Something Completely Different
We had an extraordinary summer with lots of sunshine, high temperatures and hardly any rain. Of course, we all enjoyed it. But it was also quite extraordinary, meaning: different from the ordinary, moderate summers we normally experience. We needed to adapt to this climate change and think of different ways to cope with it. Watering the garden, protecting our plants from too much sunshine, sitting inside the house with the aircon or in the shade instead of tempting ourselves in the harsh sun.
And so it is with mental space psychology: we are doing something completely different from what people are used to experience in e.g. talking therapies, so they can learn new coping strategies to manage their problems. Which just can be the key to major changes in their lives. As Lucas Derks states in his article The future of psychiatric diagnosis lies in space: “The prediction is, that one day in the far (off) future, the concept of mental space will be embraced by psychiatry. Psychiatrists will explore where in mental space clients locate an create their issues”. Depression, obesity, family problems, relationships, anxiety etc. are all issues we can treat with this new paradigm in mental therapy: space as the primary organizing principle in the mind.
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Christine presented the first results of our Depression research project at the 7th International Conference on Spatial Cognition in September in Rome. Participants were very interested in the application possibilities of mental space in psychological therapy, which was quite new to them and not commonly known. As talking therapies are the mainstream – this method was really “something completely different” for them to acknowledge.
We are therefore are planning to organize our own conference on Mental Space Therapy in due time. We will keep you posted!
Christine’s talk “Where has my depression gone?”
at the 7th ICSC, Faculty of Medicine & Psychology, Rome
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Lucas and Christine gave a workshop together on Saturday October 27th during the DVNLP Kongress in Hamburg, Germany: “Ein klinisches Experiment mit NLP und Depression”.
NLPt (Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy) is a relatively new development in NLP and we were very pleased with this opportunity to explain and demonstrate our method MSP-Depression here. Lucas also participated in a forum discussion with Dr. Maja Storch, psychologist, Martin Haberzettl and Joerg-Friedrich Gampper about her lecture “Lieben Sie doch, wie Sie wollen!” (Love as you want to!).
Forum discussion with (from left to right):
Joerg-Friedrich Gampper, Dr. Maja Storch, Lucas Derks & Martin Haberzettl
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MSP news
The mission of the international MSP Academy is to make Mental Space Psychology accessible to all those who seek it and to increase the global awareness of mental space psychology. Our aim is to found a national MSP academy in many countries. We recently introduced the Dutch MSP academy platform on facebook: MSP-Academy Nederland. The Dutch academy will organize workshops and trainings in the Netherlands in the field of mental space psychology, e.g. Mental Space and Depression (MSP-D), Over weight (MSP-O), Social Panorama etc.
We are very pleased to mention the other European countries which are starting up MSP Academies: Germany, Portugal, Finland, Japan, Spain, India and Israel. In our next newsletter we will inform you further about these initiatives.
In case you missed it: watch our introduction video about the new paradigm Mental Space Psychology, that connects spatial cognition with psychotherapy.
Are your interested in books in the field of Mental Space Psychology (MSP)? Visit our webshop and find out what might interest you! We are still collecting titles, so if you can provide us with some good and informative books, please contact René Koppelaar.
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Our facebook community is still growing steadily! At this moment we have 714 followers on our homepage of the Society for Mental Space Psychology. Help us to reach 1000 followers by the end of the year!
The Mental Space Psychology Group has been launched on Facebook, and you are kindly invited to join us in discussions or post information in the field of mental space on this platform. Jacqueline Heemskerk is responsible for all our communication on social media. Our aim is to share interesting issues with each other and deepen our knowledge about mental space and spatial cognition.
We recently introduced the Dutch MSP-Academy platform on facebook: MSP-Academy Nederland, where you will find all information about the Dutch MSP trainings and workshops shortly. We are working hard to get the local website MSP-Academy.nl in the Netherlands up and running as soon as possible.
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Due to legal issues, we were unfortunately forced to change the name of our Depression in Awareness Space (DAS) research project into Mental Space Psychology-Depression (MSP-D). From now on this project will be communicated as MSP-D.
Our MSP-D research group consists of four people: Lucas Derks, social psychologist PhD, Dienie van Wijngaarden, health psychologist PhD, Christine Beenhakker, applied psychologist BSc and Jacqueline Heemskerk, psychological therapist.
On August 30th we organized the second workshop on MSP-D for about 30 experienced therapists, to teach and explain the MSP-D method and provide them with all information needed for their experimental therapy sessions. We expect to have the results of this second round in May 2019, and of course will give you an update then.
Workshop Mental Space Psychology and Depression, 30-10-2018
We are also planning to organize MSP-D workshops next year for therapists who just would like to learn the MSP-D method (without participation in the research project), as well as for health care centres and doctors practices. All information about these workshops will be posted on our MSP-Academy Nederland facebook page as well as on our SOMSP agenda. If you are interested in learning MSP-D or would like to have a workshop on this subject in your own country, please contact Jacqueline Heemskerk or Christine Beenhakker. |
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This summer we introduced Lucas’ new video course Mental Space Atlas, that covers the whole range from the history of this new psychological paradigm up to the future use in psychotherapy and psychiatry. It aims at an audience with a professional interest, like psychologists, linguists, researchers and practitioners of various forms of psychotherapy. The 13 modules include three demonstrations of multi-modal spatial psychotherapy and also the 2014 documentary “Mental Space Psychology”, that gives a voice to a variety of people that make use of spatial interventions. The total duration of all the video material is approximately 9,5 hours. For more details and information, you can watch the trailer.
Gert Arts interviews Lucas Derks
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The future of Psychiatric Diagnosis lies in Space - and is so off from DSM that you probably don’t want to know, by Lucas A.C. Derks, September 2018.
Mental-spatial psycho diagnosis can be an addition or even an alternative for symptom based statistical diagnosis, like the DSM. The foundation for mental spatial diagnostics is made in the multidisciplinary field of spatial cognition. However, the link to psychiatry has never been made.
Mental Space Psychology – a Review of some Clinical Experiments and their Neuroscientific Background, by Claudia Wilimzig and Lucas A.C. Derks, Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, vol. 21, no 3 (83) September 2018
The objective of this article is to review clinical experiments in mental space and discuss the neuro scientific background.
Physical Activity and Incident Depression: What the Data Tell Us
Brian Miller, MD, PhD, MPH. Research update, published July 2018
Rezension Claudia Wilimzig ´Einführung in das topografische Coaching. Lösungen mit dem Raummodell´ - mit einem Geleitwort von Wolfgang Looss. Springer, Wiesbaden 2018.
Ein origineller Ansatz, der auf Psychotherapie und modernste Psychologie zurückgreift, wird hier prägnant und einleuchtend beschrieben.
What is depression, and why is it rising?
The Guardian, June 2018.
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For all activities concerning Mental Space Psychology and Social Panorama, please check our website or the MSP-Academy Nederland facebook page,
NLP International Conference, 17 – 20 May 2019, London, organised by the ANLP, Great Britain, where Lucas will give a workshop on Mental Space Psychology, and Christine will give a workshop about MSP and Depression.
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Next newsletter
Our next newsletter is due in February 2019.
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