The Integration Website         Co-Developing the Noosphere

LIFE

Born in Ghent, Flanders, Belgium, 1944, he attended the Ghent Jesuit College. He got his medical degree and his graduate as neuropsychiatrist at the Free University at Brussels (VUB). His education included special training in psychoanalysis, behaviour therapy and psychopharmacology.

He is married and father of 2 children.

His professional carreer started serving in positions including medical director of an institution for mentally retarded boys (during 10 years), chief psychiatrist of a psychiatric hospital (12 years) and professor of psychiatry and neurology at a paramedical school (20 years). At present he directs a Depression Clinic in Ghent.

In 1964 he came upon the theories of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, thanks to a conference given in Gent by the famous Flemish philosopher Max Wildiers (1904-1996). He tried to become familiar with these fascinating theories, caring to check his understanding of Teilhard's often difficult visions with Wildiers himself. He gave many conferences on this topic.

In 1978 he founded the Academy for Integrative Psychology, organizing training for future psychotherapists and councellors along an integrative model, nowadays one of the oldest psychotherapy training institutes in Belgium and perhaps one of the first in the world to use explicitly the integrative theoretical model.

Nowadays, the Depression Clinic, his private practice and the Academy take most of his time.

Next to psychology, spirituality is one of his major interests. His quest for movements and societies providing an active spiritual experience conducted him along several spiritual paths, including Teilhard's theories, Ignatian Spirituality, the Medieval Flemish Mystics, Buddhism and Transcendental Meditation. In each of these great traditions he discovered rich possiblities as well as some important limitations. In this website for global consciousness, noosphere and spirituality he attempts to elaborate, interacting and cooperating with people sharing the same eagerness, a kind of contemporary spirituality in harmony with our advanced and rapidly evolving views on cosmos, existence, evolution, technology, psychology, and global open communication.
 

THEORY

The central concept in his psychological and cosmic views is the process of integration. This concept refers to a process and a tendency to factual cooperation (or 'synergy'), as well as to theoretical synthesis. It is considered as the cornerstone of mental health, creative and inductive thinking, scientific plausibility, communication, love, mutual approach between diverging theories, cooperation and synergy, politics and peace, evolution, the noosphere, etc. Internet is developing as the spinal chord for the integrative Noosphere and a world wide integration of ideas and cooperation of initiatives.

Psychology and psychiatry should be approached as the science of optimal human functioning. The medical struggle against "pathologies" is only a first stage in the approach aiming at a better functioning of personality. The most important stage in the personal growth is enhancing essential aspects of human functioning, including: fundamental self-confidence (ego strength, positive thinking), constructive reinterpretation of frustrations, the art of integrating, self-programming, relaxation and meditation, re-experiencing and restructuring primal traumatic exposures, empathy, enhancing inspiration, communication and organization skills.
 

PUBLICATIONS

A book on Neurology (1978), on Integrative Psychology (1980 and later), on the Psychology of Optimal Functioning (1985).

Texts are also available on the Website of the Academy, mostly in Dutch and some in English. He also edits this Noosphere Website, a website on Flanders' cultural history, and a website on Constructive News.