Research Projects

The field of spatial cognition in academic psychology studied spatial and embodied thinking (see Tversky) intensively from the early 1990s. Insights from the psychology of spatial orientation were applied in linguistics, (social) geography, human communication and architecture. However, nowhere in all this research was made mention of the clinical importance of space. In mainstream psychotherapy research the notion of space lacks dramatically. Clinical experiments in mental space go back to the 1980’s where the model of the Personal Timeline was introduced over the work of Richard Bandler, Connirae and Steve Andreas, that led to a book published in 1988 by Tad James and Whyatt Woodsmall, entitled “Timeline Therapy”. In the decades that followed, extensive practical knowledge was accumulated by working with the social panorama model as presented by Lucas Derks in his 2005 book “Social Panoramas”. Research was started by members of the International Laboratory for Mental Space Research (ILMSR). The above development is reviewed in Derks’ book “Mental Space Psychology” (2026). The SOMSP (and the ILMSR) have since carried out clinical research projects. One can distinguish between qualitative clinical research projects and quantitative empirical clinical studies. This page provides an overview of what was accomplished so far and what is worked on.

Mental Space Psychology

Between 2010 and 2016, Lucas Derks explored the role of spatial interventions in psychotherapy. The conclusions were formulated in the book: Mental Space Psychology. (see “resources/books” on this very website.) The study is composed of a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data collection. On the one hand there were the evaluations of spatial psychotherapeutic interventions of which many were conducted with hundreds of clients. On the other hand, there were evaluations of more exotic practices, that however showed a clear effect of the application of spatial interventions.
The whole Mental Space Psychology project helped to support the central view of; space being the primary organizing principle of the mind.

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This image shows the exploration-procedure to find where in the client’s mental space a problematic concept is located.

Mental Spatial Psychological Diagnosis (MSD-1)

The recognition that all mental processes are experienced and take shape in the space around the brain (including in the body excluding the brain) is the heart of mental space psychology. This idea includes automatically all types of mental problems, afflictions and disorders. The investigation of how such issues manifest themselves in mental space led to an additional diagnostic tool. Beside the symptom-based diagnosis of the DSM-5 and de ISD-11 now a clinician can explore how the client has the problematic concepts (emotions and cognitions) located in their mental space. This view provides direct insights on how things need to change in mental space in order to experience a healthier mind.
This project resulted in a compendium of mental spatial configurations that relate to a broad scale of mental issues. There is a compelling overlap with existing psychopathology, but it also shows how the mental space of the client will cause certain types of problematic experiences. And how solutions should appear in mental space.

The distribution of the book Mental Spatial Diagnosis goes exclusively over somsp.com resources/books/Mental Spatial Diagnosis. The book exists at this moment in 10 languages.

Instead of lists and summaries of symptoms, like in the DSM-5, mental spatial diagnosis demands 3-dimensional insights. To make such configurations usable for the clinician, a book with images was created.

Social panorama laboratory experimentation

The basic hypothesis of the social panorama was formulated in the equation: relation equals location. For the members of the International Laboratory for Mental Space Research (www.ilmspr.com) the challenge was to conduct an experiment to test this concept. Under the title: “Relationships are Constructed from Generalized Unconscious Social Images Kept in Steady Locations in Mental Space”, in March 2016 a publication saw the light in the Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, Vol. 19, no. 1 (73).

The same article was later published as Part 4, in the book Mental Space Psychology, under the Title: An Experiment with Love. This is a quantitative empirical approach with a heavy theoretical introduction.

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Clinical experience provides detailed insights in how people create relationships in their mental space. Laboratory experiments supported most of this with statistically tested numerical data.

The exploration of the social panorama.

From clinical observations and literature on social cognition, the hypothesis that people create a three-dimensional map of social reality  is strongly supported.

Especially the clinical application of the social panorama (social landscape) idea showed a nearly undeniable effectiveness that underpinned the created theoretical framework. in several translations makes these results globally available. The results, written about in the book “Social Panoramas” (2005) (in several translations) makes these results globally available.

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The location in mental space of significant others is a tell-tale source for the treatment of relational issues.

The Food-Panorama

A clinical evaluation of the effectiveness of a mental spatial treatment of binge-eating and overweight was conducted independently by the therapist Jacqueline Heemskerk-Scholten. She treated 12 clients with such eating disorders and compared their spatial landscape of food-types to that of six women without such issues. The results were convincing and gave shape to a training program of its clinical application.

This research project was published in a book entitled: Neurolinguistic Programming in Clinical Settings. Theory and evidence-based practice. Edited by Lisa de Rijk, Richard Gray, and Frank Bourke, by Routledge, 2022. Chapter 9.

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Where what food is represented in mental space links directly to how to treat eating disorders.

The treatment of depression as a mental spatial phenomenon

In 2016 the first pilot study into the treatment of depression on the base of the mental spatial insights was conducted by Christine Beenhakker within the frame of her psychology studies with 10 clients. This was published in an article entitled: Dark Matter; mental space and depression. Beenhakker, C. & Manea, A. I. (2017) Journal for Experiential Psychotherapy, 20, 21 – 26.

In the same year the Society for Mental Space Psychology conducted a larger study, where 47 clients were treated by 19 different therapists with a very similar protocol. The results were seen as convincing for the hypothesis that many people with a depression had repressed issues from their childhood that were hidden behind dark clouds in their mental space. By using this darkness to get access to what was repressed and next treat the found issue with a combination of classical NLP-tools, a significant level of relief from the symptoms was acquired that surpassed that of the control (waiting list) group.

This study was published in the book: Neurolinguistic Programming in Clinical Settings. Theory and evidence-based practice. Edited by Lisa de Rijk, Richard Gray, and Frank Bourke, by Routledge, 2022. Chapter 6, by Richard Gray and Lucas Derks.

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The discovery that depressed clients, that could not mention a cause for their suffering, had clouds of darkness in their mental spaces, is considered a breakthrough for the treatment of depression.

Tracking Spatial Change Across Multiple Therapy Modalities

Since 2024 the SOMSP has a group of clinical researchers conduct a study to investigate the hypothesis that all therapeutic improvement comes with a spatial shift of the problematic concepts in the clients’ mental space.
On this (somsp.com) website and in the SOMSP-newsletter the development of this project will be written about. Those (SPR) clinical researchers interested in cooperation are invited to contact Dr. Rod Waddington, who is the chairman of the research commission of SOMSP and who can be found on this website.

Gathering 3-dimensional quantifiable data in clinical work demands unconventional methods. This image shows the first version of a research tool to accomplish this.
An alternative way to look at psychological disorders and health. When all psychological phenomena are happening in mental space, this must also hold for psychological issues of all sorts. This will give a new direction to the psychotherapy of the future. Read more in our book Mental Spatial Diagnosis.