Kris ROOSE
LIFE
Born in Ghent,
Flanders, Belgium, 1944, he attended the Ghent Jesuit
College. He got his medical degree and his graduate as psychiatrist 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, his
private practice, the Depression Clinic 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, Masonry, the Medieval
Flemish Mystics, Buddhism, Transcendental Meditation, Tantrism. 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, rather than choice. 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), and several books on
Masonry (1996-2003). Texts are also available on the Website of the
Academy, mostly in Dutch. He also edits this Noosphere Website.