About Myself
The almond trees in bloom:
All that we can achieve here is,
to recognize oneself without residue
in the earthly appearance.
Endlessly amazed I look at you,
You blissful, your behaviour,
How you carry the dwindling beauty in eternal meaning.
Ah, who would understand to bloom:
To him the heart would be courageous
above all weak dangers, and even in the largest.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems 1906 - 1926
Completed, Insel Verlag 1957, 2003 Frankfurt, page 829 (own translation, 2007)
Austria
I was born in 1952 in Vienna and got the Hungarian, thus real Viennese name of my father and grandfather. After an education in modern industrial production methods and studies in the fine arts, duty called.
Next I worked four years enthusiastically fulltime with youth groups in churches and studied three years theology and pastorate in Germany. Back again in Vienna, I earned a living in Computer Periphery as technical writer, translator and illustrator. In my spare time, also inspired by Chassidic ideals (Buber 1984), I worked in pastorate and teaching in local churches, and interdenominational in journalism and organization. This again brought me into radio-journalism and -production.
The Netherlands
In 1990 I moved to the Netherlands, to enter international radio in Hilversum. I shaped publications, wrote press releases, and international programme content guidelines to coordinate the content of transmissions in 40 languages towards intercultural harmony; I enjoyed to conduct inter-organisational and international research, and to set up a radio production abroad.
In 1999 I concluded my part-time studies at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and received a Masters in Social-cultural Sciences, in which I specialised in Culture, Organization and Management. As thesis I wrote an Essay on the Contemporary Messianic Jewish Movement in Israel.
After I had worked for ten years in international radio, I switched to Professional Education in 2000. As head of the department for foreign affairs I was responsible for, internationalisation policy, European accreditation of educations, European educational projects, and student practice abroad.
Rather sceptically I took notice of the therapeutic set-up work in 2001. However, already one year later I subscribed at the DHISC, the German Dutch Institute for Systemic Constellations and finished education there 2005. I did not plan to become a therapist. I wanted to work out some of my own themes, which I had not received sufficient attention in the past and had begun knocking on my door. I felt, I needed to develop myself farther on the inside. Only after I saw unexpected and unsought for appreciation of colleagues for my approach, I took courage and formerly began to offer therapy. Among the internationally recognized therapists, who inspired and taught me, are,
- Hunter Beaumont,
- Theoretical fundaments, ethics en critical self-reflection as therapist;
- Barbara en Hans Ebersbächer,
- One’s own limitation and fruitful cooperation in set-up work;
- Ursula Franke,
- The interrupted reaching-out movement of the small child in individual and group session;
- Stephan Hausner,
- Acknowledging and resolving aggression by set-up work and shamanism;
- Anngwyn St Just,
- Developing and resolving systemic and social trauma;
- Uddhar Wolfgang Könighaus (1953 - 2010),
- Theoretical and practical introduction and advancement; ‘The Empty Centre’;
- Daan van Kampenhout,
- Shamanistic and chakra set-up, rituals;
- Berthold Ulsamer,
- Tetra-lemma, choice- and other structural set-up approaches;
- Gunthard Weber,
- Conflict- and organisational set-up. I assisted translating his book on organization set-up into Dutch.
At the Marieke de Bruin Centre I looked for 18 months into the theory and practice of Loss and Trauma Integration. I saw and experienced that the phases of the Kübler-Ross model also run off parallel, not only sequentially.
Since 2007 I study depth-psychology. I enjoyed two years at the Jungian Institute in Nijmegen. In 2013 I completed the five year education on Jungian and Symbolic Psychology at Odrerir in Amstelveen, brilliantly lectured by Karin Hamaker-Zondag. For a paper I compare theological-exegetical methods with psycho-analytical ones over the Wayland Song from the Völundarkviða in the poetic Edda.
In 2011, in the new library in Wageningen, I exhibited for the first time twenty pastel-paintings and poems of the past years. A second exhibition followed already in 2012 in the Nassau-church in Amsterdam, combined with an art-vesper. With both exhibitions I intended to point to the forgotten female beginnings of the development of human consciousness (Neumann 2004).
Even more than in previous pastoral-theological work, in constellation work and depth-psychology, studies and experiences on various fields merge harmoniously with my inner development and ripening. With this background I may now accompany individuals and groups of various cultures for a part on their way, and most of all such who stand, like me, in life’s second half.