Some family members and friends said to me after my retirement “Why do you go always go on? Why don’t you stop?”  Then I asked myself: Why am I doing this work? What is my basic inspiration?

My most spontaneous answer is that it is a “drive,” something which is incessantly pushing me from the inside, I just cannot stop it, I have to go on. Moreover, it gives me the well-known “pleasure beyond small talk,” like drinking water from a deeper well without precisely know

For scholars, present time is marked by the inevitable and extensive demand for academic publishing. Many are aware of thoughts and feelings of what it is to write an article or a book, while the mental life of the editor for an academic journal is analysed very seldom. The backstage of reviewing and editing processes is not too familiar to a wider public. Although, the position of editor brings with it many positive aspects, as strange as it is, the editors can not avoid the affective turmoil a

I am in Beijing improving with Chris, Joanne, Rocky, Debra their professional and managerial  competences in view of educating new trainers and attracting entrepreneurial professionals for Shanghai and Beijing. I finished my activities for now, but cannot move to my projects in Holland that I like to work on too. Airplanes stay grounded. I recorded my thoughts and emotions and actions being in the special position “I am in a place I like to be, but not at this moment”.

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Dialogical Self Theory (DST)[1] has proven to be very helpful to my theological work as well as my personal spiritual practice. Even more so after reflecting on the bestselling books by Eckhart Tolle[2] in terms of multivocality and spiritual evolution.

In order to share my view on the relevance of DST to spiritual evolution in the third paragraph, I will first have to deal with complicated and seemingly unrelated subjectmatters. The first two parag

Four years ago my mother died at the honourable age of 93. She died in California, USA, the state and country of my birth, where I lived up to the age of 21.I came to and settled in Holland which established my long-distance relationship of 35 years with my mother.

The story I wish to tell here is the experience of losing my mother and how that experience threw me into an internal field of tension, filled with uncertainty and representin

I wrote the following article in the summer of 2001 during and in the aftermath of a miscarriage.

It illustrates the use of writing as a healing tool – but particularly focuses on how one might work through a difficult or disappointing life event by giving voice to the many selves that are responding and reacting to the difficulty.

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When I first heard about the Dialogical Self Theory (Hermans & Kempen, 1993), it immediately captured my attention. It was during a course on the Self Confrontation Method (Hermans & Hermans-Jansen,1995) that we received a brief introduction to the Dialogical Self Theory by professor Hubert Hermans.

The idea of different voices, or ‘I –positions’, composing the self (some of them co-existing in harmony, some conflicting) had a strong intuitive appeal to me. ‘You sound just

Dialogue in the self may be able to exist in every small action in everyday life. I would like to tell about dialogue which occurred in myself while playing handball. In doing defense in handball game (maybe same as in basketball or football), each defense player is in charge of an opponent offence player. When defense makes mistake or team was made score, we try to clarify who was responsible to cover, in order to stop making more mistakes. If it was obvious the person who had responsibility ma

Forms of life are like  waves, rising and dissolving moving up and down; developing …and dying…emotions are like that too. When I see the gulf only, I am likely to feel loss when it is gone or struggle against it when it is coming, and when I feel the ocean, I see the unavoidable union of life and death which meet in one existence

A dream comes back to me many times and each time brings a deep feeling which creates a powerful movement in myself. This movement feels real and vital