Albert Pesso is the co-creator, along with his wife Diane Boyden-Pesso, of Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor, a widely respected interactive technique that helps clients create new memories to compensate for emotional deficits in the past.  He has been called one of the three living masters of body-based psychotherapy and was chosen to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award by the United States Association For Body Psychotherapy.

Now, octogenarians, Al began his career as a dancer and choreographer, studying under the renowned Martha Graham while Diane received her training from the legendary Jose Limon and Ziegfield Follies star, Harriet Hoctor. They met as students at Bennington College, then married and danced together in New York City for several years.

In 1956, Al and Diane established their own dance center in Massachusetts. Five years later, the pair developed what would become the foundational theory of PBSP. As they encouraged dancers to allow their bodies to act out their inner feelings, Al and Diane observed that the resulting emotional outpouring was cathartic, but did not necessarily help the individual heal his or her emotional scars. 

They went on to develop an interactive model that drew on spatial relationships, specific wording, and physical touch to provide a response from the outer world to each of the inner needs expressed by the individual. This, the pair ultimately concluded, facilitated the creation of new body-based memories to complement the memories of emotional deficits in the past. 

Both Al and Diane retained a foothold in the dance world — he as a tenured associate professor and director of the dance department at Emerson College, she on the faculty of Wheaton College, Emerson College, and Sargent College of Boston University — even as they developed and began teaching their new form of body-based psychotherapy. 

In the 50 years since developing PBSP, Al has served as director of Psychomotor Therapy at both McLean Hospital (Belmont, MA) and in the Pain Unit of New England Rehabilitation Hospital; as adjunct professor for California’s Fielding Institute; and as a consultant in psychiatric research at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Boston. He has also taught courses on PBSP in the Harvard University continuing education program and other educational and medical institutions abroad. 

Clients have included top executives of multinational corporations, high profile entertainers and individuals from every walk of life. 

Al Pesso has written or contributed to almost a dozen books, written more than 50 articles, and led hundreds of seminars around the world. 

He has been a featured speaker at the conferences of many psychology organizations, such as: the American Academy of Psychotherapists; the Association of Humanistic Psychology; the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine; the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute; the European Congress on Body Psychotherapy; the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy; the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists; and a host of others on three continents. 

He has also been invited to make presentations at numerous medical schools and hospitals, including Grand Rounds at Boston University Medical School. 

Al spends much of his time on the road, training new PBSP therapists and counseling clients. Diane, now retired, continues to advise on the development of training programs and new techniques.

PATRIARCHY VS MATRIARCHY (Homayoun Shahri, Ph.D., M.A., LMFT)

Patriarchy and matriarchy are defined in terms line of inheritance. In patriarchy inheritance is transmitted from father to off springs, but in matriarchy inheritance is transmitted through blood relationships. Thus in a matriarchal system off springs inherit from their maternal uncle and not from their father.

Branislaw Malinowski, a prominent anthropologist, lived among and studied natives of Trobriand Islands (near the eastern coast of New Guinea), a matriarchal society on the verge of transformation to patriarchy, during the first decade of the 20th century. His observations were astonishing. He observed a very peaceful, loving, and friendly people. Children's sexuality was not repressed by parents or the society, and they engaged in sexual activities from a young age, and to the surprise of Malinowski very few native girls got pregnant before the start of eloping with a man. By the age of 20 to 25 the native men and women usually would settle with one partner and the woman would move to the man's house, and their elopement started. They would live together as long as there was love between them. Men usually collected fruites, roots, and planted various crops such as yams and taro roots, women took care of children and household matters. Part of man's annual collection of roots and fish, etc would go to his sister (his blood relative). If the couple fell out of love neither would suffer any economic consequences, as the woman was supported by her brother, and man could support himself. They would just separate and find anther suitable partner. Children would stay with their mother, as the role of father was not known to the natives. There was not economic advantage to remain eloped. Margaret Mead in her book, "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies", gave similar accounts to those that Malinowski described in his field work and studies of the natives of Trobriand Islands.

Malinowski observed that Oedipus complex did not exist in this society (experience during Oedipal period did not result in Oedipus complex) and hypothesized that perhaps Freud's assertion regarding Oedipus complex might not have been as ubiquitous and universal as he claimed. This indicated to Malinowski, and later confirmed by Wilhelm Reich that it is the sexual repression of children, and the charged sexual environment within the patriarchal family that may result in the Oedipus complex, as Freud conceived of and discussed in his writings.

Accumulation of wealth was not possible in this society as the food that they produced was very perishable and had to be consumed quickly, same for game and fish that they hunted and caught. This society was essentially a hunter-gatherer society. This society was very egalitarian and there were no hierarchies present in the society had it not been for the existence of the chief. Fathers generally were very friendly to their children and sons, but the role of maternal uncle was more of a what we know as a father in our society. Stealing, violence, sexual assault, and other antisocial behavior were non-existent in this society.

Trobriand Islanders had a chief. Chief would collect a small portion of all production and keep it for emergencies. What he collected would be consumed in a ceremony and feast, in case no emergency condition arose. That made the chief somewhat richer than the rest of the society. The chieftain realized that if his son eloped (married) their sister's daughter then wealth would remain withing chief's family, due to the nature of inheritance. Thus the chief kept his son abstinent and his sister kept her daughter abstinent. Malinowski recorded that all the antisocial behavior was limited to this group!

The transition to patriarchy began when man started cultivating crops such as wheat which could be stored and kept for a relatively long time. Thus the man who cultivated more wheat and similar crops became richer. In order for him to keep his wealth in his family he probably used a similar strategy as the Trobriand chieftain, thus keeping his sons and daughters abstinent. As the number of these rich farmers grew their sons had to marry daughters of other rich farmers. This is how the concept of dowry started. Thus now there was a price placed on the woman (in the form of dowry) so that only another rich farmer's son could marry the woman of status, and not an average member of the society, hence started the objectification of women. Of course the girl had to be kept abstinent as well so that wealth does not dissipate among commoners. Of course keeping boys and girls abstinent required authority, and discipline. This was the genesis of patriarchy, and authoritarian system of governance, the formation of marriage and later the state. Friedrich Engles in his book, “Origins of private property, family, and state”, also confirms what Malinowski had observed, albeit with some minor differences.

Wilhelm Reich, an associate of Freud, who was influenced by Malinowski formed Sexual-Political Organizations which he called “SexPols” right around the rise of Nazi's in Germany. He would educate teenagers about sexuality (what is done in High Schools today), and would provide contraceptives to them. At its peak, SexPols had over 40 thousand members across Germany. He documented that not even one SexPol member gravitated to Nazi ideology. From his experiments, documented in his books (SexPols, and Mass Psychology of Fascism, among others), he postulated that fascist and authoritarian regimes appeal to the most repressive and anti-sexual aspects of the patriarchal family (apparent in Nazi slogans). Is it then surprising that most religions as well as authoritarian systems have an anti-sexual nature, and promote marriage (in traditional loveless sense), are against choice for women, and support objectification and subjugation of women?

Where do we go from here? Reich in his book, Sexual Revolution, analyzed some reforms that were implemented early in the former Soviet Union (around 1920s which were all retracted when Stalin rose to power). These included abolition of marriage, declaring that children are property of state, meaning that their well being is guaranteed by the state. Women are also property of state (as men always were), and thus cannot be exchanged with and for money (dowry), nor can then abused. These reforms, according to Reich were very successful.

I believe we can learn from these experiments, and implement them in our society, if are to live in a peaceful society which is connected with nature, does not destroy mother earth for profit, does not repress its children (sexually and otherwise), does not wage wars, nor does it exploit its fellow human beings for economic gain, but provides the conditions for a life of pleasure and joy, love and tranquility.

References:
Branislaw Malinowski – Sexual life of savages.
Branislaw Malinowski – Argonauts of Western Pacific.
Friedrich Engles – Origin of Family, Private Property and State.
Wilhelm Reich – SexPols.
Wilhelm Reich – Mass Psychology of Fascism.
Wilhelm Reich – Sexual Revolution.
Wilhelm Reich – Invasion of Compulsory Sex Morality.


Branislaw Malinowski among natives of Trobrian Islands

Friedrich (Fritz) Perls was born in 1893 in Berlin. Against his family’s wishes, Perls served in the army during World War I. After the war, Perls studied medicine and began treating soldiers with brain injuries. He was drawn to the work of Sigmund Freud as a teenager, and his experiences treating patients pulled him further down the path toward Freudian psychoanalysis. He studied at the Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis and in Vienna.

In 1930, Perls married Lore Posner, later known as Laura Perls; the couple had two children and fled the Hitler regime by relocating to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1933. There, Perls founded a training institute to serve the psychoanalytical community. During World War II, Perls again joined the military and became a psychiatrist with the South African army.

In 1946, the Perls family moved to New York where Perls worked briefly with Wilhelm Reich and Karen Horney. Perls eventually settled in Manhattan and began working with the intellectual Paul Goodman. In 1951, in collaboration with Ralph Hefferline, Goodman and Perls produced the book Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, based mostly on Perl’s own research and clinical notes. Shortly after the publication in 1951, the Perls founded the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy and began conducting training from their apartment in Manhattan. Perls began sharing his theories with all of North America and began traveling extensively to conduct seminars and training workshops.

Later in life, Perls moved to California and became affiliated with the Esalen Institute, in 1964, where he provided workshops and continued to practice and develop Gestalt therapy. In 1969, Perls moved to Vancouver Island, Canada, to establish a training community for therapists. He died the following year in Chicago.

(Excerpts taken from GoodTherapy.org.) 

BODY-ORIENTED TRAUMA THERAPY: Clinical Perspectives. Examines the nature of trauma and its long-term effects, including recent research. Presenters include Dr Stephen Porges (creator of Polyvagal Theory), Dr Peter Levine (Creator of Somatic Experiencing), Dr Pat Ogden (Creator of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy), and Dr Bessel van der Kolk (Researcher and Author: Body Keeps the Score)

Ron Kurtz was the originator of Hakomi Therapy and the founder of the Hakomi Institute. Ron began to develop Hakomi in the 1970’s. With a background in science, mathematics, and computer engineering, Ron wrote: “My passion has been systems theory, especially the branch that studies living systems.”

Following graduate training in experimental psychology, Ron first taught at San Francisco State College, also leading encounter groups, and studying Gestalt. He became a client of John Pierrakos, founder of Bioenergetics, began to read the work of Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen, and was inspired by the work of Albert Pesso. He describes these experiences as “the beginnings of the Hakomi Method”. A practitioner of yoga since 1959, he was also strongly influenced by Buddhism and Taoism. He studied with Moshe Feldenkrais and received Rolfing sessions. He says, “All of this found its way into my thinking, my work and my writing… These threads: eastern philosophy, psychotherapeutic technique, and systems theory are the foundations of Hakomi.”

Stanley Keleman’s interest in the body has always been experientially based, beginning with an early involvement in athletics and continuing in his education at the Chiropractic Institute of New York, where he graduated in l954. After starting his practice as a clinician, he began to observe the relationship between emotional conflict, organismic movement and distortions of body posture. Following his interest, he initiated a program of training and research into the life of the body. He became a member in 1957 of Alexander Lowen’s Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis and was, until the l970’s, a senior trainer. He attended the Alfred Adler Institute and his thinking was affected profoundly by Adler’s ideas on the relationship of the state of the organism to its functioning, the will to power, and the role of society in personality development. This education and training balanced the characterological approaches of Lowen, Freud, and Reich.

In 1967, he moved to California where he interned at Esalen Institute in group dynamics and was exposed to humanistic psychology, the leading edge of psychology at the time. There in an atmosphere of cultural revolution, he established his form of working bodily. The interaction with many leaders of the humanistic movement – Carl Rodgers, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Alan Watts and others – provided a forum for his ideas. He met Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, and began a fifteen year association, teaching an annual program in which they developed connections between myth and the body. These workshops evolved into the annual programs taught by Stanley in Berkeley and Solingen Germany that connect dreams, body and the formative process.

His commitment to understanding the life of the body keeps him abreast of the changes in modern biology, neurobiology and molecular dynamics all of which help him understand how the body develops and matures. Along with his vision and philosophy, he has developed Formative Psychology®, an original methodology for teaching individuals how to participate in their own formative process. His pioneering efforts continue to take him into the forefront of learning how the body shapes itself over time, through all of life’s stages.

His Formative Psychology® methodology rests firmly on an anatomical and physiological base, as well as a psychological and mythological understanding. The Formative Psychology® approach deals with the human condition in its societal and evolutionary thrust toward forming a personal somatic self.