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I am writing this editorial on our King’s birthday – a national bank holiday in the Netherlands. Normally, our towns and cities are filled with people dressed up in our national colour orange, celebrating and are having fun, drinking on behalf of the King’s health. But then came Corona, and everything changed. We are now stuck in our houses during the “intelligent lock down” in our country, singing or playing our national anthem before the tv set trying to experience a “community feeling” of some kind.
Where are you and your loved ones in your social panorama in these Corona times? Are they close by, or – due to the social distancing – far away? Even if we have to keep distance, we can treasure them in our hearts, hoping for better times to come.
Corona has messed up the lives of many people world-wide; many people have died or are still lying very ill in hospital. Let this crisis be a wake-up call for us all, to make this world a better place. Even in a time of lock down and quarantine there are new developments with regard to the spread of mental space psychology. Now is a time for reflection, that helps us to draw new conclusions about many things in life, which may help the start of a new paradigm shift.
Lucas highlighted 10 developments in mental space that took place during this lock down situation. And aren’t we all desperately hoping things will change soon, so we can go out and hug each other again, like we used to do? On behalf of the whole SOMSP team I wish you all good health and of course: stay safe!
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10 MSP highlights during standstill
- Our Israeli ambassador Lumi Raz translated MSD-1 into Hebrew, and subtitled Mental Space Atlas in the same language. She also started a project of trauma treatment with mental space as the point of departure.
- Our German colleagues Ekkehart and Brigitte Padberg finished the German translation of Mental Space Psychology. This book will soon be available in Germany, the country with the most ‘spatial activities’ in the world.
Furthermore, the Prenzl-Komm Psychiatrische Verbund in Berlin have been working with spatial models for more than 20 years. They will study Mental Space Diagnosis MSD-1 during an extra day and evaluate it on the basis of their psychiatric work experience.
- Our Turkish colleague Seyitali Erbektas is in the last phase of getting Social Panoramas published in a Turkish translation of his own making. He will also take on the job to promote and present the Social Panorama and Mental Space Psychology in Turkey.
- Marja-Leena Savimäki in Finland is in the process of translating MSD-1 in Finnish. For more than 10 years she presents 5 day workshops on the level of social panorama consultants and has already organized 2 MSD workshops in Finland.
- Lisa de Rijk (Wake) in England, is working on a second edition of The Clinical Effectiveness of NLP. She is planning to dedicate a chapter to the research project of the Society (SOMSP) about the treatment of depression, as well as a chapter on the clinical investigation of the treatment of eating disorders by Jacqueline Heemskerk.
- The data analysis of the MSP-D research project is completed and the results are really positive, with our special thanks to Daan Masselink for the analysis and his father Robbert who contributed greatly to the project. We are writing a few additional articles on the subject, slightly more academic than the ones we already wrote up to now. The MSP-D project received a lot of attention and various lectures were given on the topic. Christine Beenhakker and Dienie van Wijngaarden developed a 2-day workshop for mental health workers in the Netherlands, which also will be organised in other countries abroad in due time.
- This year Corona blocked the Dutch Social Panorama Consultants Training, and it also postponed the trainings in Tokyo, Berlin, Portugal and perhaps even more, depending how the virus will be under control. However this opened a time space for creating something new activities. Lucas Derks made an inventory of the psychological theories that are hampering the acceptance and development of mental space psychology. This led to a video program called “Misleading theories in psychology”. 12 lectures of about 20-30 minutes will be produced and will be available soon. We will make these video’s also available to psychology students all over the world.
- Gen Rippingale in New Zealand, will surprise us with an unorthodox book about the use of mental space, your inscape, for improving your purpose in life. The working title is ‘Directions’, and we hope it will be available in our webshop soon.
- MSD-1 is being translated into Japanese, although we have not seen a copy yet .
- Social Panoramas, the book, is available in Russian, as a grey download. Congratulations!
In the mean time we are working on connections, mainly in Germany, to get a Mental Space Congress on its feet. But this may still take some time. There are many events, trainings and lectures, planned for the next two years, and hopefully we are able to let them take place.
So, where is the corona crisis in your mental space? If it is too disturbing there…. Just move it to a better location! And when you feel lonely … imagine the whole society of mental space psychology around you. We are your friends and are with you all during these difficult times.
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On February 5 our SOMSP board members Lucas and Jacqueline flew to India to give some workshops and trainings.
Jacqueline: “Our journey started with a short stopover in Dubai to visit the world's tallest building the Burj Khalifa. Bhavana Nissima, SOMSP-ambassador in India, picked us up at the airport in Hyderabad in the middle of the night (03:00). The next days she showed us her hometown, and visited Golconda Fort, built in 1518 and a museum. Even before we had given our trainings we were already famous because everyone wanted a selfie with us! They recognized us everywhere… Ah, the trainers of the society for mental space psychology!
Because we had seen too little of the beautiful Indian nature last year, from Hyderabad we flew to Kochi 2 days later, Kerala, in the southern part of India. This allowed us to acclimatize for a week, get used to the English language ‘India style’, the food and enjoy the beautiful nature.
We had a car with a private driver Ben, a very gentle person, and we toured around in the area. First we stayed in a bird sanctuary, the Hornbill camp, where Lucas photographed as many beautiful birds as possible. A few days later we followed a magnificent mountain road to Thekkada, where we had arranged to do several trips in the tiger reserve: by boat and by foot (all with guides). We didn’t see tigers but there were a lot of monkeys and gaurs, and we were also very lucky to spot some wild elephants. After a week we were back in Kochi and the next day we flew to Hyderabad. Bhavana picked us up again and took us to a fantastic 5 star hotel where we could relax by the pool for a few more days.
February 19 the 3 days Mental Space Psychology of Lucas started. The hotel had a very nice training room. Bhavana and Sridevi Datta had organized it perfectly and they did their best to make Mental Space Psychology known in India. There was an enthusiastic group of participants.
Then it was my (Jacqueline) turn to train, with 2 days MSP-Food Panorama and Overweight. Eating patterns, binge eating and overweight in the unconscious mental space. The feedback was very positive: especially about the practical use that was demonstrated. It was a thrilling experience for me.
The journey continued by plane to Visakhapatnam, a beautiful city on the Bay of Bengal.
After 2 days of enjoying the city, the beach, the boulevard and the beautiful park, the 5-day Social Panorama Consultant training by Lucas started. Here we also could use a very fine decorated and soundproof room, within our own hotel. It was all super convenient and at night we went on sightseeing missions; from visiting a submarine at the boulevard, to visiting temples. When I mentioned that the food was too spicy, the chef came to our table and made a European type meal for us, and did that every day! All flights were in time and all schedules were met. After nearly a month of training and sightseeing we hopped in an Airbus 380 back home. Thus zero hardships in India: thanks to the perfect organization by Bhavana and Sridevi. No wonder that they did this so well, because we found out that they are both very well educated, communicative, caring, and smart NLP-trainers with very high standards for ethics. It was a great honour and pleasure to work for them. They had a great skill in ordering Uber-taxis and auto-tuktuks to take us to a series of unbelievable restaurants and to a cinema theatre.
Then at the end, at five o’clock in the morning(!), Bhavana said goodbye to us at the airport. In the evening of March 3, we arrived just in time at Schiphol, before the lock down started everywhere. We had a beautiful historic closure of the pre-corona era.”
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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. At the moment the following countries have MSP Academies: Germany, Portugal, Finland, Japan, Spain, India and Israel. If you are interested to start up an MSP academy in your own country, please contact Lucas Derks or René Koppelaar.
In case you missed it: watch our introduction video about the new paradigm Mental Space Psychology, that connects spatial cognition with psychotherapy.
Are your looking for 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.
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 (j.heemskerk@somsp.com) 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.
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Our MSP-Depression 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. The research project is reaching its closure and the data-analysis is completed. We are now writing various scientific articles with the main results of this interesting project, which will be published this summer.
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Our SOMSP community is growing fast. We are therefore intending to organize an international conference on MSP in 2021. Our aim is to connect people with each other throughout the world who are working in the field of MSP, and to inform and inspire people about the latest developments in mental space psychology. As soon as we have more details about this, we will let you know.
The SOMSP is looking for people who would like to commit themselves to our society – not only in a virtual manner, but also hands-on. For practical reasons we are especially looking for people in Europe, e.g. to help us organize this conference. The first contacts have already been made. As we are a non-profit organisation, we need all the support we can get to make it work. If you have any constructive idea’s, or would like to support us and/or contribute to our Society in one way or another, please contact our chairman, Michiel Brandt |
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We hope you are just as enthusiastic as we are about mental space psychology! Please send us your experiences and ideas - we would be very happy to publish your views and comments in our newsletter.
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Our next newsletter is due in August 2020.
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