed for by the evolutionary memory which
you remember we posit as endlessly attempting to
complete maturational and life-fulfilling needs.
And now we move to the most important part of
the work the development and construction
of the new personal memory more in line with the
requirements and expectations of evolutionary
memory. On the platform of the structure stage,
she can play out, what could have been in the
past had there been fortunate circumstances,
interactions and figures been available. For
instance, an Ideal father who would have been
respectful and supportive of her value. That is
the beginning of the healing scene. There, the
client can construct counter events while at the
right age and with the right kinship
relationship which would have met, point for
point, what would have been required for optimum
developmental experience. That scene is
constructed by the client with group members
only saying and doing what they have been
instructed to do and say by the client. How
does the client know what have been right for
that moment at that age? Somewhere embedded in
our emotional core is information from our
evolutionary memory, in our genes, that knows
what would lead to a more fulfilling life.
After all, our emotions are there to supply
homeostasis in our lives. Emotional
consciousness was not supplied by nature to rob
us of the possibility of good living, but to
assist us in that endeavor. So trusting our
emotional core to supply the answers as to what
would be best for living is the client's guide
for the creation of the healing scene. When
that new sensori-motor, kinesthetic, auditory,
visual experience/event is completed, it is then
recorded alongside and permanently linked with
the memory of the original deficit ridden
event. Thus whenever external, here and now
events awaken the original negative memory, they
also awaken the new, virtual positive memory,
providing the client with more fulfilling images
through which to view and respond to the
present.
Let us review on what stages and on what screen
has that new event taken place? In one way it
has taken place in the here and now of the group
setting, but more accurately on the virtual
stage of the structure, which is within that
here and now stage. It is also taking place on
the inner and outer stages of the body. Most
importantly, I believe, it is also taking place
on the third and final screen I have reserved
till now. That is the inner screen of what
Damasio calls, the as if body. This is the
place in our minds where we can rehearse the
future so to speak. The brain has stored
internal images of the world including one's own
body and it can create unique plays using the as
if body to try out what would be wished
for or dreaded in the future. There we make
memories of the future.
That is the final screen where the work takes
place. We are using the rehearsal screen of the
as if body, plus the actual body on the
structure stage which is taking place in the
virtual past. Here is an important point
we are not making memories for the future on
that screen and on that stage, we are making
memories of the hypothetical past on it. It is
this hypothetical past now forever linked
with the memory of the deficit ridden actual
past that can positively influence our
experience of the next moment of the present as
well as our anticipations of the future.
The next step is to assist the client in fixing
the memory of that new interactive event
positioned as the past, linked with her interior
images of herself in the age which she sees
herself on the screen in her mind's eye and
feels in her mind's body. Though she has
experienced it in the here and now with the
actual group members, the impact of the event is
from the simultaneous experience in the virtual
stage of the structure in the there and then and
with the appropriate kinship relation figures.
The importance of the actual group is that they
have provided silent but emotional support to
what has transpired.
The final step is to disassemble the virtual
stage and return to the apparent here and now.
Each figure de-rolls, never to return to those
roles unless asked for in future work. In
effect the virtual stage is de-rolled and in the
apparent here and now, the group members share
their reactions to the work they have all
witnessed. The sharing is not for the client,
who is absorbed with the effect of what has just
occurred, but for the benefit of each group
member who has an opportunity to say what was
moved in his/her own psyche, from watching the
structure unfold.
In the traditional one-to-one psychoanalytic
therapy there is only one stage, the apparent
here and now and only one actor, the therapist.
Of course the skilled analyst knows very well
that there are other times, places and people
endlessly projected and transferred in the
course of the therapy. The analyst works
diligently during the treatment to make that
evident to the client. We believe that what I
have just described is a way to make those
ghostly appearances more visible, more rapidly
and placed more consciously under the control of
the client.
The PBSP therapist remains (as much as is
possible considering the natural tendency for
projection and transference) in the here and now.
Therefore, the PBSP therapist never steps into
the moving time line of the virtual stage of the
past or takes a role as one of the figures in
that past. The therapist remains outside that
theater and collaborates with the client as an
assistant and co-director in the present,
helping the client use all the information
available from his/her inner screens and stages
to make more sense of and optimum use of the
link between present consciousness and past
memories.
That is our gift to psychoanalysis in particular
and psychotherapy in general.
That is the end of my story. We revisit
psychoanalysis and revisit the past, but bring
along with us the meanings and actions of the
body and further knowledge of the workings of
the mind. I hope you enjoyed this visit. Thank
you.
Back to top
Abuse, by Albert Pesso
©
1986
What actually is abuse? When I speak of it from
the viewpoint of Pesso System/Psychomotor
Therapy I have very specific meanings attached
to the words that I use and shortly I shall
define my terms.
But first let me speak about abuse in more
general terms. Abuse is a topic of high current
interest. We read about it and hear of it
everywhere. Children are abused by their
parents, their teachers, and others who would
ordinarily be expected to be earnestly concerned
with their care. Wives are abused by their
husbands, and husbands by their wives. And now,
in this insane period when acts of terrorism
have become common, ordinary citizens, tourists,
and other innocent bystanders are beaten, held
as hostages and even murdered.
No one, anywhere, can feel sufficiently safe to
ignore the outbreak of this plague of abuse.
Abuse threatens and offends all of us. It
disturbs our sense of well-being. It robs us of
our birthright expectation of security, safety,
and comfort in our personal lives. Abuse is more
than just another topic for psychological
exploration.
It is a social phenomenon that can affect
everyone and demands that we, who are especially
involved in the treatment of victims of abuse -
that we most fully understand it so that we may
be more effective in our efforts to bring
healing to victims' pain and distress.
There are three general categories of abuse.
First, there is physical abuse which comes from
damaging blows to the body of the victim from
weapons, such as, guns, knives, etc., hard
objects, such as rocks, sticks, etc. or body
parts. such as fists, feet, teeth, etc., used to
injure, tear or disrupt the normal use of the
victim's body, muscles, bones, tissues, and
organs. In simple words, the victim is
physically beaten.
Then there is sexual abuse which comes from
unwanted sexual relationship and stimulation -
via sexual intercourse, contact, or penetration
of other body parts with the abuser's genitals,
or other body parts.
Finally, there is psychological abuse which
comes from unwanted reduction of the victim's
self esteem and value through imposed
degradation, humiliation, ridicule, derision,
and/or other psychological blows, demeaning to
the self image, and damaging to the identity and
functioning of the victim. Another form of
psychological abuse results from forced
submission to the commands and will of the
abuser with no possibility of resistance or
escape, where the victim must only show
obedience.
Clearly, abuse (ab-use) is an ab-(normal)-use of
a person, whereby a person is treated as a
thing, an object or a commodity and not as a
living soul and ego. The twenty seven years that
I and my wife Diane have been engaged in the
development of Pesso System Psychomotor has
given us a unique perspective on the human
psyche. Using and developing PS/P techniques
with clients who have been victims of abuse, and
working with other clients who have experienced
crises that required them to reorder their lives
in meaningful ways has led us to fundamental
conclusions about how the human psyche is
organized.
It is from that vantage point that I would like
to describe how I understand the terms, soul and
ego.
Soul is the word I use to represent the
essential self - the core of a human being. The
soul is the source of all the energies of a
person - those energies that arise out of the
genes, out of the unconscious. The individual
soul inherits the treasure of the collected
information and knowledge about life and
existence that has been accumulated through
evolutionary time and recorded and deposited in
our genes. Our individual soul, though born in
our lifetime, traces its history to the
beginning of time. It is this power and history
of life I mean to denote when I use the word
soul.
The ego is the encircling band of consciousness,
control, and mastery that enables people to live
their souls as individuals in charge of their
own lives and destinies. It is the agency by
which we connect with the energies springing
from the soul.
The ego is not ancient, it contains no
information rising from the evolutionary past.
We are born with the possibility of an ego, with
blank slates where our egos shall arise. Our
egos are created in our own lifetimes.
Metaphorically speaking, if the soul is the
protoplasm in the biological cell of existence,
then the ego is the cell membrane which holds it
together, defines it and separates it from other
cells and the rest of the outside world.
The shapes and characters of our egos are formed
and influenced by our relationships and contacts
with the significant individuals involved with
our upbringing, especially our parents and
parent surrogates.
In this definition of the soul I include
attributes that are similar to what are usually
referred to as instincts.
The soul is the source of our emotions, our
impulses, our instinctive behaviors and
reactions to external events. From there we
learn to find pleasure and laugh when things are
satisfying, to become angry or sad when things
are frustrating. From there arise the urges to
be close to others, to love and to create. From
there we find the capacity and willingness to
attack when we are in danger, or to run from it.
As well as giving us impulses upon which to act,
our soul also gives us our capacity to feel, to
sense, to take in the world as food or
experience. When we take in the world literally,
as food, we digest that food and convert it to
energy or the stuff our bodies are made of. When
we take in the world symbolically, as events and
experiences, we neurologically and
psychologically digest it and convert it to
meaning and the stuff our minds are made of.
In summary, the soul consists of the polarities
of power and vulnerability. By power I mean the
capacity to move, to act, to transform, or make
an effect upon the world. By vulnerability I
mean the capacity to feel, to respond, to take
in and be transformed by the world.
From its position as the interface between the
outer and inner world, the membrane which
separates the soul from the outside world, the
ego mediates, modifies and controls, what shall
go out of us or come in to us. It determines
what form the action shall take when the
impulses from the soul are allowed to become
behavior and what form the meaning shall take
when the significance of external events are
internalized.
The ego gives us the capacity to become
conscious of existence as it gives names, words,
images and measurements to the outer world of
events as well as to the inner world of our
impressions. The ego has the capacity to make
discriminations between things, categories, and
emotional states. In that function it assists in
differentiating between this and that, inside
and outside, self and other, dreaming and awake,
thinking and feeling, etc. This discriminating
ability is a function of its encircling,
boundary making and separating capacities.
As the ego is created in the crucible of the
family home, it is a reflection of how our
parents and significant others have reacted to
us. It is a record of what names they have given
to what they license or allow to come in or out
of us. Simply put, the child, through
interactions with its parents, learns to know
and to control his/her own emotional range of
feelings and actions. Then, having internalized
the knowledge gained from those interactions in
his/her ego, the child is more or less equipped
to handle those ranges of feelings and actions
in relationship with the rest of the world.
Ultimately, it is the parents who determine the
relationship and balance between the soul and
the ego.
We are in good balance if our parents and our
early history licenses and allows as much as
possible of what our souls actually and
potentially consist of to be expressed
consciously and to be given names and sanction
for expression or experience. For only what is
named and sanctioned is made conscious by the
ego and given the right to be expressed, have a
place in the world and be experienced as real.
All else becomes inadmissible, sinks to the
unconscious and will not be experienced or
recognized as coming from the self. What the ego
has no place or name for becomes psychologically
invisible, whether it be inside or outside the
self.
It is for this reason we spend such a large part
of our lives learning to maintain the balance
between our souls - who we really are or
potentially can become - and our egos - who we
can consciously and actually be in the real
world.
Thus the ego is always at work balancing the
nuclear forces of power and vulnerability within
us. Containing power so that we do not explode
ourselves or the world with what can come out of
us. Withstanding vulnerability so that we
maintain our physical integrity without losing
our own shape by merging or making union with
the rest of the world.
With this as background let us return to the
subject of abuse.
What effect does abuse have on the soul and the
ego?
Abuse dramatically damages the carefully
constructed relationship and balance between the
soul and the ego.
All abuse figuratively pierces the ego (which
penetration can be experienced as a rape). As
experience is thrust into the victim by the
abuser without his/her consent, the ego defenses
are broken or burst, and the soul-stuff is left
without boundaries, giving rise to omnipotent
levels of feeling.
The ego, throughout its lifetime attempting to
gain mastery of the self and the outside world,
is given a great shock, for the abuser gives the
victim's ego no part in the decision making
process determining what shall come in to
his/her body or consciousness. The abuser may
beat the victim, rape the victim, ridicule the
victim - or all three - and the victim finds
him/herself absolutely unable to control what is
happening.
The ego is thereby damaged. All the ego
functions are affected and reduced, resulting in
feelings of loss of control, loss of language,
loss of consciousness, loss of identity, loss of
meaning, loss of capacity for discrimination
between inner and outer, fantasy and reality,
dream and awake, etc.
As abuse is extremely life threatening it
produces highly charged survival reactions in
the soul and figuratively raises internal
temperature to a dangerously high degree. Abuse
produces levels of feeling and reactivity
(vulnerability and power) that are far beyond
what the victim's ego has heretofore learned to
cope with. Their normal life histories have
simply not prepared them for this amount of
response. Since these feelings have had no
interaction or contact with any ego constructing
figures, they are unknown, not named as their
own feelings, thus responded to as foreign by
the ego. Consequently, victims become uncertain
as to who they are, and what their true identity
is - more evidence that their weakened ego is in
great distress and jeopardy.
Most victims tend to become quiet and fearful.
The outer world has presented them with great
danger. Their own souls have reacted in ways
that are beyond their consciousness and
comprehension. The first response is to shut
down. The ego shrinks and grows rigid - letting
little in or out - everything is regarded as
suspect, foreign and dangerous.
Some victims may become psychotic if their egos
burst rather than shrink and shut down.
Other victims may act out, releasing behaviors
that they would never have allowed before,
creating distress in themselves and to all who
know them.
These are the miserable conditions that abuse
leaves victims with.
Interpersonal contact must be made with those
nuclear forces or there will never be peace
between the soul and the ego. The truth of what
one has lived through must be felt and
experienced consciously, in interaction with
ego-making figures and thereby made real.
It is the aim of Pesso System Psychomotor
Therapy in the treatment of abuse victims to
attend to these problems by:
a) creating conditions that allow the ego to
once again be in charge;
b) creating a setting where the victim may bring
all those powerful feelings and impulses to the
surface of consciousness and behavior;
c) providing that behavior and those feelings
with the necessary limiting countershapes via
the use of role-playing group members.
These steps have the function of allowing
everything in reaction to the abuse to be
understood, made conscious, given names, given
shape, given a place, given acceptance, and
therefore made available for internalization in
the ego.
In order to help you more clearly understand the
interventions I will be describing in the next
section, I will describe two more Psychomotor
concepts.
The first is shape/countershape. If we think of
the soul as having a shape, then the perfectly
fitting ego would provide the perfect
countershape. Such an ego would perfectly
represent the soul as it surrounds and contains
it.
But the ego is created in the relationship and
contact with one's parents. This means that
before there can be an ego countershape, the
parents must provide the appropriate
countershape to every dimension of the soul and
that countershape would then get reflected to
and internalized by the ego.
What I am getting at is that there is a need for
action and touch in the process of experiencing
the countershape. If the shape of the soul is
represented by the action of the body, then the
countershape of the ego is first experienced in
the touch and action of the parents' bodies in
relation to that action, as well as in their
acceptance, naming and defining of the action.
In conclusion, the victim's damaged ego requires
touch and action to repair it.
If one would attend only to the victim's fear
and uncertainty following the abuse, then touch
and action might not be entirely necessary, but
if one acknowledges and understands that some of
the major damage to the ego results from the
condition of over-arousal of the instinctual or
soul energies which severely buffet the ego,
then it becomes clear that touch and action will
be absolutely necessary.
The second concept is that of ego-wrapping. I
mean wrapping in the sense of wrapping a package
or a gift, or wrapping a blanket around a baby.
Wrapping is the countershape around the shape.
The skin of the ego, in this sense, wraps around
the soul.
Using this metaphor, the totality of soul should
be wrapped in ego. That means that every
expression of the self, the shape, should be met
with the touch and action countershape of those
figures who assist us in making ego. That is,
every part of our self should be met, touched,
named, given dimension and accepted by the
important ego making figures in our life.
That is what I mean by ego-wrapping.
Following the extreme impact of abuse, much of
the earlier wrapping of victims' souls may be
ripped apart. The intention of the treatment of
abuse in Pesso System Psychomotor Therapy is to
create conditions for the re-wrapping and ego
repairing of the damaged areas.
We do this by giving the clients the opportunity
for doing "structures". A structure is a
symbolic re-experiencing of a given event.
During a structure, victims are allowed and
encouraged to discover all the powerful soul
feelings and reactions coupled to the abuse that
may never have been brought to the surface
before in their lives.
During the structure, accommodators, who will
role-play all the significant figures in the
event, are provided to insure that sufficient
"ego wrapping" is available. Ideal figures are
role-played by other group members. In effect,
the ideal figures are the ones the client would
have needed to have present either to have
stopped the abuse or to have given the support
needed in order for abuse effects to be
processed and dealt with by their confused and
distressed egos. The ideal figures become the
ego supports or props which permit the soul and
the ego to come in better balance.
Other group members role play "negative"
figures, such as abusers, or negative aspects of
abusive parents, etc. When these figures are
used and are targets of aggression or revenge
they do not fight back but make sounds of pain
and defeat, giving the client expectations of
success in the expression of anger and self
defense.
I shall now list the topics that are attended to
in the treatment of abuse using Pesso System
Psychomotor Therapy.
1. THE EXPERIENCE OF LOSS OF CONTROL.
2. THE EXPERIENCE OF FEAR AND TERROR.
3. THE EXPERIENCE OF PAIN, HURT AND SADNESS
4. THE IMPULSE AND EXPRESSION OF REVENGE.
5. THE EXPRESSION OF EROTICISM AND RECEPTIVITY.
6. THE IMPULSE AND EXPRESSION OF MURDER
7. THE INCREASE OF GUILT, SHAME AND THE DESIRE
FOR PUNISHMENT
8. THE DESIRE TO EXPRESS LOVE FOR THE ABUSER.
I shall describe the body symptoms and the
treatment as I attend to each topic listed.
THE EXPERIENCE OF LOSS OF CONTROL.
Inasmuch as abuse denies the client choice and
control, those rights must be freely given in
the therapy. If the therapist is too rigid and
follows a too formal procedure, the therapist
and the procedure itself will be further
evidence that the world is abusive, even
including the therapy session.
There are two simple Psychomotor Therapy
exercises that help the client regain control.
These two exercises are not set forth as major
procedures in the healing process but as simple
examples of the kind of techniques and exercises
that can be applied to the problem of loss of
control.
The first exercise is called the Controlled
Approach.
The client chooses where to stand in the room
and another group member is asked to volunteer
to be the figure that is controlled. The rules
of the exercise are that the controlled figure
must respond to the commands of the client,
given by signs of the hands. The client can
indicate whether they want the controlled figure
to move closer or further away, to one side or
another, to stand higher or lower, to move
faster or slower, etc.
This gives the client practice in controlling
another person in their field of sight and
produces feelings of safety and mastery.
Although it might produce anxiety as they move
the figure closer, they discover that they can
command the figure to move further away to
reduce their anxiety.
This exercise can be repeated many times over
the period of therapy and the feelings and
reactions that the distance and direction
produce can provide much material for the
therapy as well as be indicators of the clients'
increasing safety with physical closeness.
The second exercises gives the client practice
in regaining control of their own body. It is
called Conscious Voluntary Movement. There are
four steps in this exercise. The first is
decision. The second is plan. The third is
implementation. And the fourth is verification.
Briefly, it supplies an opportunity to practice
mastery and control of the body in a
non-threatening, non-emotional task. In the
first step the client must make a decision
regarding raising an arm, using only the
shoulder joint, limiting the movement so it is
devoid of expression. The choices are limited to
which arm, which direction, and what height. The
second step is to make an image or a plan of the
arm in the finished position. The third step is
to carry out the action devoid of feeling and
making sure that each bit of action is a product
of conscious choice and execution. The fourth
step is to determine that the action has been
carried out according to the decision and plan.
This exercise provides the client with the
chance to gain control over their own actions,
not allowing any other movement than that of
their own conscious choice to be allowed action.
Thus the client practices and learns that at any
time, the turbulent emotions beneath the surface
can be held in check while they make their
bodies follow their will.
Those who wish to use these specific exercises
can refer to my book, "Movement in
Psychotherapy", N. Y. University Press, 1969,
for more details. Having learned to control
their emotions and their body actions the client
is more prepared to give those emotions bodily
expression.
Now we shall turn to the remainder of the
conditions on the list.
THE EXPERIENCE OF FEAR AND TERROR.
Fear and terror is experienced intensely during
abuse and, without ego-wrapping, it is felt as
boundless, endless, and omnipotent.
We see the residue and signs of this unbounded
fear in clients when they report trembling in
their legs or that their shoulders are tense,
both indications that the fear is at the
threshold of expression. Trembling in the legs
indicates the possibility of an impulse to run.
Tension in the shoulders suggests the
possibility of an impulse to hide.
A goal of the structure is to provide the client
with opportunities for the bodily expression and
discharge of that energy. In doing this it is
important to understand that the expression of
fear will not be "finished" and satisfied until
the client feels safely "away" from the threat,
in a secure place. Therefore ideal figures must
first be established as a completely safe haven,
and so equipped with power that they can be
perceived as equally powerful or more powerful
than the abuser. This reassures the client that
the attacker could not overcome this newly found
security.
It is not wise to invite clients to fully
contact their fear before those conditions are
present; otherwise the structure will not result
in the experience of safety, but in a
never-ending running panic and pit of terror
from which the only escape is death or
psychologically splitting from the body. As
safety is the countershape to fear, fear without
safety is felt as endless.
Quite simply, the bodily experience of fear can
only be successfully processed within the
confines of a safe place. The client can be
given the freedom to literally do this running
when the ideal figures are established in the
room as the haven to run to. This releases the
incipient action and provides great relief when
the safety is reached.
The hiding impulse is attended to while the
client is curled up in the arms of the safe
figures. They might look as if they would want
to pull their head into their body, making their
neck disappear. Or shrink into a ball and make
themselves less visible or even to become
invisible. This can also be understood as an
attempt to get out of their body.
Gentle, but firm, counter-pressure to the raised
shoulders releases cries of fear and terror that
may be locked up in that tension. The therapist
must be prepared to hear, and handle calmly, the
screams of fear, terror and
helpless-calling-for-help that erupt from the
client. The ideal haven figures must hold the
client tightly during this expression so that
the client doesn't think for a moment that there
will be a loss of contact in the midst of this
terrifying expression. Loss of firm contact
would feel like a collapse of the ego.
The remarks that the ideal figures may be
assigned or asked to say during these
interventions includes statements like, "We
won't let him hurt you." "We can help you handle
how frightened you are." "We are not frightened,
your fear is normal and we will help you deal
with it." etc. Such words of acceptance and
reassurance give dimension to the experience.
In contact with the ideal figures, the fear
becomes experienceable, expressible, nameable,
finite, measurable and acceptable, giving it
consciousness and a place in the ego.
THE EXPERIENCE OF PAIN, HURT AND SADNESS
The experience of physical pain and the
emotional anguish of what had been lived through
will now be attended to. The physical symptoms
connected with those feelings are often reported
as tension or hardness in the stomach, tension
in the throat and pressure in the chest. That is
not to say that emotional or physical pain
always shows up that way, but deep sadness,
grief and other painful feelings frequently give
first evidence of themselves in those areas of
the body.
The technique, as with other reports of bodily
tension and pain, is to ask the client to
tighten the muscles around the distressed area
and then to note what emotions, feelings, sounds
or actions arise out of that increase of
tension. In most cases the client will begin to
cry, for it is with just those muscles that
crying normally comes about. The pain and
sadness that have been locked in now come out.
It is a purging kind of crying which includes
grieving for the lost innocence, the lost
safety, or grief for whatever losses the abuse
produced.
As before, the ideal figures are there to
facilitate the crying, by totaling surrounding
the agitated surfaces of the client's body. For
if the crying was expressed without solid
contact it might feel too great an emotion for
their bodies to handle and they might turn the
feelings off in an attempt to keep their bodies
from bursting or imploding from the force of the
tumultuous feelings.
Hands are firmly placed against all turbulent
and shaking surfaces. Those surfaces are usually
the stomach and the shoulders. The body shows
the distress to its physical integrity at those
spots and needs external support to help sustain
it through the storm of feelings that are
surging through it and being expressed by it.
The agitation and distress is felt as a strain
on the ego, and the external support results in
strengthening the ego.
The phrases that the ideal figures may say at
this time include, "We can handle how sad you
are." "We are not overcome by your feelings."
"We can help you handle how sad you are." "We
can understand how sad you are." "We won't let
you explode or implode from this feeling," etc.
THE IMPULSE AND EXPRESSION OF REVENGE AND
SADISTIC FEELINGS
Although there is no pre-determined sequence in
the expression of feelings it is usual that when
clients feel safe they are more ready to
encounter their reflexive impulse to return the
insult to the attacker in the form of revenge
and sadism.
This is not an easy emotion for clients to find
or identify. The abuser has been judged as less
than human for what has been done and it is
repugnant for victims to consider that there is
even the remotest possibility of finding such
feelings, impulses, fantasies or behaviors in
themselves. It is a matter of individual
judgment as to when it is the right moment to
bring up this topic.
I say bring up this topic for I have found that
clients do not usually surface those feelings on
their own.
Fortunately, the body gives some clue as to the
appropriate moment for this intervention. The
body sensations that are most closely associated
with sadistic aggression are tensions in the
calf muscles. Often such clients complain of
waking in the middle of the night with severe
pains and cramps in the calf muscles. When asked
to exaggerate this tension, if they feel it
during the therapy session, they flex the foot
in a way that is similar to the appearance of
someone about to stamp on the ground or on some
object.
If this association is acceptable to the client,
permission can be given to stamp symbolically on
the abuser. The client may then proceed to grind
and stamp on a pillow while another group
member, role-playing the abuser, provides the
appropriate groans and cries of pain.
The therapist has to see to it that the pillow
that the client digs into and stamps upon is not
too soft or it will be too easily compressed,
resulting in the client's heel striking the hard
surface of the floor and possibly producing an
injury. Unconscious guilt feelings about
sadistic emotions might incline clients to
accidentally punish their own foot for the
unacceptable act, even if the act is only done
symbolically and in fantasy connection with the
abuser.
For clients who might be guilty about this form
of expression, it may be useful or necessary for
their foot and leg to be restrained by ideal
limiting figures, keeping them from carrying out
the full motion of stamping. This limiting
function is accompanied by statements such as,
"It is all right that you have such revengeful
and sadistic feelings, but we won't let you
'literally' do it." This intervention clearly
defines the expression as symbolic and conveys
the message that its full realistic expression
in the outside world, to the real attacker,
would not be permitted. However, not all clients
need to be limited in this fashion as they
already have the notion that the action is
purely symbolic, not only in the motoric
expression but also in their minds.
Then the therapist can offer the information
that sadistic impulses and wishes to "pay back"
the abuser - by penetrating them and violating
them - are common.
The client might have been beaten with fists, or
shot, or cut with a knife. he/she might have
been slapped, or humiliated or tortured. he/she
might have been sexually assaulted or had bones
broken. Whatever the form, the therapist can
expect and anticipate that the client has
unconscious impulses to return the method of the
attack. It seems the unconscious contains a kind
of "eye for an eye" attitude, an inverted
variety of the golden rule that would be
expressed in words as, "Do unto others as others
have done unto you." Repulsive as it may be for
clients to hear of the possibility of such
attitudes, especially within themselves, they
are relieved to learn that those impulses do
exist in others. And when those impulses finally
do surface to consciousness and are expressed in
this symbolic setting, it brings great
satisfaction and relief, for, even if only in
fantasy, "revenge is sweet".
The role-player who is representing the attacker
must act as if punched, shot, tortured, etc.
when the client symbolically carries out those
deeds in the structure. The therapist attends to
reports of sensations in the client's hands,
arms, or whatever part of the body is receiving
the impulses to carry out the revenge. If the
client had been shot, they might hold their hand
as if a gun were in it. Usually, the emotional
reaction to imagining shooting back makes it
evident to both the client and the therapist,
that such reversal impulses do indeed reside in
the musculature and in the soul. The same
procedure would be followed if the client had
been stabbed, punched etc. He/she would then
play out the reversal procedure with a
role-player identified as the original attacker.
Once again the therapist must be prepared to
offer limiting figures if the client is too
frightened or uneasy about finding those
impulses. As in the earlier example, the
limiting figures would restrain the client from
fully completing whatever action the vengeful
impulse had taken. They might make statements
like, "It is all right that you want to stab the
attacker, but we will not let you literally do
it," thus giving validation and permission for
the impulse, but not for it being literally
carried out. They would then illustrate that by
keeping the stabbing action from being
completed, keeping the symbolic knife from its
target. The same procedure would be followed
whatever act of revenge was imagined, such as,
keeping the client from pulling the trigger on
the gun, or keeping the client from sexually
assaulting the attacker - for instance, by
placing hands on their hips and restraining them
while they attempted to "rape back" the
attacker.
THE EXPRESSION OF EROTICISM AND RECEPTIVITY
One of the most unexpected and surprising
findings in our work has been that abuse of any
kind produces a reflexive increase in
vulnerability that includes an erotic element.
The person under attack not only responds with
defensive reactions, but may also experiences
reflexive bodily impulses, not immediately
available to consciousness, that imply a
readiness to receive penetration. It is as if
some archaic portion of the soul is highly
responsive to and appreciative of aggression -
and is prepared to welcome it. This level of
vulnerability feels like a kind of infinite and
omnipotent openness. It includes a kind of
chaotic excitement and willingness that would
appear ready to take in and absorb everything
and anything.
On the bodily level, this state shows up as
trembling in the upper thighs and often is
associated with pain and tension in the lower
back. A client's psychological readiness to deal
with this topic must be assessed by the
therapist and includes attending to the time
when those physical elements are noticed by the
client. The client, while recalling the attack,
might report that their thighs are trembling,
which they react to by clasping their arms
around their knees and holding their legs
tightly together.
Imagine a client sitting on the floor with their
knees bent up, with their chin or face near
their knees and with their arms around their
legs - kind of in a small ball. It looks
protective and indeed is an expression on the
bodily level of this type of statement, "Keep
away from me, I won't let you get to me. I am
keeping myself tightly closed."
When these positions and bodily actions are
found in female victims who have been sexually
assaulted, it is clear that they are closing
themselves to keep their genitals from being
penetrated. However, one need not be physically
and sexually penetrated to get the reaction of
omnipotent vulnerability or openness.
Psychological abuse and attacks on the ego
produce the same out of control, unconscious
responses on men who have been assaulted or
regularly beaten by siblings or parents. These
men fight the same battle with their out of
control receptivity as assaulted women do. With
no literal vagina to close, they present the
same picture following a physical attack. They
report and show the same trembling in the
thighs, combined with the same desperate holding
together of the legs.
On the topic of eroticism and receptivity the
treatment of abuse should be the same for men or
women, whether or not the attack included sexual
elements. It is as if the force of the violence
created a "magical" vagina in the victim via the
psychological "hole" that was torn in their
personal boundaries or in the psychic structure
of their ego.
My speculative hypothesis is that the endocrine
system, influenced by the unconscious, responds
to the feeling of the omnipotent vulnerability
or "magical vagina", by secreting significant
amounts of those hormones that are associated
with sexual receptivity into the bloodstream. It
would make an interesting research study to
measure the shifts in hormone levels in men and
women after they had suffered various kinds of
abuse.
This unconscious pattern of receptivity creates
great conflict and difficulty for victims. They
know that they are very uncomfortable in their
bodies following the attack, and they know on a
conscious level that they are trying to protect
their bodies, by holding themselves tightly. But
they don't know that part of the discomfort
arises from the paradoxical and unthinkable
impulse to open themselves to receive the
attack. To repeat, the discomfort in the body is
not only from the shame and pain of the attack,
but from the effort of holding down those
unconscious and extremely powerful yet
conflicted drives. It is only when the legs are
tightly held together by ideal limiting figures
that the full force of those bodily impulses can
become conscious, visible and controllable. But
more on that in a bit.
The more regularly one has been a victim,
especially with a more powerful family member,
the more reinforced is the unconscious notion
that one has not only a "magical vagina" but an
"omnipotent" one as well. It is as if the
repeated attacks demonstrate to the victim that
they "draw" the attacker to them and that the
attacker cannot resist attacking them. They may
feel that they have become irresistible in their
attractiveness as victims. For the attack is
attention, even if negative, and is a highly
charged form of recognition with much emotional
heat attached to it on the side of both the
aggressor and the victim. When the PS/P
therapist works with this aspect of the
treatment it is important to let the client know
what is behind this intervention. Teaching is
necessary to assist the client in the creation
of a cognitive frame of reference that makes
sense to them. The therapist must tell about the
notion of openness, that I have just described,
in such a way that the client does not feel
judged or reproached for their paradoxical
erotic responses. Rape victims have so often
been blamed for what has happened to them that
it is important that it does not appear to the
client that they are once again being blamed for
causing the attack, rather than being
sympathized with for its damaging effect.
It must be made clear to the client that the
sexually receptive response is not a conscious
choice representing their wishes, but an
unconscious reaction created by the attack. They
have to understand clearly that "they" have not
chosen to become stimulated by the attack. That
they are not perverse and desirous of pain, but
that a "process" has been triggered within them
by the attack which overcame the, till then,
balanced ego controls upon their inner
vulnerability and receptivity.
If the client is not told in advance why this
intervention of holding the legs together is
being done, this act itself could be perceived
and experienced as another abusive attack. The
abused client's ego, having lost control of both
the outer and inner worlds, must be actively
included in the treatment. Everything done in
the therapy must include the client's conscious
control and choice.
The intervention that is used to deal with this
openness is to provide limits to the impulse to
separate the legs via ideal limiting figures.
(They may also be likened to or even be enrolled
as Ideal Parents). They tightly hold the
client's legs together at the knees, so that
they "take over" the task of holding the knees
together, allowing the client to then feel the
opposite impulse of separating them. It may take
more than one person to do this successfully,
for it is important when the client attempts to
separate the knees that the accommodators keep
him/her from doing so - even the slightest bit.
When all is prepared, the client can then
attempt to separate his/her legs with all the
feeling for doing so that he/she can find in
his/her body. The scene that follows is usually
startling and dramatic. A tremendous energetic
struggle begins. With impressive effort the
client attempts to separate their knees and with
equal and greater effort the limiting figures
keep them from doing so.
It is as if the "magical vagina" is asked to
make its appearance or the omnipotent
receptivity is invited to express itself.
Although the limiting figures are external, they
represent allies for the ego which in this
intervention succeed in keeping the legs closed,
no matter how hard the effort is made to open
them.
It is not exactly accurate to say "no matter how
hard the client is trying to open them" for in a
way it is not the client in their ego state that
is trying to separate their knees. It is as if
the client has permitted the "out of control" or
seemingly, "possessed" element within themselves
to take over their body and then it is that
element that fights and ultimately finds that it
cannot overcome the limiting efforts of the
external ideal figures.
There are screams that come out of the client at
this time. Not screams of terror or pain but
screams, high and piercing, like some
mythological banshee. "Let me go, you------!!",
the client shouts. I may stop the process at
this point to check if the client truly wants to
be let go. Almost always, the client reassures
me in their normal speaking voice, "Oh no, not
at all, I just have to say that while I
struggle, but please don't let go of me." The
struggle resumes.
Finally, after repeated and frenzied efforts,
the battle is over. One would not have expected
such titanic efforts coming from the timid or
quiet victim we began with. There has been no
timidity here. Certainly no quiet, as one
listens to the client's screamed demands for
release and the heavy breathing of all involved
in the struggle. It is almost as if one were
able to graphically witness a Freudian primitive
id struggling to escape the grip of an ego
force. If that really was the case one would
undoubtedly learn to seriously attend to the
force of the id in its wish to be "free".
Even small, seemingly weak and helpless women
demonstrate tremendous energy at this point of
the structure. Those therapists who use this
technique should be prepared to confront this
great force regardless of the physical
appearance or sex of the client.
At the finish, the client feels relieved and
cleansed. They report that the tensions which
they have chronically felt in their lower backs
and in other parts of their body have relaxed.
It is clearly a relief for them to find that
they were not able to break the bounds of their
openness. The verbal message of the limiting
figures can be internalized along with the
experience; the limiting figures can say, "It is
all right to feel open and to want to be
receptive, but we can put limits on it and help
you handle your openness and vulnerability".
It is especially important when the client has
been sexually abused by a family member to add,
"We will not let you be literally penetrated,
even if you want it", for in that situation
there may be a part of the client that might
unconsciously wish to submit and this verbal
injunction gives the right for that wish to
exist, while emphasizing that the limits shall
still be applied.
Those limits and statements empower clients to
say to themselves that, "It is all right for me
to have powerful receptive and vulnerable
feelings, or even incestuous sexual wishes. It
does not mean that I will submit to those
impulses and have them carried out against my
conscious wishes of choice and control. I can
handle those feelings."
THE IMPULSE AND EXPRESSION OF MURDER
Victims ultimately have to deal with their own
murderous anger at the attacker. Some of that
theme was examined in the section about revenge,
but now I shall go into that topic further. One
portion of the murderous impulse arises out of
the outrage for what has been done. Another
portion originates from the strongly felt
impulse to kill that person who was capable of
awakening such powerful and unacceptable
feelings in one's self as those just described.
I would like to address this second element now.
Because their self esteem as well as ego
membrane has been so damaged by the assault and
because so many unacceptable and disturbing
feelings are released by that wound, the client,
in an attempt to stop that threat from ever
happening again, comes to the instinctive
conclusion that murder is the only solution.
A third way to understand those impulses is to
see the rise of those murderous feelings as an
attempt of the soul, in the absence of ego
ability to contain its unfettered vulnerability,
to balance itself by releasing equivalent
antithetical power in the form of unlimited
aggression. A primordial penetrating force is
set loose - directed, not so much sexually, but
aggressively toward the attacker - and if one
adds the second element, with this unconscious
or possibly conscious thought, "I am not well or
safe until the attacker is dead."
In the structure which develops out of this
stage in the treatment, the client, as before,
is permitted fuller expression of the inhibited
body impulses which would result in the visible
emergence of those unconscious drives. The body
symptoms which are reported at this time are
rather global and include rapid heart beat,
increased breathing, and tensions which result
in extension of the body in many places -
tension in the arms, hands and jaws, which
produce fists or fingers extended like claws,
and bared teeth, resulting in biting actions. It
might also include tension in the legs, which
when released, results in kicking actions. When
the client is viewed in this state, the
impression is one of destructive hatred.
The assistance of ideal limiting figures is
essential for the release and safe expression of
those feelings. Without them, a client might
choose to remain frozen and emotionally
paralyzed rather than risk releasing the
devastating explosion that might issue from the
direct, open expression of all that power
stirring inside.
It takes at least six people to limit one person
in this state. They must be expertly placed so
that no injury to the client is possible. For
when the client releases those furious emotions
into action the force and speed of the movement
are prodigious. Care must taken that there is no
chance of accidental wrenching or dislocation of
joints, and no possibility of painful contact
with people, furniture or other objects. In the
holding, they permit some action, but completely
check the possibility of harmful outcome. Pesso
System Psychomotor therapists are trained in
this intervention and know how to teach group
members to properly hold one another for safe
limits. This intervention should never be
attempted without taking all appropriate
measures beforehand.
The limiting figures might give the following
verbal message, "It is all right to want to kill
your attacker but we wont let you literally do
it." This kind of statement and intervention
licenses the emotional impulse while
simultaneously making it safe to express it
without danger or damage. It communicates to the
client that he/she is justified in his/her
outrage and feelings but doesn't stop the flow
of feelings to the muscles. It simply stops the
motoric expression from resulting in the literal
death that is emotionally intended. When the
client completes this expression, great relief
can set in and expressions of changing levels of
tension in the body reported. Now, even this
level of inner fury and penetrating-ness can be
tapped safely. The ego is once again in charge.
The client learns that primitive feelings do not
have to cause literal disruption, and that the
flow of living emotional rhythms can be attended
to safely, without danger.
THE INCREASE OF GUILT, SHAME AND THE DESIRE FOR
PUNISHMENT
Guilt, shame and self punishment are processes
used by the psyche to bring it more into balance
when ego processes have failed. If there had
been sufficient ego, that is, ability to handle
one's own strong inner forces, then there would
be less, or no, need to bring such drastic
measures to the task. Whenever there is an
abundance of guilt, shame and self punishment,
one can assume that there are strong inner
forces that are not yet under ego control, in
this way guilt is used to control those unruly
forces.
The victim, thrown out of balance and out of
control by abuse, is ashamed and guilty about
how open they are, and, by the law of opposites
becomes rigidly closed. Ashamed and guilty about
how angry they are, they become rigidly "nice".
Guilt, operating on the law of opposites,
inclines victims to punish themselves for their
out of control impulses. The murderous energies
directed outward are turned inward as a way to
reduce the discomfort. Thus clients have a
predisposition to be accident prone or
self-destructive.
Paradoxically that very self-punishment which is
sought to alleviate the distress allows an
indirect but precise expression of the two
forces that the victim seeks to place under
control. In that act of self-punishment, both
the enactor and the object of those drives is
the self rather than an external figure. Guilt
takes the client's own wish to penetrate the
abuser, deflects it from that external target,
and directs it back towards the self, resulting
in the self-destructive wish to punch one's self
or tear one's self apart with their nails,
knives or any other penetrating object. When the
deflected blow lands on the self, it is the self
that is penetrated and thus the forbidden,
unconscious wish to be penetrated is partially
satisfied, but by the self and not by the
outside figure.
The non-interactive solution of self-punishment
leads to isolation, and in an odd way,
omnipotence. Since one's penetrating forces are
not reality tested and limited by an outside
force, one can assume that one is omnipotently
penetrating. And when one's receptivity is not
reality tested by an outside force, one can come
to the conclusion that one is the most open
person in the world and the very model or
paradigm for openness in the universe.
So, while the victim feels awful, shamed, guilty
and wishing to destroy him/herself, there is a
significant secondary gain of specialness and
uniqueness. Even though this is unconscious it
isn't given up easily. This fact must be
recognized in the treatment. Simple verbal
reassurance to a victim that they really aren't
so bad is not satisfying to the unconscious
omnipotent fantasy, and even threatens to take
away the pleasure of one's uniqueness. The
treatment must include the expression of the
force and power of both the penetrating and
receiving impulses and meet them head on in
their most active forms and levels of
expression.
As before, the limiting figures are required.
This intervention can be applied when the client
exhibits gestures and impulses that indicate
that they are about to direct their anger
inwardly. For example, the client may have
his/her fist balled up and be preparing to
strike in the direction of the attacker and it
becomes apparent that the gesture has a tendency
to move toward the self rather than toward the
object. The therapist can check with the client
if indeed there was such an intention. If the
client says there was and also admits feeling a
strong inclination for self-punishment for all
that happened, the therapist must be prepared to
limit that action. With the agreement of the
client, the limiting figures place their hands
over the balled fist and keep it from landing on
the client's body, saying, "We wont let you hurt
yourself."
This statement has to be delivered seriously,
and acted upon with determination so that there
is absolutely no possibility of the client
touching his/her own face with either his/her
own fist or the controlling hands of the
limiting figures. For any touch at that moment
is taken as indication by the client, that
he/she has succeeded in breaking the limits.
Another mighty struggle may begin at this point.
The guilt-driven wish to hurt one's self is now
allowed free expression as the client, in a
self-hating-rage. attempts to break loose and
attack him/herself.
What is also set loose is the penetrating force
that has been out of control and which is now
directed toward the self in an omnipotent,
non-interactive form. That too, is limited by
the limiting figures. Their very blocking of the
landing of the blow places them between that
part of the client that is punching, and their
super-receptive part. This limiting act forces
the client to recognize that they are now in a
non-self interaction with those forces that have
been kept from external interaction, which they
have avoided for fear of the danger they might
cause. Also they have avoided interaction in the
service of their omnipotence which has found
pleasure in being the greatest and only force in
the universe.
The struggle of the client is impressive and can
be likened to an image of a primitive god figure
who might be saying, "Get out of my way. I will
punch myself, I will kill myself, I will rape
myself, for I am the mightiest power in the
universe and no one can control me." By being
limited, such clients are reduced to the level
of being only people and not gods.
But they do not give up the struggle easily, for
in the struggle is also included this element -
the client may imply or directly say, "Let go of
me, I am the worst person in the universe
because of what happened and my responsibility
for making it happen, and I should be punished."
The omnipotence is followed by the impotence
which would balance it, but which maintains the
omnipotence in that the client would be both the
punisher and the punished.
When the struggle finally subsides, the client
is both relieved and saddened. The human,
interactive part of themselves is relieved. They
are not God, they are not the worst person in
the universe, they are just another person.
Someone outside of themselves is caring enough
to keep them from hurting themselves and that
feels good. But the omnipotent aspect may leave
the client somewhat frustrated and unhappy, for
now they have to give up their solitary, unique
posture to join the world as simply another
human being.
THE DESIRE TO EXPRESS LOVE FOR THE ABUSER
Having put many of their unlimited feelings
under ego control, it is possible for the client
to consider feelings of love for the aggressor,
especially if the aggressor was a family member.
They may now be more able to consider their
feelings of tenderness and affection toward that
part of the abuser that they may care about. Not
the hated part, not the awful part, but the
human part that they have known.
Imagine a client who has been regularly abused
by her father, who is an alcoholic. In the
father's alcoholic periods, he would be savage
and violently beat all in the family who came
near him. However, when he was not alcoholic he
would be considerate and even pleasant to be
around. Furthermore, when he and the victim were
both younger, they shared some very happy times
fishing, going for walks, riding bicycles
together, etc. The warmth and love of those
periods may have been buried and never been
fully savored, or expressed, probably because
the client hesitated out of inhibition or fear
of when the next outburst would occur.
The figure used in structures to facilitate this
expression is called the loved aspect of the
real figure. This figure represents neither the
totality of the real figure nor the hated aspect
of the real figure, but only the loved aspect in
isolation from all the other parts that the
child knew and remembered so clearly. When such
a figure is placed before a client in a
structure, many feelings, including some
negative ones, may rise up in relationship
toward the entire, "real" figure. Then it is
necessary to have the negative aspect present in
a role to distinguish it from the loved aspect
figure. Thus the negative and positive emotions
both have their objects in roles.
When the loving feelings well up, the client can
voice and finally openly express the warmth and
affection that has been so long suppressed. At
the point in the structure when the client might
want to touch the loved aspect, feelings rise
higher than they may be prepared to handle and
they might get anxious. At that moment it is
useful to introduce the limiting figures who
would hold the client, bursting with their
feelings, to provide reassurance and limits on
their tendency of becoming too receptive and
vulnerable in the presence of that figure. The
limiting figures might possibly encircle the
client's legs to keep in check the receptive
impulses.
More typically they provide flexible restraint
as the client reaches a hand to caress the loved
aspect. This restraint assists the client in
modifying and controlling the level of impulse
that would ordinarily be out of ego control. The
words that the limiting figures might say at
this time are, "We can help you handle how much
you love him." "We won't let you burst with your
feelings," etc. It is very touching to watch
clients express this long suppressed love. It
also a great relief and satisfaction for the
client. Those feelings are no longer
frightening. They may have feared that had they
expressed them in the past, the real figure
could have made them their "slaves". That is why
they preferred to hide those feelings even from
themselves.
This step helps create a more balanced figure of
the aggressor who no longer looms so large and
forbidding. Aggressors become less gigantic and
more human sized now that this lovable aspect is
included in the client's mental image. They also
appear less charged, because the client can now
handle all the different range of feelings that
the abuser is capable of provoking in them. The
client no longer feels out of control in their
presence and can handle each different emotional
response without them getting out of hand -
neither too much love nor too much hate. The
loving reactions to the abuser are now
handle-able and ego integrateable.
This concludes the list of elements attended to
in structures. I have tried to show how we tap
all the energies in the bodies of the clients so
that nothing is left unexperienced, unexpressed,
unconscious, unlimited, unnamed and without
place. Everything rising from the soul is
ego-wrapped by contact with the ideal figures.
The body, no longer the store house of
frightening omnipotent impulses, can be in
balance and living in it can be comfortable
again.
Back to top
Sexual Abuse,
by Albert Pesso
©
1988
(This lecture was given for the Studiedag (Study Day) on
Sexual Abuse held at the Vrije Universiteit
(Free University) in Amsterdam, May 31, 1988)
Over the years I have seen many adults who have
had histories of sexual abuse, some of it
incestuous - with parents or siblings - some of
it with relatives, and some of it with neighbors
or strangers.
Abuse victims, whether it be sexual, physical or
psychological abuse, share one thing in common.
They all carry a wound that makes them extremely
vulnerable. Though some of them may learn to
cover this vulnerability with a facade of
toughness and prickliness, underneath it they
share a terror of their own softness.
They tend to become sensitive people with a deep
capacity for feeling. They also tend to be very
alert to what other people are feeling,
especially about them.
In my way of trying to understand and explain
the forces that the psyche is composed of I use
the term power to describe the penetrating
quality of force and aggression, and
vulnerability to describe the polar opposite
drawing force of openness and receptivity. I
associate mass or matter with power and space
with vulnerability.
All of us are born with the polarities of power
and vulnerability and our task in life is to
integrate those forces and to keep them
balanced. It is our ego that holds all this
together. The ego is like an encircling membrane
that contains and moderates those forces. If the
ego is damaged, those forces tend to become
unruly and chaotic.
Abuse is a major cause of severe damage to the
ego. It is as if the force of abuse produces a
rip or a tear in that ego membrane and then it
doesn't function so well. Sexual abuse,
especially with women, sometimes can include a
literal, unwanted, tearing open of their bodies.
This insult to their physical as well as
psychological integrity has profound
consequences.
All the ego functions are affected and reduced,
resulting in feelings of loss of control,
diminishment of speech and use of words,
diminishment of consciousness, of identity, of
meaning, and finally, diminishment of the
capacity for discrimination in the differences
between inner and outer, fantasy and reality.
Abuse victims tend to be more closed than other
people, unwilling to let anything of any kind
near or into them. Their vulnerability becomes
not only unprotected and exposed by the abuse
but dangerously exaggerated and reinforced
because of it. The vulnerability of some
victims, no longer under the control of the ego,
appears unbounded and without dimension. That
may explain why some abuse victims act out and
become promiscuous. In others the unbounded
vulnerability is not acted upon at all. In fact,
their vulnerability and openness may be so
frightening to them that they don't dare to feel
even the slightest quantity of it. In some the
openness of the person and their ego is so great
that they experience psychosis.
Some abuse victims who don't act on the
vulnerability in a direct way may express it by
being spacey. You remember space is a metaphor
for the openness of vulnerability.
I am thinking now of one recent client who had a
long history of incestuous relations with her
father. She had learned to be out of her body as
a way of coping with the impossible sensations
that the sexual contact with her father produced
in her. That way, she could say to herself, that
no matter what he did to her body, it was not
being done to her because she wasn't really
there anymore. This dissociation added to her
appearance of being far away, mysterious, not of
this earth. She was also interested and deeply
absorbed in things metaphysical. But when she
spoke of those matters it was never quite clear
what exactly she was talking about. That, I saw
as part of her spacey quality.
Her voice was very quiet, almost inaudible.
Ordinarily, I think of the voice as an
expression of power. In her case it was
practically the reverse. Her voice was so soft
it was as if she was drawing in the words with
her breath rather than speaking them out.
The same quality was true of her gaze. When most
people look into someone's eyes as they do in
conversation, you get the impression that they
are looking into that other's person's mind or
thoughts. That supports the notion that some
part of sight is like a penetrating force. Of
course seeing is also taking in sight and is
therefore an expression of openness. Ordinarily
this quality is balanced in people. But her gaze
rarely gave that penetrating impression. Only
the reverse was true. Her eyes were quite open,
even enlarged and had that quality that would
make people think they could fall into them.
Her personality and behavior gave out that kind
of too vulnerable message that could often
produce its opposite in contact with others. It
is common that when someone is very powerful,
some part of the local environment tends to
become less powerful and more vulnerable. Also
when someone is very vulnerable others become
less vulnerable and more powerful. I think of
the polar forces of power and vulnerability as
tending to pull out or elicit the opposite
effect on people. That might explain why some
vulnerable people seem almost literally to
attract attack.
As a therapist I have learned to note my own
subtle, not quite unconscious reactions of
subliminal aggressiveness and sexual awareness
toward this client. Having seen many super
vulnerable clients I have come to expect those
feelings and have some knowledge about how to
use those reactions as a way to further the
therapeutic work. Therapists have to be on their
guard not to fall into the trap of reflexive
opposite reactions. It is almost an expression
of some abuse victims' power that they can make
some people do and say terrible things to them.
That is not their conscious intention, they hate
being hurt, they want that pattern stopped, but
other unconscious forces are also operating
which we should be careful not to reinforce in
the therapy.
Because of their increased feelings of
defenselessness and helplessness, some clients
work hard at finding the strength and force that
would hold off future abuse. They strive to be
strong and able to protect themselves. This
helps balance their psyche and is important
work. However, in order for them to finally feel
comfortable with their feelings, they must also
learn to master the feelings of vulnerability,
not only by developing the opposite forces but
by corralling it, that is by feeling the
receptivity and then experiencing its limits -
which leads to having good ego boundaries around
the openness. But to do that they must first
feel the full strength of their super
vulnerability again, and for those clients that
is not a very attractive prospect.
Those are some of the typical elements I expect
to find when I work with an abuse client. Not
all clients have all these elements, but all
have some suggestion of them and at one time or
another demonstrate one part or another. I will
now list eight important topics that we attend
to in dealing with abuse clients in Pesso System
Psychomotor Therapy.
I. Need For Control
II. Need For Protection
III. Guilt and Shame
IV. Eroticism and Receptivity
V. Hatred and Murder
VI. Sadness and Loss
VII. Love and Tenderness
VIII.Antidote Relationship
Before going further, I would like to bring in
an important point. and that is that a therapist
has to deal not only with the concepts and ideas
of power and vulnerability. but ultimately with
the physical and active body expression of those
forces felt in the body during the therapy.
Power and vulnerability are not just thoughts
and feelings, they are the stuff that moves and
activates our lives.
But here is a caveat, a warning that should be
included with the above statements. Since it was
unwanted touch and action that contributed to
the sexual abuse in the first place, those
clients are naturally aversive to touch and
action. Much time must be spent just to help
them feel safe with the therapist or the group
itself. Only then should the therapist help them
become reaccustomed to safe touch and action in
a group. I emphasize group because my experience
indicates that it takes many people to do the
limiting and contacting necessary to contain all
the power that eventually is available to the
client. Then those elements must be used with
caution and great discretion. Too rapid
application of those potentially therapeutic
elements could frighten clients and reinforce
their belief that their bodies are still not
very safe places.
NEED FOR CONTROL
So reestablishment of control is the first
requirement in working with abuse clients. They
have lost control of their bodies and their
choices and the therapy must begin with the
explicit redeclaration and resumption of their
rights to maintain integrity of their bodies and
choices. Also their right and ability to be in
control of the events that will happen in the
therapy has to be acknowledged and developed. I
will not go into detail now about specific
exercises which attend to these topics. The
workshops this afternoon will include two of
them.
Before I describe some of the ways to work with
power and vulnerability in a structure using
touch and action, I would like to briefly tell
those of you who were not here yesterday what a
structure is. A structure is the name for the
therapeutic session in Pesso System Psychomotor
Therapy. It is a controlled, role-played
reconstruction of an event like abuse, where we
help the client to work out all the feelings in
action and interaction, that they may not have
been able to feel when it actually happened.
Included in a structure is the alternative
possibility with what we call ideal figures,
like ideal mother and ideal father, who, if they
had been there at that time would have treated
them totally differently and with more respect
and without abuse, etc.
Now I would like to describe some of the work
with the abovementioned client. I will not go
into what had to be attended to in the
pre-structural work or the preparatory work she
had done in many years of therapy with other
therapists. To further my goal of demonstrating
some of the essential issues to look for in the
work with abuse using structures I will combine
elements from several different structures, and
treat it as if it was one single structure. I
will make comment on these elements as I go
along.
During the session the client began to remember
the contacts with her father. She started to
feel sick and felt that she would throw up. I
understood that reaction as having too much
feeling in her body, more than she could handle.
She was one of those people who learned how to
leave her body and now we could see why, because
if she felt what was in there it would be too
much. Whenever there is such an overload, I know
that the route out is to have the person use the
energy in their body very strongly and then to
have that action that comes out of the body be
in contact with supporting or containing figures
who provide countershaping pressure and
resistance to the action as a way to help them
to handle it. Without those outside people to
contact them when they have those feelings, they
might feel as if their egos would explode from
the force of the feelings inside and that they
then might go crazy. The physical contact and
pressure from the outside contacting people is
experienced like a healing seal or cover over
the hole in their fragile egos.
So I suggested she select some people to
role-play just such contact, containing figures
so she could process that energy. The contact
figures, who were females, gently put their arms
around her as she sat on the floor with her arms
around her knees and then I suggested that she
tighten the muscles around the areas of tension
in her body. She began to tremble. The contact
figures held her more securely and she began to
cry, saying she was very frightened. I
understood that she was frightened not only
because she was remembering how helpless she
felt when her father abused her but she might
also be frightened of the feelings that it
brought up in her that she did not understand.
It was fear of the inside as well as of the
outside. There are steps to work with that but
for now I will only tell you that the contact
figures are usually asked to say, or are needed
to say things like, "We can help you handle how
scared you are." This gives license to the
feelings, giving them a name and making them
handleable as the containing figures are there
as an outer surface to hold them together.
The feeling of fear is extremely high in abuse
clients. Not only is fear intense for them, but
that distress is compounded or increased by the
fact that the fear has been held so long inside
without being fully expressed. That is, the full
amount of feeling, force and expression is kept
from reaching consciousness and bodily
expression. But the fear remains as a symptom in
the body and does not go away until it is
finally processed in an interaction, and using
yesterday's term, properly ego-wrapped.
One of the body symptoms associated with fear is
an achiness in the shoulders. When I ask clients
reporting that symptom to move in the way the
achiness seems to make them want to move, they
usually raise their shoulders. The look of that
movement gives the impression of someone trying
to pull their head into their body in an attempt
to shrink and hide inside themselves.
Slight downward pressure on the shoulders by the
contact figures assists the client in fully
accessing the fear. The expression of this level
of fear frequently includes a peculiarly high
pitched sound, one you might hear from a
terrified person or animal. When the fear is
fully processed in the safe haven created by the
contact figures this tension disappears and the
body becomes more relaxed. If the fear is
allowed to build up without the counter pressure
contact with outside figures it is likely that
the client will immediately feel nauseous and
close to vomiting. Such moments of vomiting are
a reflexive, unconscious attempt to get the
unpleasant overcharged feelings out of the body.
THE NEED FOR PROTECTION
I have learned that with this depth of fear
there is a great need to have protection. I
proposed to the client that she choose ideal
figures who would have protected her at that
time. She agreed. That gave her sufficient
safety to fully feel the fear. She cried and
screamed in those high shrieking sounds and
shivered as the feelings ran through her body
which was trembling all over.
The absence of protection is a major element in
abuse clients. Frequently the abuser is a family
member who should have been the one giving
protection rather than being the threat. When it
is the parent who has been the abuser the child
feels totally undefended and unprotected by the
opposite parent who they feel should have known
what was happening and stopped it. This kind of
protective experience is supplied in structures
by ideal parents who standardly say things like,
"If I had been back there then I would have
known what was going on and I would have stopped
it from happening."
The client, in the arms of the protective
figures, felt free to touch even deeper levels
of fear and terror. Suddenly, she clasped her
neck which had cramped with pain. That is a
common reaction when people feel very
vulnerable. At those moments some part of the
body, frequently the neck, becomes very hard, as
a kind of alternative to their own softness that
has made them feel so defenseless. I asked her
to exaggerate the tension in her neck and in
doing so her head pressed backward. That action
needed to be contacted with and one of the
containing figures, with her approval, placed
her hands around the base of her head and the
client, using the force created by the
contracted muscles, pushed her head backwards
into her hands.
This kind of intervention is provided to meet
the counterforce which the client calls up in
the attempt to balance the too vulnerable
feelings. It is important that when this hard
reaction to their soft feelings surfaces that it
is not met with limits. Limits are that special
intervention which stop an action from being
completed. In this case limits are not required,
but a more subtle amount of resistance is
offered, with just the right amount of force
applied. This allows the client to continue to
move their body in whatever direction they wish
it to go but they have to work harder to make it
happen. This intervention demonstrates to the
client that their strength and force is
effective. The words that the accommodators
might be asked to say in connection with it are,
"You're strong, you can have an effect on me."
Or other words that would give a similar message
of validating the client's attempts at
increasing the amount of power they have
available in their bodies. This validation of
that kind of strength has the paradoxical effect
of giving the client the license and safety to
go deeper into their vulnerable feelings.
From that interaction, the client, with great
force, pushed her hips forward and with the
contact figures giving counterpressure on her
hip bones, the client's thighs and pelvis shook
violently.
GUILT AND SHAME
She said something like "That is so sexual", sat
back on her heels and began to pound on her
thighs. Quickly the containing figures
restrained her from hitting her legs and in a
flash she began to aim her fists toward her face
which it appeared she would like to smash. She
seemed to be in a fit of self hate, guilt and
shame for having sexual feelings in her body and
would destroy those parts of herself that had
those feelings. The limiting figures with her
agreement, I must say that nothing is allowed to
happen without the client's agreement, say to
her, "We will not let you hurt yourself." Then
when they are clearly ready for her attempts the
client feels free to release all the pent up
self hate and disgust she has about her
feelings. They struggle greatly but it is always
a relief to find that no matter how hard they
try they will be limited from doing damage to
themselves.
A lot of things are combined in the above
description. Things can move pretty quickly when
people follow their impulses and it is important
that the therapist has a kind of inventory or
list in his or her mind so that the major
possibilities can be anticipated. Let me cover
in more detail some of what was involved in that
sequence. As expected, when the counter phobic
strength was validated, the vulnerability
presented itself, this time in the form of
sexual excitement and receptivity.
EROTICISM AND RECEPTIVITY
First let me say that one of the most unexpected
and surprising findings in our work has been
that abuse of any kind, physical, psychological
or sexual, produces a reflexive erotic element.
The person under attack not only responds with
defensive reactions, but may also experience
reflexive bodily impulses, not immediately
available to consciousness, that imply a
readiness to receive penetration. It is as if
some archaic portion of the psyche is highly
responsive to, and appreciative of aggression -
and is prepared to welcome it. This part of
vulnerability includes a kind of chaotic
excitement and willingness that would appear
ready to take in and absorb everything and
anything. Of course in sexual abuse this element
is even further heightened. Not that she wants
or consciously feels any sexual excitement, but
the sexual organs are involved and some
unconscious part of her reacts to this
stimulation. This only adds to her distress. For
she has not asked or wanted to be stimulated.
She has been denied her rights to have mastery
over her own feelings and body.
The guilt that she feels at such moments is
enormous. She blames herself for her own
predicament. The fact that she just found
herself feeling sexual seems proof to her that
it was her fault that the abuse occurred. She
would kill the offending parts of herself, "If
thine eye offend thee pluck it out." She would
pluck out her sexual feelings in her guilty
thighs and smash the sexual feelings out of her
head.
HATRED AND MURDER
But when this self hate and guilt is limited it
can quickly turn to hatred and murder directed
toward the person who made all those unwanted
feelings happen. That too must be expressed. But
in a form where it is clear that there would not
be the allowance of literal murder.
When those feeling of self-hate shift to become
hatred of the person who brought those feelings
out in her, the client chose to have a negative
father enrolled so that she could vent her fury
at him. The negative father role-player
accommodates as if struck when she directs her
blows at him. It was satisfying to the client to
see her negative father in pain. She wanted to
punish him for what he had done to her.
"I'll really kill him now." she said. If she had
not been limited she might become frightened
that nothing would stop her from carrying out
her murderous intentions. At such moments the
containing figures can say, "It's all right to
be so angry at him, but we won't let you
literally kill him. We can handle your anger and
we can help you handle it." Their firm limiting
action was concrete proof of that. This allowed
her to fully express all the hatred and rage she
felt for him. She lunged toward him and punched
in his direction and kicked toward him venting
all the suppressed hostility.
SADNESS AND LOSS
But she didn't stay with anger for long.
Shortly, she was remembering how much she loved
her father, how he had been the adored daddy for
her in her childhood and now she could not bear
to think of him being hurt. That brought her to
great sadness and loss, for she remembered how
hurt and confused she was the day he first
approached her sexually. It was like the end of
her world.
Paradoxically, during the process of expressing
this sadness and grief, right in the middle of
her crying and all the shaking and convulsive
feelings that came with it, she noted that her
thighs were trembling and that there was another
tension in her belly and lower back.
When I asked her to exaggerate the tension and
to see what movement came of it, it made her
legs shake in a way that they oscillated between
opening and closing.
Here the combination of vulnerability, openness
and eroticism was most present. I don't yet know
the explanation for this phenomenon that the
openness is expressed as open legs but I have
seen it so regularly that it became clear to me
that it has sexual meaning. But the very same
reaction occurs with males who have been
physically abused, and they have no genitals
that would be exposed by open legs. At such
moments the impulse to open the legs is directly
connected in my mind with the boundless openness
of space and vulnerability I spoke of earlier.
Here is where it is to be met and where it is
corralled and brought within bounds with the
help of limiting figures. In a way their success
in keeping the legs from splitting apart is
equivalent to the creation of a boundary around
the spaciness or openness of the personality. It
is also a way of illustrating and reinforcing
the ego's new grip on the chaotic vulnerability,
as the ego, figuratively represented by the
limiting figures succeeds in putting the
omnipotent vulnerability back under its control.
Before carrying out the appropriate intervention
to limit this erotic receptive feeling I
explained some of the theoretical notions about
it to her. This was helpful to her and permitted
her greater freedom to move under the force of
those impulses.
The limiting figures, and it is important that
in this case they be female and not male,
otherwise it might feel like she was submitting
to male strength, wrapped their arms around her
knees so that no matter how hard she might try
to open her legs she would not be able to do so.
It is a paradoxical thing. Here is a person who
has been abused and who wants more than anything
to close herself up to keep from being abused,
and she finds that a part of herself that she is
not in conscious control of intends to move in a
way that is quite the opposite. Now that
external figures are doing the closing, she can
attend totally to the impulse to open her legs
and that releases an enormous amount of energy.
There is a great struggle, and not only does she
fight to separate them, but her hips thrust
forward repeatedly and when she makes the sounds
that the effort brings, it surprises her. She
says, "Those are the sounds that he made when he
was doing it." Now the emotions connected to
that event are entirely conscious and she can
find some of the same feelings in herself.
Although it at first makes her ashamed, she
finds that she can continue to make the movement
and the sounds and is relieved that she can own
those sexual feelings in herself but still while
she is kept from separating her legs. If the
sexual contact a client had included some
conscious sexual excitement and a wish to have
incestuous relations, the ideal limiting figures
could say something like this, "It is OK that
you might want to have sex with your father but
we wont let you literally do it." There is
relief when limiting figures succeed in getting
that omnipotent feeling of receptive sexuality
and vulnerability under control. After the
limits she feels that her body is more her own
and she relaxes in a way she has not been able
to do before.
EXPRESSION OF LOVE AND TENDERNESS
Now she takes some time to feel where she is and
she remarks that the room looks different,
lighter and her body feels softer and less
tense. She looks over to where the negative
father was and begins to remember her real
father again and how she used to adore him.
Feelings of love well up in her and she begins
to cry now. This is a soft feeling and she
begins to stroke the floor in front of her as
she talks about how wonderful she used to think
he was.
She asked a group member to role play the loved
aspect of her real father. This figure is
entirely separate from the negative figure. It
represents that part of her real father that she
loved, but now in a form that was separate from
the negative father. This kind of polarization
allows the tender feelings to be expressed
toward the loved aspect without ambivalence. If
she should begin to be angry again, those
feelings would be directed toward the negative
father.
Now the feeling in her body is neither sexual,
furious or guilty. She is feeling tender with
the unexpressed love she had felt for him and
had to bury after the incest began.
The male group member role playing the loved
aspect is asked to sit closer. She is still
being held by the contact figures are around
her. As she looks at him her body begins to
tremble again and they do their encircling
function to help her to contain her
vulnerability as she feels the love for him.
This is reassuring for without it those feelings
might get out of control, in a way it is
omnipotent tenderness. Their holding can include
their saying, "We can help you handle how much
you love him." For her love feelings are also
somewhat out of ego control.
As she reaches her hand to touch him she becomes
frightened by the force of her feelings and
other containing figures are enrolled to hold
onto her wrists as she reaches toward her
father's face and hair. They exert a little
counter pressure, giving just enough resistance
so that the effort is not stopped completely.
That is why they are called resistance figures,
not to represent her resistance, but to give her
enough external resistance so that she does not
get paralyzed by her own ambivalence about
touching him. Those resistance figures make it
just possible for the tender feelings to be
expressed without getting out of control.
Together they enable her to feel all that she
feels without the ego bursting. It is very
tender to see that moment, for then some of the
old child feelings toward her father can be
expressed toward that part of her father she
still loves.
HEALING ANTIDOTE
I haven't said anything about ideal parents yet,
but in many structures they may be there
throughout offering regular antidoting contact
and statements. By antidoting I mean the process
of giving the kinds of interaction that are
opposite to the toxic ones given by the original
parents.
I'll jump ahead now and describe how she used
the ideal parents in her structure. She chooses
two group members, male and female to represent
the ideal father and ideal mother. They are
instructed to sit side by side, entirely
opposite to the original situation where the
parents were not close at all.She said something
about still not believing that they liked each
other or had sex together and I asked her if
would be OK if I provided her with what I have
found is a kind of classic image of parental
intimacy. I described it to her and when she
agreed I instructed the ideal parents to embrace
each other and look into each other's eyes. This
made her face light up. She said she had never
seen her real parents so close and that it was
wonderful to imagine her ideal parents being so
intimate. The ideal father would say, "I would
never be sexual with you I would only be sexual
with your mother" It was a great relief for her.
It made her feel free, like a child and now she
felt she could have a mother again
She began to cry and climbed into her ideal
mother's lap like a little child, experiencing
what she hadn't felt in a long time, being loved
and protected by a mother who was only a mother
and not a competitor for the father.
Here we come to the end of this condensed
composite structure.
Through it I have tried to show how we attend to
those important needs and deeply suppressed
emotions that are waiting for expression in
victims of sexual abuse. Her nuclear forces of
power and vulnerability are no longer either
totally suppressed nor near meltdown. She has
expressed the emotions in her body in a way that
she can feel more control over them. They have
been seen, touched, named and given boundaries,
therefore ego-wrapped. She is more of one piece.
The integrity of her body and the feelings in it
have been recognized in a respectful setting and
given a place. I hope you have found these ideas
interesting and useful.
Thank you.
Back to top
Abuse
From a PBSP Perspective
I. Introduction
A. Talk briefly about the 3 Tiers
1. Not enough wanted coming in
a. Basic Needs not met
2. Too much unwanted coming in
a. Abuse/Trauma
3. Too much going out too soon
a.
Holes in Roles
- Show on slide/screen
- Tell them we will focus
on the 2nd Tier (too much coming in)
II. Definition
A. Ab-use in PBSP terms means abnormal use of a person in which
they are
treated as an object, or a
commodity not as a living soul and ego
1. Physical -- a person is
attacked or beaten (e.g. hit, kicked, punched,
stoned, shot, cut) which causes injury to their
body and would also
include any kind of penetration i.e. enemas,
invasive surgeries, auditory
(yelled at)
2. Sexual – an unwanted sexual
relationship or stimulation which may include
sexual intercourse, contact or
penetration
3. Psychological – a person’s
self worth and value is reduced by the abuser
through denigration, humiliation, and
ridicule. Abuse may also result from forced
submission where the victim’s only choice is
submission.
So, to understand the PBSP approach to treating
trauma, it is necessary to first understand our
theory
of Soul
& Ego
*III. Soul
A. Definition
1. It is our essential self—the core
of our human being
2. Think of it as a
biological entity that has not yet accumulated a
personal history. It has no present knowledge
of a self with an inside and no present
experience of an outside world.
a. contained within it, however, is the history
of all successful life
processes pushing forward to live and survive.
GIVE an EXAMPLE - baby
3. It is the source
of all the energies of a person arising
from the genes.
4. It is the source
of our emotions, impulses and primeval
(fundamental) behaviors and reactions to
external
events and traces it’s history to the beginning
of time
5. It is from here
that we experience
a. Pleasure and laugh when things
are satisfying
b. Feel angry/sad when things are frustrating
c. Urges to be close, to love, to create
d. The capacity to attack/run from danger
6. It gives us our capacity to feel,
to sense, to take in the world as food or
experience.
a. On the literal level: food = energy and
become the stuff our bodies are made of
b. Symbolically: as events and experiences, we
neurologically and psychologically digest it and
convert it to
meaning and the stuff our minds are made of
For further reading on the Ego:
Pesso, A. (1991). Ego Development in the
Possibility Sphere. In A. Pesso & J. Crandell,
Eds. Moving psychotherapy: Theory and
application of Pesso System/Psychomotor Therapy
(pp 51-63) Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.
Pesso, A. (1991). Ego Function and Pesso
System/Psychomotor Therapy. In A. pesso & J.
Crandell, Eds. Moving Psychotherapy: Theory and
application of Pesso System/Psychomotor Therapy
(pp 41-49). Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.
B. Power vs. Vulnerability
1. In content, the soul consists of
the polarities of power vs. vulnerability
(these are not the only
polarities—just don’t mention those here)
a.
Power – The capacity to move, to act, to
transform, or make an effect upon the world.
1. One of the metaphors of power is mass or
matter in action
NEED A CONCRETE EXAMPLE
b.
Vulnerability: the capacity to feel, to
respond, to take in the world
1. One metaphor is space and receptive
emptiness
NEED A CONCRETE EXAMPLE
IV. Ego
A. Definition
1. It is the
psychological boundaries of a person (the skin
of the self) created through interactions with
significant others in our upbringing.
2. Unlike the
soul, we are not born with an ego, merely, we
are born with the possibility of an ego. It is
created in
our lifetime while the soul has an evolutionary
component.
3. It is the
encircling band of consciousness, control, and
mastery surrounding the soul that enables people
to
function as individuals in charge of their own
lives and destinies.
4. It is the cell
membrane which holds together the soul and
defines and separates from the rest of the
world.
5. It is the
interface between the inner and outer world.
6. It
mediates, modifies and controls what shall go
out of us and what comes into us.
7. It determines
what form the action will take when the impulses
from the soul are allowed to become behavior
and what form the meaning shall take when the
significance of external events is internalized.
8. It gives
names, words, images and measurements to the
outer world of events as well as inner world of
our
impressions.
9. It has the
capacity to discriminate between things,
categories and emotional states – in that way it
assists in
differentiating between this and that, inside
and out, self and other, thinking and feeling,
dreaming and awake.
a. this discriminating ability is a function if
its encircling, boundary-making and separating
capacities.
10. It is created in our
family home and is a reflection of how our
parents have reacted to us.
a. it is a record of what names they have given
to what they license or allow to come in and
out of us.
11. Through parental
interactions the child learns to know and to
control their own emotional range of feelings
and
actions.
a. the child then internalizes the knowledge
gained from those interactions in their ego.
12. Only what is named and
sanctioned is made conscious by the ego and
given the right to be expressed, have
a place in the world and be experienced as
real—this it is the ”I” that we know and the
source of
consciousness.
a. What the ego has no place or name for
becomes psychologically invisible, whether it
be inside or outside
the self
13. Ego is always working to
manage the nuclear forces of power and
vulnerability within us: containing power so
we don’t explode the world or ourselves and
withstanding vulnerability so we can maintain
our physical
integrity without losing our shape by merging or
making union with the rest of the world.
V. Effects of Trauma on Soul and Ego
A. Trauma figuratively pierces the personal
boundaries of self and breaks the encircling
bonds of the victim’s ego
which helped them manage
and control the dual domains of inside and
outside worlds.
(use a drawing)
B. The trauma is experienced as a rape.
C. The ego which throughout one’s lifetime
constantly increases mastery of the self
and surroundings suffers a
great shock.
D. All ego functions are affected and
reduced and vary degrees of feeling so of
1. Loss of
control
2. Language
3. Consciousness
4. Identity
5. Meaning
6. Capacity to
discriminate inner and outer world
7. Fantasy and
reality, dream and wakefulness and bipolar
distinctions
E. Trauma is extremely life threatening and
produces highly charged survival reactions,
which figuratively raises the
internal temperature to
dangerously high degree
1. This leaves the soul
without boundaries and produces levels of
feeling and reactivity that are beyond what a
victim has learned to cope with, since these
feeling have no interaction or contact with ego
constructing
figures—consequently victim becomes uncertain
of their identity.
EXAMPLE
F. Most victims tend to become quiet and fearful
and the wound makes them very vulnerable and
they may cover up
with toughness and
prickliness
–underneath they share
terror of their own softness
–they learn to be very
alert to what other people are feeling,
esp.
about them
G. Own soul have reacted in ways beyond their
consciousness and comprehension.
H. 1st response
1. shut down
2. ego shrinks
and grows rigid—letting little in or out
a. everything is regarded as dangerous,
suspect, and foreign
3. They become more closed, and less
willing to let anything of any kind near or into
them
4. Their vulnerability
become unprotected and exposed and
becomes dangerously exaggerated and reinforced
a. to some, vulnerability
appears unbound and may explain promiscuous (clt.
Example : Teresa)
b. others don’t act on it but
extremely frightened and don’t dare even the
smallest quantity of openness or
vulnerability
c. indirectly acting on it by
being “spacey” or out of their body
I. Unprotected vulnerability can lead to:
1. Promiscuity and
acting out
2. Don’t allow to feel
3. Other psychosis
4. Acting “spacey”
5. Counterphobic
hardness
J. Too vulnerable can produce the opposite in the
other as well as vice a versa
a. use
countertransference
K. The truth of what one has lived through must
be felt and experienced consciously in
interaction with ego-making
figures to be made real
and must involve touch and action
VI. Trauma and the Brain
A. In looking at trauma, it is important
to understand what is happening on the
neurological level and it’s implications
for intra-psychic
damage
1. It is useful to explain to
client’s so they can develop some cognitive
understanding for what they might be
experiencing and thus help them feel some sense
of control, alleviate shame, guilt and an over
sense of
responsibility
2. Information enhances the
pilot
B. The Road Map of Fear
Our senses pick up threat –unwanted
touch, terrifying sound and immediately send a
message to the central
portion of our brain
where two neural pathways are activated.
C. For a moment let’s look at where our
senses go
a. Smells and touch go directly to
the amygdala
1). consequently, smells evoke
stronger memories of feelings than do sights and
sounds
b. Sights and
sounds are first processed by the thalamus (it
is the hub for
sights and
sounds and breaks down incoming visual cues by
size, shape
and color and
auditory cues by volume and dissonance, and then
signals
the
appropriate parts of the cortex.) which filters
the incoming cues and
shunts them
either directly to the amygdala or to the
appropriate parts of
the cortex
1st Route A—Shortcut
- when startled/shocked ;
the brain engages and emergency hot line to its
fear center, the amygdala
c.
Definition—it is an almond-shaped cluster of
cells and makes up the
emotional core of the brain. It has the primary
role of triggering the fear
response to insure both the individual’s own
survival and consequently, the
survival of our species
1). Some of the signs that put it on alert are
genetic and hardwired (example?) à
2). Some are learned and conditioned by
experience (i.e. fear of dogs)
3). What is special about the amygdale is it
rapidly activates just about every system of the
body
to
fight – like the
devil
flee – run like hell
freeze – like a statue
**appease - like
4).
The results are the classic fear response:
sweaty palms
rapid heartbeat
increased blood pressure
burst of adrenaline
5).
All before you know why you are afraid
6).
The amygdala while busy telling the body what to
do also fires up the hippocampus
a. Definition
job is to help the brain learn and form new
memories. These are
survival memories of where you were when you
were shocked, what
it looked like, how it smelled, sounded, felt,
tasted and
what was going on around you at the time. It is
contextual learning
to help you avoid the danger in the future.
2nd Route B—The High Road
- only after the fear
response is activated does the conscious mind
kick into
gear and the cortex
analyzes the data and tells the amygdala to
stand
down or to continue its
job
D. In the event of trauma, the amygdala
has the power to over ride the ego and can stir
such overpowering bodily
reactions to the forces of power and
vulnerability that those reactions become
unbound and outside the realm
of our
ego. They become omnipotent.
VII. Ten Important Topics to Attend to
with Abuse Clients in PBSP
1. The experience of loss of
Control
2. The Experience of Fear and
Terror
3. Need for protection
4. The Experience of Pain, Hurt,
and Sadness
5. The Impulse and Expression of
revenge and Sadistic Feelings
6. The Expression of eroticism and
receptivity
7. The Impulse and Expression of
hatred and murder
8. The increase of guilt, shame,
and the desire for punishment
9. The desire to express love for
the abuser
10. The need for an antidote
relationship
a. not all clients have all these
elements and these may not all show at once
b. power and vulnerability
are not just concepts but they are forces which
move and activate our
lives in physical and active bodily expression
and
therapist must be
prepared for those expressions
c. glitch is while healing
requires action and touch it was also action and
touch which created the
abuse in the first place
A. The Experience of Loss of
Control
1. Much time must be spent to
help client feel safe with therapist and group
2. 2 PBSP exercises that help
clients regain control
a. Controlled Approach
b. Conscious Voluntary
Movement
1. 4 steps:
decide
plan
implement
verify
a. learning more control of conscious voluntary
actions helps clients to consider allowing
unconscious emotions bodily expression
c. Arm Raise
B. Fear and Terror
1. Experienced in abuse and without ego
wrapping, feel boundless and endless
(omnipotent)
2. Body Parts
a. Trembling in legs—possible impulse to run
b. Achiness in
shoulders=fear—shrink into body to hide
c. Tension in
shoulders—impulse to hide
3. Ideal parents must first be installed before
dealing with these emotions so client feels
safety
a. Safety to countershape is fear
b. Throw up: occurs when there is too much
feeling in body, more than clt. can handle
1). may be reflexive, unconscious attempt to
get rid of unpleasant, overcharged feelings in
the body
4. High pitched sound might
come—warn group
C. Need for Protection
1. Place ideal parents as wall/shield between
client and abuser
2. Neck cramps—when someone feels more
vulnerable than they are accustom
a.) as a reflexive
alternative to softness/defenseless neck and
calves may become hard
3. When reactions to their soft feelings
surface don’t meet with limits
D. Pain, Hurt, Sadness
1. Body Parts – shows up as
tension or hardness in the stomach, throat, and
pressure in chest
2. Technique is to tighten those muscles
E. Impulse and Expression of Revenge
and Sadistic Feelings
1. Clients don’t generally bring up this topic,
therapist has to by stating that it is common to
feel this
2. Body sensations related to these
feelings=tension in calf muscles
a. might want to stomp or
grind
3. Whatever was done to client, assume they
unconsciously want to do back to the perpetrator
4. Therapist be prepared to provide limits if
necessary
**F. Expression of Eroticism and
Receptivity
1. Most unexpected feelings
2. Abuse produces a reflexive increase in
vulnerability that includes an erotic element—a
readiness to receive
penetration
3. Its as if some archaic portion of the soul
highly responsive to and receptive of aggression
4. This level of vulnerability feels like a kind
of omnipotent openness and includes a chaotic
excitement and
readiness to take in and absorb everything and
anything
5. Some unconscious part of
body reacts to the stimulation—the guilt about
this is enormous and clt.
blames themselves for their own predicament and
because they feel sexual,
it is proof to them it is their fault and
consequently,
they want to kill offending
parts of self
a. On body, shows
up—trembling upper thighs and associated with
pain
and tension in lower
back
b. Psychological abuse
produces same reactions
c. Men and women treatment
is the same
d. Reflexive
receptivity—close off and paradoxically impulse
to open
themselves (pg. 181)
e. Magical sexual
receptivity and omnipotent as well
1). irresistible
2). draw attacher to
them
6. Clear, comprehensible, teaching is necessary
to help clt. create a cognitive
frame of reference that makes sense
7. Everything done in therapy must
include client’s conscious control and choice
8. To deal with this openness we provide limits
to impulse to separate legs through ideal,
limiting figures
a. Tightly hold knees
together, so they “take over” the task of
holding
knees together, so clt.
can attend and feel the opposite impulse of
separating them
b. It may take more than
one person and extremely important that
accommodators keep
them from separating even a little
1). Very important you explain steps to clt.
before you do it, so they
understand the point of what you are doing or
they could get into a
competitive position with you
2). Scene is full of
energy
3). Magical sexual
receptivity is asked to make its appearance or
the
omnipotent
receptivity is invited to express self
a. Although limiting figures are external, they
represent allies for the ego
b. The element that is fighting is the
“possessed element within themselves—it is that
element
that is fighting (entity?)
c. Screams are
increased and piercing “Let me go”
1). stop here to see if they really want to be
let go
d. At the end, clts. feel relieved and
cleansed—relief that they were not able to break
free
e. Verbal messages from limiting figures are
internalized along with the experience (verbal
lines
pg. 183)
G. Impulse and Expression of Murder
1.
Victims have to ultimately deal with own
murderous anger at attacker
a. 1 portion is outrage and, 1 portion is
impulse to kill
1). Kill is seen as only solution to making
sure it never happens again
2. 3rd way to understand impulse:
see the rise of murderous feeling as an
attempt of soul, in absence of
ego, to balance itself by releasing equivalent
antithetical power in the form
of unlimited aggression
a. Primordial penetrating
force is set loose aggressively towards
attacker “I am not safe until you are dead”
3.
Body symptoms at this stage are global and
include:
a. rapid heart beat
b. increased breathing
c. tension in arms, hands,
jaw, fists, fingers like claws
d. bared teeth—biting action
e. tension in legs which
result in kicking actions
4.
Ideal limiting figures essential
5. 6 people to limit 1 person in
this state, carefully placed
H. Increase of Guilt, Shame and Desire for
Punishment
1. These
are processes used by psyche to bring it more
into balance when
ego
processes have failed
2.
Whenever there is abundance of feelings, assume
that there are strong
inner
forces not yet under ego control
3. Victims
are ashamed and guilty about how open they are
so consequently
become
rigidly closed and ashamed and guilty about how
angry they are
and
become rigidly nice ( law of opposites)
4. (Law of
turning inwards) victims will punish self for
out of control,
forbidden impulses
5.
Murderous energies turn in—can be predisposed to
be accident prone or self destructive
a. Enactor and self are the same rather than
external figure (pg 184)
b. Guilt take aggression
toward abuser deflects it from them and directs
it
back to self, resulting in
self-destructive wish to punch self, tear self
apart with nails, knives,
etc.
--when deflected
blow lands on self, self is penetrated and the
unconscious wish to
be penetrated is partially satisfied
1). This non-interactive solution of self
punishment leads to isolation
and omnipotence—can assume that self is
omnipotently penetrating
and conversely most open person in world
2). Significant 2ndary gain of specialness and
uniqueness—this is
unconscious and not given up easily
a. Verbal reassurance isn’t satisfying to the
unconscious
omnipotent fantasy and even threatens to take
away the pleasure
of one’s uniqueness
b. Treatment must include expression of the
force and power of
both penetrating and receiving impulses and meet
them head
on in their most active forms and levels of
expression
6. Limiting figures required
and applied when it looks like anger is going to
be
directed inwardly
a. i.e. when fists are
balled up and moving toward self not object—you
can
check with clt.
1). Limiting figures place hands over balled
fist
--“We won’t let you
hurt yourself” or “ You don’t deserve to be
hurt”
a. Absolutely no
possibility for clients touching their own faces
with
either their own
fists or the controlling hands of limiting
figures
because any
touch at that moment is taken as indication by
clt.
that they have
succeeded in breaking the limits
2). Clt. may also avoid
interaction in the past in the service of their
omnipotence
3). Struggle with figures
is impressive
i.e. “Get out of my
way. I will punch myself. I will kill myself.
I am
the mightiest
power in the universe and no one can control me”
4). They don’t give up
struggle easily
--impotent feelings
seem to follow the omnipotent ones in a
balancing act yet the
powerlessness secretly maintains the omnipotence
I. Desire to Express Love for Abuser
1. After unlimited feelings get
under ego control, love may emerge
2. Figure in structure called,
‘loved aspects of real figure (Al, are you still
doing
this or using place markers?)
3. Sometimes when you enroll
positive, negative feeling arise so enroll neg.
aspects
4. Client may want to touch loved
aspects, use limiting figures so they don’t
become too open and vulnerable
and may also encircle clt’s legs to keep
receptive impulses in check
a. provide flexible restraint
J. Need for Antidote Relationship
1. After historical events have been
processed, provide ideals
Back to top
Abuse Outline
I. Introduction
II. Definition
*III.
Soul
A. Definition
*B. Power vs. Vulnerability
IV. Ego
A. Definition
V. Effects of Trauma on Soul and Ego
VI. Trauma and the Brain
VII. Ten Important Topics to Attend to
with Abuse Clients in PBSP
A. The Experience of Loss of Control
B. The Experience of Fear and Terror
C. Need for Protection
D. Pain, Hurt, Sadness
E. Impulse and Expression of Revenge and
Sadistic Feelings
*F.Expression of Eroticism and
Receptivity
G. Impulse and Expression of Murder
H. Increase of Guilt, Shame and Desire for
Punishment
I. Desire to Express Love for Abuser
J. Need for Antidote Relationship
VIII. Questions and Answers
Back to top |
