What can the psychomotoric therapist do, to enable a child to learn how to act, create and change with joy and pleasure- all of which are basic prerequisite for life?
First of all she has to be open, available and flexible enough for the child to feel that being active together and with each other is a possibility. Being active together here meands, that each others differences are accepted and appreciated, but each person is and remains an individual. A rule recorded in »Bruno« is always valid: »He (the therapist) is personally taking part; he is having an infra-verbal dialogue, within which, everybody experiences the body of the other (…) . This could be called ›empathic behaviour‹ on a physical and psycho-tonic level. Authenticity, willingness, empathy are basic terms of Rogers psychological theory which re-enforce the purpose of the supportive interaction with a client in a psychomotoric session ( Aucouturier, 1995, p.13).« Or in other words: the unity or representation of oneself can only evolve within a pleasurable relationship with another person. Only if the psychomotoric therapist is willing to be transformed, to be changed is she able to establish a joyful relationship. For this it mainly needs a stable image of the psychomotoric therapist herself, who is not scared of transformation brought about by somebody else, but who experiences and shares this with joy. By doing this, the child is granted a receptive mirror of the joint interaction. I have emphasised the importance of self- awareness and physical experience during training for psychomotoric therapists in my book »Beweg-gruende« ( Esser,1992, p57 ). The psychomotoric therapist is helping the child to recognise her repetitive play behaviour, which is obstructing her development. The therapist can ask the child for solutions to make changes possible. Moreover the therapist can help the child to find solutions and work on these.
It's not the therapist who has the solutions but the child who knows them!

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