Movement in Psychotherapy

This book is intended as an aid in the effort being directed toward the uses of the body and body movement for educational and therapeutic ends. Systematic "Psychomotor Techniques and Training" is the name used to identify the specific techniques outlined in this book. The core of the motor and spatial sensitization techniques grew out of my long experience performing and teaching dance with my wife, Diane Pesso. Our subsequent conscious application of these techniques toward therapeutic ends attracted the interest of Dr. Charles A. Pinderhughes, Chief of Psychiatric Research at Boston Veterans Administration Hospital. His interest led to the formation of a research team under his supervision at that hospital in 1964. The team consisted of Dr. Pinderhughes, a psychoanalyst; Dr. Leo J. Reyna, an experimental psychologist and behavior therapist; Mr. James Pederson, Chief of Recreation, and myself. Four years of systematic inquiry into the processes involved at the Veterans Administration in psychomotor and training led to further sophistication of techniques and the development of a rational design and conceptual framework. Five years of clinical practice with normal people, and four years at McLean Hospital produced practical experience in the use of the method with a wide range of people. This book will deal mainly with actual practices and concrete examples of their use.

The goal of this book is to present the logical and sequential series of steps that may be followed using this technique, not with the idea that a psychomotor therapist will be produced from a reading, but with the idea that someone knowledgeable in his own field might select what is usable and meaningful to himself while seeing the place of that portion within the whole. This brings us to the form in which the book was written. The book proceeds from the very first meeting of a group, and follows the group through all the steps that would lead it toward becoming a working therapeutic entity. Each step is described in detail, as if to a trainee, to underline the meaning behind each step and each decision the group leader makes. The book is not limited to those interested in nonverbal therapies; it should be valuable to all who are involved in groups and group behavior. This material has proven valuable to psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, occupational therapists, sensitivity group leaders, teachers, ministers, recreation therapists and activity therapists, as well as students of these subjects.

This method provides a means of experiencing more of one's "organic" self as a living, moving organism and not only as a thinking, conceptualizing, verbalizing being. Although man's concepts and way of seeing things evolves and is evolving rapidly, man's organismic self has remained constant for as long as man has been man. Yet each culture has made different assessments as to what man's organismic or given self is and forces or allows himself to act accordingly. Psychomotor training attempts to come into contact experientially with this organismic given, without recourse to cultural concepts and preconceptions. Thus one hopes by this method to verify what one is organismically and then upon this foundation build the intellectual, rational and verbal which is the gift given only to man and which allows only man to adapt, vary, and evolve according to changing external conditions.

Psicologia