In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Petah Gibbs offers a critical perspective on the use of psychological testing and mental skills training in youth sport. Drawing from his clinical and sport psychology experience, he warns against the growing trend of treating children’s sport like professional sport, particularly through premature psychometric assessments like the Athlete Apperception Test (AAT). While these tools can be powerful in the hands of trained clinicians, Gibbs argues they should never be used to fast-track children into performance optimization pipelines driven by commercial or parental pressures. Instead, sport in childhood should remain a space for play, social development, and emotional learning—without the weight of adult expectations.
Dr. Gibbs also reflects on the sensitive application of projective tools like the AAT with younger populations. He emphasizes their true value lies not in diagnosis or performance enhancement, but in creating space for meaningful conversation—especially with children who struggle to engage verbally. The discussion touches on ethical practice, the risks of amateur misuse, and the importance of clinical supervision when working with emotionally vulnerable young athletes. Most poignantly, he underlines the deep integration between sport and life: challenges on the field are rarely isolated, and any responsible psychological intervention must take into account the full human experience of the child—not just their performance.
Mathias Alberton (00:03)
Hello everyone, this is Mathias Alberton, I'm the creator of Martial Attitude, this is Martial Attitude Voice, a podcast which explores a bit, yeah, no, spoke psychology, that's for sure, and then we do have ⁓ a great interest in the stories of visually impaired and blind people across the globe. I'm of course based in London, UK, but I also have spoken with athletes across the globe and I'm talking with visually impaired and blind people across the globe to understand their own subjective perspectives on visual impairment and the difficulties to navigate lies with this kind of impairment, which we know it exists to a very large degree of differences in a continuum, let's say, between being fully blind from birth or by acquiring sight loss later in life and to which degree sight loss is acquired. As you know, I am conducting a series of workshops every Sunday afternoon in central London to create more confidence and to enhance navigation skills among visually impaired and blind people. It's called Martial Attitude Training.
And I invite you to go on the website to send me a message if you'd to know more. In the last few episodes on the sports psychology side of things, so to speak, we have investigated a fascinating topic, which is the development and the use of a psychological technique called the Athlete Apperception Technique created by Dr. Petah Gibbs in collaboration with Daryl Marchant and ⁓ Mark Anderson. They have created this projective test in brackets or technique in order to understand a bit the individual underneath, beyond under the surface, the more visible surface of the athletes. We know that other examples of projective technique like the Rorschach, very notably, or the TAT are already existing, but no one before Dr. Gibbs actually created, let's say in a way validated, a system specifically for sport people.
I invite you to look at previous episodes to discover more. We have today, again, Dr. Gibbs, based in Melbourne, working as a psychologist, of course, in the past with high performance ⁓ sports and leagues, both in US and Australia, like the AFL, NBA, NBL, and so forth. We want today to have him on the conversation because there is something that we yet didn't explore. That is the children set of cards of the athlete's high-perception technique. So Dr. Gibbs, hello, how do you do?
Dr. Petah Gibbs (03:43)
Hello, Mathias. Good, thank you. Good to speak to you again.
Mathias Alberton (03:49)
It took me a bit longer to introduce the thing, but we have spoken already. It's a fascinating topic, but it's fairly complex. We went through a standard set of pictures and images. We do have a supplementary set of five pictures, which dig into specific emotions, trigger specific shadows if you like in psychoanalytic terms. But we also have a children's set here. So what is all this about and how did you come across the children's set in the first place?
Dr. Petah Gibbs (04:38)
Probably came about mainly through the model of using the TAT, the thematic outperception test, as a basis for what we were developing. And so the TAT has a regular set, an adult set. It also has a senior set, so that's for more elderly people. And so the images are more designed to elicit the type of responses that are culturally and environmentally respectful of elderly people's current living situations, you know, so things like being able to lift heavy things or living alone or death, things like that. so and then they also have a child version for you working with and people, know, adolescents and younger children in clinical settings. And so the idea was, you know, we have a lot of nowadays in sports psychology, probably more and more so as, you know, psychology in sport has become more and more and continues to become more and more recognised as a, as an important part of a young athlete's development more more parents and agents and we even see across the world in different sports we you know we see you know spectacular headlines where you know 13, 14 year old children are being signed long-term deals for know EPL clubs and being recognized very early and of course in the Olympics you know particularly in know sports like gymnastics where we get a lot of children who are probably just post pubescent, maybe pretty pubescent in some cases. So the idea that more more parents and coaches and generally the world of sport acknowledges that the mental side of the game is just as important as the physical side of the game. Especially, mean, at the professional level, if you talk to any full-time professional athlete, they will acknowledge that they probably only realised, I mean, I would guess that 95 % of the professional athletes that I've spoken to, both male and female, would have acknowledged that they recognised that they only realised the mental side of the game was equally as important as a physical game, if not more important, once they were in a professional environment.
Mathias Alberton (07:31)
In this regard I'm actually curious because well, when we speak about sport, we speak about athletes, professional athletes, they do it for a living, they do it for a lifetime, and so there is a standard set, added athletes, that's fine. But if what you just said about someone very young being spotted talent, early talent acquisition is a practice that is well known and is developed around the globe. And it's very important because the sooner you spot the talent, the better in order to develop the talent in a meaningful way for the talent, the Sam, themselves, and for the sport.
And of course, for all the by-product, is sponsorship, which is audience, which is performance and success, if you wish to buy into this kind of narrative for the clubs and associations. But my point is... Sport is predominantly played by children, not by adults. It's watched by adults. The adults are entertained. And we could argue that in the last 20 years, there's been a big advancement in athletes being older.
You you see it in all sports. The athletes themselves are becoming older or they are retiring at older age. But it all starts when they are children. So in a way, my first question would be, well, when you did develop the AAT, shouldn't actually have been a priority to think about children?
Instead of developing an adult set. Let's say the children set seems to be quite organically the most important set because it's the majority of the clientele, if you wish.
Dr. Petah Gibbs (10:02)
Yeah, I think you make a good point there. I still have reservations over that because I truly believe that children's sport is just recreation and fun. There may be a few people, for every professional athlete in any sport that has played their entire childhood with teammates or with other participants, you know, there's hundreds, if not thousands that are never going to be professional athletes and never going to play at a high level. They're purely there to play a game and have fun and learn what sport is really about, you know, especially for children. It's about socializing. It's important part of our environmental development as going to school is and developing relationships with peers. It's about loss and winning and dealing with that and modesty and frustrations. I could list off a million adjectives. ⁓ So the idea of the children, I mean, I've been approached by several, know, probably four or five different agencies. There was actually one agency and my co-author, Daryl, we had talked about that. You know, there was from the EPL, like a group of agents that look for young talent.
So they were saying, look, we're identifying talent at, you know, 12, 13. We want to sign these kids and then we want to start really helping them develop. by the time they're ready to play in the APL when they become, you know, 17, 18, we've really helped them with their physical and skill development, but we've also helped with their mental development. And in that sense, we think it'd be a great idea at that age of 12 or 13, maybe doing some psych testing, working with the sports ecologists, really starting to understand the mental side of it. So there's been a few different agency groups here and a couple of basketball academies that are on selling, basically saying, hey, we'll get you kids to college in America playing basketball. You sign up with us, give us some money and we'll help train your kids, do some extra training and we'll do some psych work with them, get them, you know, work on their mental side of the game and all of that. I was never interested in any of that. I find some of that fairly distasteful, especially agents having dealt with a lot of them. know, they're only in for money. They're not they don't really care about the athletes. I've met very few agents that actually really care about the people that they represent if they're not making a buck out of it.
That aside, there's also the insanity of the parents too. I've been around, I've been on boards of Junior Basketball Association and I've met that many parents that are completely insane when it comes to talking about their children and how good they are. know, like why is my Johnny, why is my Katie at age 12, they're not getting enough minutes, you know, that's crazy. They're going to be an NBA player.
My man, my general response to is, well, if they're to be an NBA player, they're going to get recognized and they're to be an NBA player because they're going to be that good. They don't need you pushing them and growling at the coach and all of that. Just let them be. Don't intervene. They don't need psych work. They don't need mental training. Just let them play. When you if you go to the NBA, NBA to play basketball professionally, you're just super talented and somebody's going to see it and you're going to get the minutes.
But if your Johnny at 13 isn't getting many minutes and you're having to push for them to get minutes, just your pushing alone might be the thing that actually helps them never to become professional athlete. So there's an insanity about how parents go about this mostly. You know, I've seen more crazy parents than I would like to ever see again in my life just through being around junior, you know, children's sport. And I'm sure a lot of listeners have had that experience. We all know those experiences.
Some are more overt than others. You know, the crazy parents that are screaming and yelling at their kids and the referees during a kids game. I mean, it is insanity. It's a kids game. Just let them play. So look, but the idea of having the test there, that's not to say the test shouldn't be there. The idea of having the test there are, are some very, there's a very small part of the population. I'm talking very small. It might only be a few. It might be that one kid that's like, wow, this kid is going to be a superstar. There's no doubt about it. We can see that in 13. Physically, skill wise, they're wanting to get better. They're wanting to commit to this. Their parents are behind it. Let's do some, you know, mental skills training. Therefore, that's where this technique might be helpful. But there are also dangers with this. And I probably need to, before we go into the actual images, you know, when we were developing this, if we this isn't a plaything. No tests, no test is a plaything. It really should be only used by professionals with training. know, the last thing you'd ever want is somebody who has no training in administration of tests, administering tests and then interpreting tests and using their own interpretation to make decisions on where the clinical or psychological treatment goes. That's, I think, particularly dangerous. So we've talked in previous podcasts about, look, the idea, the idea of the AAT is that you don't really need as a sports psychologist, you've got, you already have a good idea. You've been trained as psychologist. You've got a good awareness. You have, you understand your ethical, the ethical boundaries. You understand what is right and what is wrong. Hopefully, no, not everyone is as good as everyone else, but most people have a clear understanding. Do no harm.
So you can use the test, but you've got to be very careful about the interpretation. It can be difficult to interpret, but I won't even get into the ideas of transference and counter-transference. mean, that's talked a lot about in the book and in any transcript or article that we've written, because when we're talking about projective, we're talking a fair bit about the unconscious and we're talking about one of the ego-defense mechanisms.
Regardless of whether you're a fan of Freud or not, those ego-defense mechanisms are still terms that are used around the world to describe part of our, mechanisms that help us survive as humans and live in the world. So with, especially with psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy, which the projective tests are based on that theory. Transference and countertransference are a huge part of that. It's generally not taught. And so you can be a general therapist doing any form of therapy, whether it's CBT or positive psychology, whatever type you use, the theory is that there's always going to be transference and countertransference. And so in the interpretation, you've got to be really wary of that.
How much is the therapist projecting into their interpretation and their understanding of what the answers are that the clients are giving? So I don't want to get into that because that's probably need better experts than me in that area. it takes a fair bit to work through all of that. But that's a particular ⁓ flash point for when we talk about using the children set, you know, in the hands of somebody that's not super experienced in projection, you know, defence mechanism, transference, counter-transference, understanding how all that works and what to look for and what to be careful of, what to be wary of, some, you know, poor decision-making could happen, you know, so, you know, we probably see examples of that on TV all the time the one school counsellor who's had a couple of years of counselling during their education and the kid makes one comment and all of a sudden that kid and his parents are being investigated for abuse because they've just misread the situation or they're being overly eager or whatever. So we have to be really aware of that. the consideration of having a children's set wasn't for it to be really, I don't think, my co-authors might completely disagree, but I doubt it. I don't think it's really there for general use of, for children. It's more for people that are struggling, they're sports struggling, but they need to see a skill. If a child's struggling and my guess is that it's not just sport. I don't think life and sport exist separately. I've never worked with a professional athlete where life and sport exist separately. The issues they might be talking about that are affecting their sport might be actually really entrenched in their job and what's going on there in the sport. But we don't live separate to that experience. So they're generally quite tied to life. So with kids, they really need specialized experts to be working with them that particularly vulnerable population.
Mathias Alberton (20:15)
And from here, what are the images of the children set different from those of the standard set? Also considering that two images are derived from the standard set. When I say derived, meaning that they are the same as in the standard set. And one is equal copied shared with the supplementary set.
Dr. Petah Gibbs (20:47)
Yeah, so we did some testing and we found and decided on a set of five cards. know, 10 was probably too much just to get look at the very least. I've always found this at the very least the using these images to get trying to tap into the unconscious and trying to analyse a child or an adult or anything like that.
Sometimes the most difficult part of being a practitioner is evoking some type of discussion, is getting a client to talk and to talk openly and to divulge and to give up part of themselves. mean, when I did my placement, I I worked with fluent children, know, children that just refused to turn up to school. I think early on, I had a client that would just come in and he would sit there and you know, the general, like, how are you doing? How's your day? You know, nothing. He'd put his hoodie over his head and he'd lay on the table and he wouldn't speak. And then I'd try a few times, you know, like, well, look, why don't we just have a conversation? Tell me about any of your favourite hobbies, know, anything to try and get him to talk. Nothing. He was just angry and didn't want to be there. So at the end of the first 30 minute session, I said, OK, well, I'll see you next week. And he walked out, never said a word.
And that happened for probably four or five weeks. And I said to my supervisor, like, what do I do? Like, they said, no, you just got to keep doing what you do. And so probably four or five sessions, you know, it was like, okay, look, we have to talk. Otherwise, this is just, we're just going to be doing this for weeks and weeks and weeks. You have to go to school. We have to talk about why you're not going to school. Just tell me something about yourself. And, you know, eventually we started talking, but it was really hard for me as a young trainee at the very least, these images elicit some discussion because they they they clients generally feel like I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about I'm being tasked to tell a story about what's going on here. So we've found like they generally will talk about something something else out of themselves without really realizing that what they're doing is they're really projecting. So, the images, there's only five images. The first image looked generally to explain, know, as I said, they're pretty fairly simple pencil drawings, but it's a, it looks like three children sitting on the sidelines of what could be a baseball game or something like that, or a softball game, one child kneeling down. So it could be looked at as this is a, you know, a kid that's waiting for his turn to get on or he's sitting on the bench or he's always on the bench or he never gets on to the field. You know, he's, you know, always he's not good enough to be on the field. It elicits these type of general responses. Second one is a kid in a looks like an American football helmet with a adult talking to him. The kid looks despondent. So it's an adult. So you start tapping into the adult, you know, the relationship between maybe the coach or a parent and that that interaction. And then the third one is a pole vaulter, a young pole vaulter with the coach standing behind with hands on the pole vaulter helping to move upwards. So getting some instruction. The fourth image is a young athlete sitting in a field looking sitting down. It looks like a baseball field or a softball field looking completely despondent with their head in the hands. I say her to me it always looks like a female and most people see it as a female but some will see it as a male.
And there's a crowd behind. you know, something's gone wrong or she might be overcome with elation. But generally it kind of elicits grief. The fifth one is a young, young boy looks like who's got huge boxing gloves on sitting in the corner of a ring. So that, you know, that will elicit stories about, you know, competition, pre-competition stress, things like that. And then the last image is the one of the images from the main set, which is the six kids standing around getting chosen into teams to play. So, so it kind of elicits a whole range of different relationships, interpersonal relationships, but also sport, you know, there's sport themes in there as far as. How do you know your relationship with your coach, dealing with loss, dealing with frustration, dealing with not being chosen, dealing with fear of having to perform and dealing with having to develop a skill set. as you hopefully people can imagine just getting a young person, a child to look at these and tell a bit of a story about these, it might really give you some clues into what they want to talk about or maybe what's why they're presented to you.
Mathias Alberton (26:05)
And because you're saying this, my next question is kind of perfectly timed for this kind of reflection. in your experience, I mean, have you noticed remark what you think are children different than adults in regard to their approach or their reaction to the AAT.
Dr. Petah Gibbs (26:38)
As a whole, I haven't used it personally with tons of kids, only a few, apart from when we were validating the studies and collecting data. generally, I mean, I've worked with a lot of kids, but generally, if you can get a kid talking, that's the start, they're probably little freer about not being judged. Maybe I find adults more likely to tend to be worried about what they're saying because they're being judged and they're speaking to a psychologist or an expert who's judging everything they say. Like anyone out there who works in psychology or psychiatry or counseling or anything, if you ask what you do for a job and you say that, you know, the general reaction is not times I turn it's like, Oh, are you reading my mind? Just is it such, such the misunderstanding of the, maybe the public generally that any therapist has the, even has the skill to do that. So, you know, generally children, it's a bit of a discussion with somebody that they've been brought to see and they're probably, I find them a little bit freer. So they'll give a little bit freer, quite imaginative stories that seem can seem to go completely way off where you would imagine yourself as a clinician. I'm more than adults who I think probably are a little bit more aware of. I've got to get this right. You see, you can see that even I think in the way sometimes people answer. was talking about social desirability, the way people, adults answer questionnaires, you know, I don't want this person to think I'm lazy. So when it says, you know, am I excited to wake up in the morning and get to work? You know, I want to get this job. So, I mean, I would do that if I, if I needed a job, I'm a terrible morning person. am no, people don't talk to me before 11am because I'm such, such a horrible person. I'm a night owl. But if I had to get a job and get my interview, the employer asked.
You know, are you a morning person? You know, here at the office, we all get here really early and we'd like to get started early in the day. I would say, oh, absolutely. Yeah. Look, after I get up and have my jog at 5am and get back from the gym, I'd probably be here before anyone else. I love to get work early on, very bright in the morning. That's, I'm completely lying, but I'm being socially desirable because I want to impress the person to get the job. That's, that's the basic fault of all pencil and paper tests. They're completely open to response bias and there's very few ways other than that social desire of the test to meet to even get a sense of how much people are lying with projective testing. It kind of takes it out of the equation, but adults will back to your initial question. Adults will be, I find it generally more careful about the types of story they're telling and by pre-thinking like, well, if I say this is an out to elephants and they're having sex, then this therapist is probably stunned to judge me, something to do with elephant sex. If that makes sense. Which I would never judge, personally, I would never judge anyone talking about elephant sex. It's a legitimate conversation. Just joking. So with a child, I find they're less inhibited as to how you're thinking of me, how you're judging me. They just kind of talk and tell you.
Mathias Alberton (30:26)
When you're talking now, maybe is a right moment to ask, is there an age that is more viable to suggest the test with children? I'm thinking about right now children of the age of, I don't know, nine, 10 and above or 11 above, so secondary school kind of children. And I'm talking about the age because even adults, if you wish, as it was for the TAT, you mentioned at the beginning of the episode, there is a senior set kind of thing. So even this kind of, let's say, from the perspective of the client, this idea of being judged or being screened or being read thoroughly or the social desirability with age change, because, you know, it's quite common in a fable way, kind of a prototypical way, the older man is less concerned about society and desirability because it is past that. and as opposed to a younger man of, I don't know, 20 years old, which we know is very different, if anything, just physiologically speaking, from a man who is 50 years old. And therefore, you know, you cannot have a set for each age group, but you know what I mean. ⁓ Instead, for children, what age are we talking about?
Dr. Petah Gibbs (32:29)
Yeah. Well, with any protective test, most of the experts, including the authors of like the TAT, they're not made for young children. They're made for older children and adolescents. So probably that 10, 11 would be the youngest you'd really be looking at. They're specialized psychology tests. If a child needs psychological help because of issues, in perfect world, no child would need psychological help, but we know this is not a perfect world. ⁓ So those that have to see, do some assessment. There's really particular specialized tests for that. And there are experts who have done that a million times and know exactly how to use those tests. It's not for a general practitioner. These are more for, you know, I would think if, if it was, if there are sports psychologists out there listening to this saying, oh yeah, I've got a couple of people I could imagine using this for, know, ideally they'd be, you know, adolescents, know, they'd be post pubescent, you know, they'd be 15, 16, 17. They're preparing maybe for, you know, they're taking their sport fairly seriously. They know they want to work on their mental game a little bit, but they've got a few issues they want to work through with the therapist, with the sports psychologist. That's, that's safe and benign enough. But, you know, anything less than that, think there needs to be specialised training. Yeah. If you haven't had the experience of that, I would be very careful about going to a place, least, and then starting to interpret stories, you know, from, you know, from a projective sense.
Mathias Alberton (34:27)
And well, I don't want to be provocative for the sake of being provocative, thinking about the adults I've just said, mean, you know, adults might be different, different age groups, different approaches overall to life or to the closer reality or relationships. And when we're talking about children, now we do agree we're talking about younger or older adolescents. So in between the age of, let's say, 11 to 18.
So, but I don't want to be too provocative, but there are those adults who we might say never grow. Or I don't want to say that they have a Peter Pan syndrome or kind of approach to life because they are very lively or they are very imaginative or they are very joyful. Nothing bad. But there are some who are actually stuck for something that has happened in childhood.
And we know to a certain extent that a good number, a good amount of whatever problem, psychologically speaking, we are referring to when talking about someone, a client, might actually have a root in childhood. So the kind of question, not to be provocative, but... Isn't it that some adults actually would need more the children said than the adults said?
Dr. Petah Gibbs (36:25)
Yeah, that's a good question. I think if an adult was using the adult set and there were a lot of childhood issues, those issues would come out in their stories throughout anyway, some of those themes would come through there. And a couple of those images in the children set are in the adult set because they do generally the image where the six children stand around getting chosen because probably a majority of people have been in a situation with a group of friends or a neighborhood kids. You know, there's like, OK, there's eight of us, let's break into teams. I'm one leader. See the other leader. I choose you. I choose you. And two kids get left, you know, as the last two picks. That will evoke an emotion in most people that have been that or probably everyone that's been in that situation, you know, which is probably most people whether it's in the schoolyard or at home, of feelings they might identify as being the person that's generally, I'm good at soccer, so therefore I'm going to, I'll be one of the captains choosing the team, or I'm always the last one picked, or I'm somewhere in between. So, people with those issues with childhood themes that will come through, they'll come through regardless of the set that you using, I think the adults that will pick that up anyway. And look, you know, just to reinforce what we've probably talked about throughout this series of podcasts on this technique, any therapist that uses very much here and now type of psychology, you know, and that might be, you know, I don't know if you would or others would include CBT in that, you know, as bit of a here and now, know, positive psychology act, you know, some of the more modern therapies that are going around. They're not listening, they're probably not listening to this anyway. Well, we're not listening to this anyway, because that's not in their repertoire. It's probably not their interest area, you know, and I think that I think sports psychology personally, think sports psychology is made up mostly of people that are like, let's identify the problem and find a solution and move on more than let's sit down and work through your childhood and all your childhood issues and your environmental issues and what made you the adult you are today. That's generally not what sports psychology is about. Some therapists might end up working to that point if they develop a really good therapeutic relationship with an athlete. But the majority are, they're like, I've got an issue, let's work through the issue and let's move forward me about your relationship with your mother. That wouldn't be the first question of most sports psychologists. If any sports psychologist, tell me about your relationship with your mother. Whereas an analyst, that might be one of the few questions that they would ask. So this test is, or technique is, you know, for those that have got a relationship or really want to dive deep, it's not for, it's not for more superficial or here and now type of therapies, if that makes sense. And that's not a knock on them. I'm just saying this is a different theory and it's a different test. It's just a different way of doing things. And it might be appropriate for some athletes, some athletes you wouldn't use it for.
Mathias Alberton (40:01)
Looking back, is there anything you would revise, expand in the Athlete Apperception technique based on how athletes, and in this case, for instance, children, have responded to it in practice?
Dr. Petah Gibbs (40:21)
I honestly, it seems probably embarrassed and it seems kind of arrogant to say, immodest to say like, can't think of anything. And that's not to suggest that it's a perfect test. It's just, it's just based on a really well established, you know, more than a hundred year old, more than probably, you know, what the Rorschach 1921 and is still used, is still one of the top tests used and in the forensic, in legal settings it's used, in courts it's used, the raw shot is 1920, so it's over 100 years old and it hasn't been changed. It is exactly as it was in 1920. Some of the scoring systems have been updated or developed, but the core, but it is is what it is. The TAT 1935, it's the same, it's 90 years old. so we based it off that there's very few, if you buy into the theory as a clinician, as an expert, if you buy into the theory and you buy into the idea of it, then it works and it can really be a good tool in your arsenal.
But if you don't buy into it, it's completely useless. So I can't think of anything because I think it's based on really solid theory that's been around for, as I said, 100 years. And the two people I developed with, know, really, really experienced sports psychologists that been doing it forever. Not to say they're old, but they've been doing it for a long, time with thousands of athletes very well published across disciplines, not psychodynamic. If you look at both Daryl Marchant and Mark Anderson, very few of their publications are psychodynamic, psychoanalytic. They're very more contemporary sports, psychology and CBT and humanistic ideas, Eastern philosophy even. Mark does a bunch on with mindfulness and Buddhist type of philosophies.
So really eclectic. They just have, they have a love and a passion for all forms of psychology and embracing everything for, you know, and using the best of each one to have that eclectic view. so, you know, they're, you know, they, they see the value in things for different people, but, you know, from my understanding that they'll be picking and choosing that they get an athlete that approaches them with, I've got this particular issue.
And they meet with the athlete, do an intake. They may, we'll make a decision. It's not going to be like, okay, I'm going to give you the AAT. It's like, okay, I'm going to work with you on this and we'll do this. We might use this little questionnaire and this little questionnaire, we're just going to talk and we're just going to do mindfulness. That might be all that athlete needs. this athlete, this athlete I could really sit down and do an AAT with. So hopefully that makes sense.
Mathias Alberton (43:49)
Absolutely. And actually, I think this is a great way to close this episode and to close a bit of the discourse that we started, the conversation we started, the investigation, if you wish, we started on this technique you have developed together with Professor Anderson and Dr. Marchand as well. And... Honestly, it's been a fantastic journey. I am extremely grateful you had the time, the patience, the passion to talk and share what you have created, it can be used, to which kind of people would apply, for what kind of practitioner would be the best tool. I sincerely hope that the episodes we created together would be listened to by lot of people and have a significant, so to speak, ripple effect for the pop psychology community or at large, psychological community. So thank you very much. Thank you very much, Petah. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Petah Gibbs (45:05)
Yeah, thanks, Mathias. I want to thank you too, because as I probably said right from the beginning, and I think Mark said in his podcast, and it is that this was a real passion project. We really enjoyed it. I mean, this was my PhD dissertation. so, you know, I loved it and embraced it and Mark loves to embrace it. And we're really interested in this area of psychology ⁓ and bringing it across to sports psychology where it isn't really talked about at all this particular technique and theory. So just the opportunity to talk about it has given me great joy. It's not a chore at all to sit here and talk about it. It's ⁓ because generally in my life, no one cares whatsoever about what I do. So to meet somebody across the other side of the world who's like, hey, I'm interested in what you do is it's a great ego boost to use a Freudian term to finish with. And I've really enjoyed it. So appreciate it your time and interest.
Mathias Alberton (46:04)
Lovely. ⁓ I also take the occasion to thank all the audience who has been listening to us throughout these episodes and I invite them to listen to all the previous episodes with Dr. Pete Gibbs. Really, you will find incredible insights there if you haven't come across the episode before. And if you are visually impaired or blind or you know someone who is and is around the London area and would like to train a bit with me at Martial Attitude Training. I'm very happy for it. So please text, use social media, use the links in the description below and as usual, you keep in touch.