Pesso was about to conduct a workshop in “PBSP psychomotor therapy,”1 and he invited me to attend. It was unlike any group work I had ever seen. He took a low chair opposite a woman named Nancy, whom he called a “protagonist,” with the other participants seated on pillows around them. He then invited Nancy to talk about what was troubling her, occasionally using her pauses to “witness” what he was observing—as in “A witness can see how crestfallen you are when you talk about your father deserting the family.” I was impressed by how carefully he tracked subtle shifts in body posture, facial expression, tone of voice, and eye gaze, the nonverbal expressions of emotion. (This is called “microtracking” in psychomotor therapy).
Each time Pesso made a “witness statement,” Nancy’s face and body relaxed a bit, as if she felt comforted by being seen and validated. His quiet comments seemed to bolster her courage to continue and go deeper. When Nancy started to cry, he observed that nobody should have to bear so much pain all by herself, and he asked if she would like to choose someone to sit next to her. (He called this a “contact person.”) Nancy nodded and, after carefully scanning the room, pointed to a kind-looking middle-aged woman. Pesso asked Nancy where she would like her contact person to sit. “Right here,” Nancy said decisively, indicating a pillow immediately to her right.
I was fascinated. People process spatial relations with the right hemisphere of the brain, and our neuroimaging research had shown that the imprint of trauma is principally on the right hemisphere as well (see chapter 3). Caring, disapproval, and indifference all are primarily conveyed by facial expression, tone of voice, and physical movements. According to recent research, up to 90 percent of human communication occurs in the nonverbal, right-hemisphere realm,2 and this was where Pesso’s work seemed primarily to be directed. As the workshop went on, I was also struck by how the contact person’s presence seemed to help Nancy tolerate the painful experiences she was dredging up.3
But what was most unusual was how Pesso created tableaus—or as he called them, “structures”—of the protagonists’ past. As the narratives unfolded, group participants were asked to play the roles of significant people in the protagonists’ lives, such as parents and other family members, so that their inner world began to take form in three-dimensional space. Group members were also enlisted to play the ideal, wished-for parents who would provide the support, love, and protection that had been lacking at critical moments. Protagonists became the directors of their own plays, creating around them the past they never had, and they clearly experienced profound physical and mental relief after these imaginary scenarios. Could this technique instill imprints of safety and comfort alongside those of terror and abandonment, decades after the original shaping of mind and brain?
Intrigued with the promise of Pesso’s work, I eagerly accepted his invitation to visit his hilltop farmhouse in southern New Hampshire. After lunch beneath an ancient oak tree, Al asked me to join him in his red clapboard barn, now a studio, to do a structure. I’d spent several years in psychoanalysis, so I did not expect any major revelations. I was a settled professional man in my forties with my own family, and I thought of my parents as two elderly people who were trying to create a decent old age for themselves. I certainly did not think they still had a major influence on me.
Since there were no other people available for role-play, Al began by asking me to select an object or a piece of furniture to represent my father. I chose a gigantic black leather couch and asked Al to put it upright about eight feet in front of me, slightly to the left. Then he asked if I’d like to bring my mother into the room as well, and I chose a heavy lamp, approximately the same height as the upright couch. As the session continued, the space became populated with the important people in my life: my best friend, a tiny Kleenex box to my right; my wife, a small pillow next to him; my two children, two more tiny pillows.
After a while I surveyed the projection of my internal landscape: two hulking, dark, and threatening objects representing my parents and an array of minuscule objects representing my wife, children, and friends. I was astounded; I had re-created my inner image of my stern Calvinistic parents from the time I was a little boy. My chest felt tight, and I’m sure that my voice sounded even tighter. I could not deny what my spatial brain was revealing: The structure had allowed me to visualize my implicit map of the world.
When I told Al what I had just uncovered, he nodded and asked if I would allow him to change my perspective. I felt my skepticism return, but I liked Al and was curious about his method, so I hesitantly agreed. He then interposed his body directly between me and the couch and lamp, making them disappear from my line of sight. Instantaneously I felt a deep release in my body—the constriction in my chest eased and my breathing became relaxed. That was the moment I decided to become Pesso’s student.4
RESTRUCTURING INNER MAPS
Projecting your inner world into the three-dimensional space of a structure enables you to see what’s happening in the theater of your mind and gives you a much clearer perspective on your reactions to people and events in the past. As you position placeholders for the important people in your life, you may be surprised by the unexpected memories, thoughts, and emotions that come up. You then can experiment with moving the pieces around on the external chessboard that you’ve created and see what effect it has on you.
Although the structures involve dialogue, psychomotor therapy does not explain or interpret the past. Instead, it allows you to feel what you felt back then, to visualize what you saw, and to say what you could not say when it actually happened. It’s as if you could go back into the movie of your life and rewrite the crucial scenes. You can direct the role-players to do things they failed to do in the past, such as keeping your father from beating up your mom. These tableaus can stimulate powerful emotions. For example, as you place your “real mother” in the corner, cowering in terror, you may feel a deep longing to protect her and realize how powerless you felt as a child. But if you then create an ideal mother, who stands up to your father and who knows how to avoid getting trapped in abusive relationships, you may experience a visceral sense of relief and an unburdening of that old guilt and helplessness. Or you might confront the brother who brutalized you as a child and then create an ideal brother who protects you and becomes your role model.
The job of the director/therapist and other group members is to provide protagonists with the support they need to delve into whatever they have been too afraid to explore on their own. The safety of the group allows you to notice things that you have hidden from yourself—usually the things you are most ashamed of. When you no longer have to hide, the structure allows you to place the shame where it belongs—on the figures right in front of you who represent those who hurt you and made you feel helpless as a child.
Feeling safe means you can say things to your father (or, rather, the placeholder who represents him) that you wish you could have said as a five-year-old. You can tell the placeholder for your depressed and frightened mother how terrible you felt about not being able to take care of her. You can experiment with distance and proximity and explore what happens as you move placeholders around. As an active participant, you can lose yourself in a scene in a way you cannot when you simply tell a story. And as you take charge of representing the reality of your experience, the witness keeps you company, reflecting the changes in your posture, facial expression, and tone of voice.
In my experience, physically reexperiencing the past in the present and then reworking it in a safe and supportive “container” can be powerful enough to create new, supplemental memories: simulated experiences of growing up in an attuned, affectionate setting where you are protected from harm. Structures do not erase bad memories, or even neutralize them the way EMDR does. Instead, a structure offers fresh options—an alternative memory in which your basic human needs are met and your longings for love and protection are fulfilled.
REVISING THE PAST
Let me give an example from a workshop I led not long ago at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
Maria was a slender, athletic Filipina in her midforties who had been pleasant and accommodating during our first two days, which had been devoted to exploring the long-term impact of trauma and teaching self-regulation techniques. But now, seated on her pillow about six feet away from me, she looked scared and collapsed. I wondered to myself if she had volunteered as a protagonist mainly to please the girlfriend who had accompanied her to the workshop.
I began by encouraging her to notice what was going on inside her and to share whatever came to mind. After a long silence she said: “I can’t really feel anything in my body, and my mind is blank.” Mirroring her inner tension, I replied: “A witness can see how worried you are that your mind is blank and you don’t feel anything after volunteering to do a structure. Is that right?” “Yes!” she answered, sounding slightly relieved.
The “witness figure” enters the structure at the very beginning and takes the role of an accepting, nonjudgmental observer who joins the protagonist by reflecting his or her emotional state and noting the context in which that state has emerged (as when I mentioned Maria’s “volunteering to do a structure”). Being validated by feeling heard and seen is a precondition for feeling safe, which is critical when we explore the dangerous territory of trauma and abandonment. A neuroimaging study has shown that when people hear a statement that mirrors their inner state, the right amygdala momentarily lights up, as if to underline the accuracy of the reflection.
I encouraged Maria to keep focusing on her breath, one of the exercises we had been practicing together, and to notice what she was feeling in her body. After another long silence she hesitantly began to speak: “There is always a sense of fear in everything I do. It doesn’t look like I am afraid, but I am always pushing myself. It is really difficult for me to be up here.” I reflected, “A witness can see how uncomfortable you feel pushing yourself to be here,” and she nodded, slightly straightening her spine, signaling that she felt understood. She continued: “I grew up thinking that my family was normal. But I always was terrified of my dad. I never felt cared for by him. He never hit me as hard as he did my siblings, but I have a pervasive sense of fear.” I noted that a witness could see how afraid she looked as she spoke of her father, and then I invited her to select a group member to represent him.
Maria scanned the room and chose Scott, a gentle video producer who had been a lively and supportive member of the group. I gave Scott his script: “I enroll as your real father, who terrified you when you were a little girl,” which he repeated. (Note that this work is not about improvisation but about accurately enacting the dialogue and directions provided by the witness and protagonist.) I then asked Maria where she would like her real father to be positioned, and she instructed Scott to stand about twelve feet away, slightly to her right and facing away from her. We were beginning to create the tableau, and every time I conduct a structure I’m impressed by how precise the outward projections of the right hemisphere are. Protagonists always know exactly where the various characters in their structures should be located.
It also surprises me, again and again, how the placeholders representing the significant people in the protagonist’s past almost immediately assume a virtual reality: The people who enroll seem to become the people he or she had to deal with back then—not only to the protagonist but often to the other participants as well. I encouraged Maria to take a good, long look at her real father, and as she gazed at him standing there, we could witness how her emotions shifted between terror and a deep sense of compassion for him. She tearfully reflected on how difficult his life had been—how, as a child during World War II, he had seen people beheaded; how he had been forced to eat rotten fish infested with maggots. Structures promote one of the essential conditions for deep therapeutic change: a trancelike state in which multiple realities can live side by side—past and present, knowing that you’re an adult while feeling the way you did as a child, expressing your rage or terror to someone who feels like your abuser while being fully aware that you are talking to Scott, who is nothing like your real father, and experiencing simultaneously the complex emotions of loyalty, tenderness, rage, and longing that kids feel with their parents.
As Maria began to speak about their relationship when she was a little girl, I continued to mirror her expressions. Her father had brutalized her mother, she said. He was relentlessly critical of her diet, her body, her housekeeping, and she was always afraid for her mother when he berated her. Maria described her mother as loving and warm; she could not have survived without her. She would always be there to comfort Maria after her father lashed out at her, but she didn’t do anything to protect her children from their father’s rage. “I think my mom had a lot of fear herself. I have a sense that she didn’t protect us because she felt trapped.”
At this point I suggested that it was time to call Maria’s real mother into the room. Maria scanned the group and smiled brightly as she asked Kristin, a blonde, Scandinavian-looking artist, to play the part of her real mother. Kristin accepted in the formal words of the structure: “I enroll as your real mother, who was warm and loving and without whom you would not have survived but who failed to protect you from your abusive father.” Maria had her sit on a pillow to her right, much closer than her real father.
I encouraged Maria to look at Kristin and then I asked, “So what happens when you look at her?” Maria angrily said, “Nothing.” “A witness would see how you stiffen as you look at your real mom and angrily say that you feel nothing,” I noted. After a long silence I asked again, “So what happens now?” Maria looked slightly more collapsed and repeated, “Nothing.” I asked her, “Is there something you want to say to your mom?” Finally Maria said, “I know you did the best you could,” and then, moments later: “I wanted you to protect me.” When she began to cry softly, I asked her, “What is happening inside?” “Holding my chest, my heart feels like it is pounding really hard,” Maria said. “My sadness goes out to my mom; how incapable she was of standing up to my father and protecting us. She just shuts down, pretending everything’s okay, and in her mind it probably is, and that makes me mad today. I want to say to her: ‘Mom, when I see you react to dad when he is being mean . . . when I see your face, you look disgusted and I don’t know why you don’t say, “Fuck off.” You don’t know how to fight—you are such a pushover—there is a part of you that is not good and not alive. I don’t even know what I want you to say. I just want you to be different—nothing you do is right, like you accept everything when it is totally not okay.’” I noted, “A witness would see how fierce you are as you want your mother to stand up to your dad.” Maria then talked about how she wanted her mother to run off with the kids and take them away from her terrifying father.
I then suggested enrolling another group member to represent her ideal mother. Maria scanned the room again and chose Ellen, a therapist and martial artist. Maria placed her on a pillow to her right between her real mother and herself and asked Ellen to put her arm around her. “What do you want your ideal mother to say to your dad?” I asked. “I want her to say, ‘If you are going to talk like that, I am going to leave you and take the kids,’” she answered. “‘We are not going to sit here and listen to this shit.’” Ellen repeated Maria’s words. Then I asked: “What happens now?” Maria responded: “I like it. I have a little pressure in my head. My breath is free. I have a subtle energetic dance in my body now. Sweet.” “A witness can see how delighted you are when you hear your mother saying that she is not taking this shit from your dad anymore and that she will take you away from him,” I told her. Maria began to sob and said, “I would have been able to be a safe, happy little girl.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see several group members weeping silently—the possibility of growing up safe and happy clearly resonated with their own longings.
After a
while I suggested that it was time to summon Maria’s ideal father. I could clearly see the delight in Maria’s eyes as she scanned the group, imagining her ideal father. She finally chose Danny. I gave him his script, and he gently told her: “I enroll as your ideal father, who would have loved you and cared for you and who would not have terrified you.” Maria instructed him to take a seat near her on her left and beamed. “My healthy mom and dad!” she exclaimed. I responded: “Allow yourself to feel that joy as you look at an ideal dad who would have cared for you.” Maria cried, “It’s beautiful,” and threw her arms around Danny, smiling at him through her tears. “I am remembering a really tender moment with my dad, and that is what this feels like. I would love to have my mom next to me too.” Both ideal parents tenderly responded and cradled her. I left them there for a while so that they could fully internalize the experience.
We finished with Danny saying: “If I had been your ideal dad back then, I would have loved you just like this and not have inflicted my cruelty,” while Ellen added, “If I had been your ideal mom, I would have stood up for you and me and protected you and not let any harm come to you.” All the characters then made final statements, deenrolling from the roles they had played, and formally resumed being themselves.
RESCRIPTING YOUR LIFE
Nobody grows up under ideal circumstances—as if we even know what ideal circumstances are. As my late friend David Servan-Schreiber once said: every life is difficult in its own way. But we do know that, in order to become self-confident and capable adults, it helps enormously to have grown up with steady and predictable parents; parents who delighted in you, in your discoveries and explorations; parents who helped you organize your comings and goings; and who served as role models for self-care and getting along with other people.
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