Synopsis of the book

Kafka's Father - Where in Space is Your Tormentor? - Introduction to Mental Space Psychology in twelve case studies

By Lucas Derks, Adrian Schweizer and Rainer Wawrzik

Estimated scope: 339 Pages incl. literature

Completion: Ready

Series: Published in the series "Die Mediation" (Steinbeis Edition), edited by Prof. Dr. habil. Gernot Barth (IKOME/Steinbeis University).

 

Information about the authors

Dr. Lucas Derks

Lucas Albert Charles Derks (born 1950) grew up in Utrecht in the Netherlands. Until the age of 26, his life was entirely dedicated to the visual arts. He was a lecturer at a center for lay art when, out of passionate fascination, he began to study social psychology. In his second year of study (1977), he encountered hypnotherapy and NLP, whose practical approach immediately appealed to him.

After graduating (1982), he worked in visitor research for several major Dutch museums. He was then asked to teach NLP as part of a hypnotherapy training and at an institute for remedial education. From there, he further developed as a psychotherapy researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Eclectic Psychology in Nijmegen – the city where he has lived since 1995.

The connection between social psychology and NLP led to the development of the Social Panorama model. This model analyzes human relationships as three-dimensional constructs and helps in their adjustment. This later resulted in the theoretical insight known as "Mental Space Psychology," which views all of psychology as an imaginary spatial process – the guiding question is: "Where do you think what?" In 2016, Lucas received his doctorate on Mental Space Psychology.

Lucas has made the worldwide dissemination of his work his life's work. To this end, he has written four books and a multitude of articles and produced 15 documentaries. He now spends a large part of his work abroad.

Adrian Schweizer

Adrian Schweizer (born 1958) studied law, journalism, psychology, communication and military sciences in Bern and Santa Cruz (California) as well as at Harvard Law School – a combination of subjects that already suggests that conflicts have never interested him solely as a legal issue. For several years, he initially worked as an investigating judge and lawyer.

What is dealt with in courtrooms is rarely what truly separates the parties involved. Based on this observation, around 1990, he and other pioneers "invented" the professions of coach and business mediator, as well as process-oriented organizational development – job descriptions that did not yet exist in German-speaking countries at the time. Today, he coaches investors, entrepreneurs, and board members. He successfully mediated a dispute worth 300 million francs and co-designed the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland with 10,000 participants as a process coach.

In parallel, he passed on his craft: He taught at the universities of Passau, St. Gallen, Hagen, and Karlsruhe and has trained around 4,000 mediators and 400 executive coaches to date. He has written ten books in his fields of expertise, including the standard works “Cooperation Instead of Confrontation. New Ways of Lawyerly Negotiation” (with Reiner Ponschab) and the three volumes “Conflict Resolution Without Court – Mediation, Coaching, Sustainability”. He repeatedly tries to bring together fiction and non-fiction in one form.

Adrian's question today is that of a practitioner who has been around long enough to see trends come and go: Which methods really make a difference, and which are just hot air? Two books on the subject are in preparation. This volume features his Paternoster model, which connects the Logical Levels with the four Perceptual Positions. When not traveling the world, he lives in the Old Frisian Republic of Gersau on Lake Lucerne.

Rainer Wawrzik :

Rainer Wawrzik (born 1967) lives in Bad Vilbel, Germany. His professional life began with mainframes: He is a trained software developer specializing in mainframe systems and, after positions in various banks, worked at Commerzbank in Frankfurt as a manager and major project manager. Those who build systems there learn to break down complex requirements until they can be translated into a functioning architecture.

However, the larger the projects became, the clearer it became that the most difficult systems were not located in data centers, but in the minds of those involved. To expand his leadership skills, he trained as a Systemic Executive Coach at the FernUniversität in Hagen. This was followed by a long series of teachers: Prof. John Grinder (USA) in NLP, Dr. Stephen Gilligan (USA) in Trancework, Dr. Gunther Schmidt (Milton-Erickson-Institut Heidelberg) in hypno-systemic concepts, Dipl.-Psych. Insa Sparrer and Prof. Dr. Matthias Varga von Kibéd in Systemic Structural Constellations (SySt), Dr. Connirae Andreas (USA) in The Wholeness Work, and finally Dr. Lucas Derks (Netherlands) in Mental Space Psychology.

Both worlds continued to exist side by side. As a certified Scrum Master, he accompanied the agile transformation of Commerzbank as a change agent, implemented the role of Release Train Engineer there and held it until his early retirement, alongside his roles as line manager and change manager. He has been working as an independent executive coach and trainer since 2013, and since 2021 he has been part of the training team for the

What Rainer has taken from software development is not a method, but an attitude: to clarify tasks to such an extent that an approach becomes recognizable that works. This is exactly what he does today with problems in people's minds. From the multitude of his training, he filters out what proves useful in practice and combines it into new procedural strategies – the spatial miracle question is one of them. He presents some of these approaches in this book.

 

Core message of the book:

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Young is based on the exploration of the client's imagination. In the 30s of the last century, the research of people's dreams, images and visions was considered too complex by academic psychology and was no longer pursued further. Instead, the focus was on the analysis of visible behavior (behaviorism) and correct thinking (cognitive behavioral therapy). Since then, the assumption has been that trained behavior and correct thinking can dissolve bad feelings in the long run. Cognitive behavioral therapy and its further developments still dominate the field of therapy and coaching today. The "Dark Ages" psychological interventions, which academically do not care about people's imagination, continues.

In the 70s of the last century, researchers at the University of California in Santa Cruz Gregory Bateson , John Grinder , Richard Bandler and Frank Pucelik the exploration of people's imaginations. They investigated which feelings and which thoughts trigger which ideas and, above all, how exactly these ideas are put together from the representational systems of seeing, hearing, riching, tasting, smelling and sensing. If the client is sad, does he experience this sadness as an image or as a film? Colored or black and white? Is he in the plot or does he see himself from the outside? Does he hear a possible voice from the right, left or is it even stereophonic? Her hypothesis, which has now been tested millions of times, is that targeted changes in the way the imagination is constructed changes the feelings, thoughts and behaviour of clients.

Lucas Derks has succeeded in further developing this biological approach to people's thinking, feeling and behaviour. His research, based on the findings of the four pioneers, has led to the Mental Space Psychology guided. The MSP assumes that every feeling and every thought is stored electrochemically in the brain and once in a kind of hologram in the room around us. One can easily test this hypothesis by simply thinking of one's mother, daughter, son or Angela Merkel and observing where in three-dimensional space around ours this hologram is located. In front? Behind? Left? Right? Size? Distance? Feeling?

If these holograms are analyzed, deconstructed and reassembled with regard to their structure from the five sensory systems, the feelings, the thoughts and thus the future behavior change.

The book describes theoretically why this is so and shows in twelve case studies, which are structured like short stories, how the MSP is applied in practice.

The book also brings together the twelve approaches into a meta-approach that meets both the efficacy science requirements of Grawe as well as the neurobiological view of Roth and allows the user to develop individual intervention strategies adapted to the client.

The book teaches vehicle construction and not how to build cars, trucks or motorcycles and then do nothing but build cars, trucks or motorcycles. Vehicles that really drive!

 

Target group/readership

• Practicing coaches and therapists, who are interested in new horizons and want to increase the efficiency of their (academically) learned processes.
• Coaches and therapists who work on Methods validated by efficacy science and neurobiology trust.
• Coaches and therapists who would like to have a clear Instructions for action follow.
• Young coaches and therapists who are open to new procedures.
• Persons who themselves Continuing Education Courses in psychotherapy or coaching, but have little experience in how to put what they have learned into practice.
• Students in training to become a coach or therapist.

 

What benefits does the target group get from reading it? ?

In the book, the target group learns how to deal with the Mental Space Psychology so that their work can be carried out according to the criteria of psychotherapeutic effectiveness research ( Grawe) and the neurobiological perspective ( Roth ) brings about long-term changes. The book guides them to expand their own practice by directly addressing the client's systems of representation, and in particular the client's imaginary world manifested in space, in such a way that their work becomes even more effective. In essence, this is an extension of the cognitive-linguistic speech intervention that is still taught practically everywhere today, which unfortunately is not effective or only effective in the short term, to the long-term effective emotional-physical intervention, as demanded by neurobiology and academic effectiveness research.

 

What means will be used to implement it?

Comprehensibility-oriented, more American than European writing style. Mixture between journalism and scientific approach. Theoretical foundation, presentation of the assumptions, case reports, work instructions, exercise inserts, questionnaires, many graphics and visualizations.

 

Which books are in direct competition?

To our knowledge, no other

 

What makes the book unique?

 The book is the fruit of 30 years of research and application. With the help of twelve Case histories how to change the client's imagination in such a way that their feelings, thoughts and behaviour change sustainably and in the long term. Part of the MSP was considered a Social Panorama 10,000 times taught and successfully applied 100,000 times around the world in the last 30 years. The book brings this practical review of the Mental Space Psychology and the Social Panoramas to the point, gives precise, understandable instructions for action, links the procedure with the latest academic research and remains easy to read and understand.

 

Table of contents

Foreword by Prof. Dr. Hansjörg Znoj (University of Bern)

Foreword by the editor, Prof. Dr. habil. Gernot Barth (IKOME/Steinbeis University)

Acknowledgments of the authors

Prologue

1. "Out in Space!" – How to work practically with Mental Space Psychology (MSP) and Who is the book aimed at? ?

2. 'Please dis-associate' – The three psychotherapeutic paradigms .

3. 'The brain is a GPS!' – Why the Space is the most important organizational principle of our psyche.

4. „What process steps does an effective psychotherapeutic intervention follow?“ – As far as the psychological Efficacy Research says about it.

5. "You pig, you vile sack!" – How to participate in a manifestation abreacted .

6. "I'm surrounded by idiots!" – How to make manifestations Mixes .

7. "I'll show you where the hammer hangs!" – How to make manifestations postpones .

8. "I've always been on the brakes since then!" – how to make manifestations Weaves .

9. "The crowd of idiots!" – How to make manifestations Modeled .

10. "I'm the pusher!" – How to use resources Merges .

11. "The problem is all inside your head she said to me" – How to deal with the manifestations negotiates .

12. "Roses for Grandma" – how to Relations between manifestations Manifested .

13. "The weakest link" – how to use the Time (Family Panorama).

14. "You were a bad boss" – How to Clouds of burden resolve.

15. "That's how it works!" –Ours Intervention strategy Mental Space Psychology.

16. "The Crying Suse" – How to avoid unconscious bad previous experiences neutralizes .

Epilogue

Bibliography

Annex 1      "How does empathy work?" - How to sensitive becomes.

Annex 2      "Incidentally, we assume the following!" - What are the Assumptions of the MSP?

Annex 3 Working with the self – Changing a weak self-experience

Appendix 4 EGO development, coaching and therapy – Which coach or therapist uses which methods and why?

Annex 5 Understand

Appendix 6 Possible areas of application

Appendix 7 Glossary, subject and personal index

The authors

 

Applications

 

Chapter	Possible areas of application	Lowdown
4.8 - Lack of self-confidence - Self-esteem problems	Title	"I'm afraid of myself!" – How to discover your self
	Method	'Changing a weak self-experience' ⇨ Improve self-image
5 - All types of aggression and aversion towards others	Title	"You pig, you vile scumbag!" – How to vent on a manifestation
	Method	Neutralizing hatred / aggressive metaphors / silently reacting ⇨ to let off steam on a manifestation
6 - Problems of belonging with groups - Exclusion from groups	Title	"I'm surrounded by idiots!" – How to mix manifestations
	Method	Belonging and non-belonging as a fundamental need – "mixing" ⇨ Mix Manifestations
7 - Suffering from the authority of others - Suffering from one's own authority	Title	"I'll show you where the hammer hangs!" – How to postpone manifestations
	Method	Changing Authority Relationships ⇨ Postpone manifestations
8 - Shock experiences	Title	"I've always been on the brakes since then!" – how to weave manifestations
	Method	Dealing with trauma (dis-associated) Dealing with trauma (associated) ⇨ Interweaving manifestations
9 - Bringing people who work with groups into an optimal relationship with the group.	Title	"The Idiots!" – How to Model Manifestations
	Method	Coach Panorama ⇨ Model Manifestations
10 - Ambiguity - Dilemma - Doubt - Inner conflict	Title	"I'm the Pusher!" – How to Merge Resources
	Method	Building a positive self over a negative one ⇨ Merge manifestations with resources
11 - Conflicts between two parties - Negotiate	Title	„The problem is all inside your head she said to me“ – How to negotiate with manifestations
	Method	Negotiation and mediation panorama ⇨ Negotiate with manifestations
12 - Grief for the deceased - Detaching from ex-partners - Detaching from "own babies" such as companies one has sold	Title	"Roses for Grandma" – how to manifest relationships between manifestations
	Method	Spiritual Panorama (Mourning) ⇨ Changing manifestations
13 - Finding peace with the family - Deep-rooted, unwanted patterns of social experience and behavior that we suspect originated in early childhood.	Title	"The weakest link" – how to work with time (Family Panorama)
	Method	Family panorama ⇨ Work with the times
14 - Overload - Burn-out - Depression	Title	„You were a bad boss“ – How to dissolve clouds of stress
	Method	Depression in Awareness Space (DAS) ⇨ working with the cloud of burden
16 - Bad feelings - Changing (compulsive) behavior	Title	"The Crying Suse" – How to Neutralize Unconscious Bad Previous Experiences
	Method	Fast Imprinting ⇨ reconditioning trigger emotions ⇨ identifying trigger emotions ⇨ three-dimensional miracle question ⇨ resource overload ⇨ metaphorical decorating