Summary

“Filling in the Holes: Creating Structures” begins with a pair of quotes suggesting that human beings have the potential to alter their minds by choosing to see things in different ways. Author van der Kolk then prologues this chapter with the question of how people who have never known the presence, support, love, or acknowledgement of important people in their lives could fill the inner gaps that that lack of knowing had left behind. He then describes observing, and then participating in, a technique called psychomotor therapy developed by former dancer Albert Pesso, which functioned on two levels. The first was for the therapist to verbally acknowledge (“witness”) what clients said about their experiences; this acknowledgement of feeling, the author comments, allows clients to feel safe and believed. The second level of function is to offer clients the opportunity to...