Return to People Certified in PBSP Iman Baardman Ph.D.
Certified as a PBSP Trainer November 14th, 2002 My Professional life:
From 1964 till 1975 I was a scientific coworker in the Social Psychology Department of the Free University in Amsterdam (a protestant university). I was teaching groupdynamics. At that time grouppsychotherapy came in public focus, and I was invited to become part time consultant and researcher at Veluweland, a small, well known, very progressive, psychiatric hospital in the Netherlands, organized as a therapeutic community. The founder and director of that clinic was Willy Arendsen Hein M.D. He is the man who first brought Albert Pesso and Diane Boyden-Pesso to Holland in 1973. I joined the first PBSP-workshop! Later on I became a full time psychotherapist at Veluweland (1975). I worked with great satisfaction as it turned out that I fit in well in the Veluweland therapeutic community. However, because Veluweland is in the east part of Holland, far from Amsterdam, and my family refused to move closer to it, I left the clinic and became associate professor again at the Free University (1980). This time as a member of the Faculty for Human Movement Sciences Department: Movement and Health. It was a splendid situation for my PBSP training, because I got permission from the University (in terms of time and money) to follow the (2nd) official PBSP-training. I was certified as a PBSP therapist in 1986 -- the 10th PBSP therapist to be certified in Holland. That year I started to write my Ph. D.-dissertation about imaginary ugliness, a topic with an absolute media-appeal. Abstracts came out in many journals and newspapers, and I was almost every week on TV at that time --a glorious moment. In 1986 a Supervisor Training for Certified PBSP Therapists in the Netherlands started. I did not join right then because of my dissertation work. I started later, in 1992, and together with two colleagues, I was certified as a PBSP Supervisor in 1999. Two years ago I submitted a special written curriculum to become a Certified PBSP Trainer. I finished that program last November (11/14/02). Last year I became 65 and retired from the University. I stopped my ongoing PBSP therapy group (after 20 years). I am now co-teaching in the Official PBSP Training with Liesbeth de Boer, Lowijs Perquin and Tjeerd Jongsma. Other PBSP involvements: I teach theologists in a 12 hours course the PBSP principles of bodily and motoric information, the urge for fitting interaction, etc. It is nice to do. I also took over from Lowijs Perquin an Introduction to PBSP for psychotherapists in the southern part of Holland. My motivation: Before Veluweland my professor gave me permission to follow as many seminars and therapy courses as I liked, and in the '70's there were many. He liked that his coworkers were broadly oriented. And indeed I became broadly oriented, including in body oriented approaches. A side effect was that all those courses together felt like patchwork. And than came Al and PBSP, with a system, a sound frame of reference, and a marvelously worked out method. The outcome was that all my knowledge built up till then came together in a coherent approach. As a consequence, I never took any other psychotherapeutic course after beginning my training in PBSP. Other interests: From time to time I teach the cognitive-behavior treatment that I developed for clients who are convinced of having a bad outlook for themselves. I like to presenting my approach to others. | 
