Egon Molineus - Professional Biography

Egon Molineus is a married, unconventional psychological coach and psychotherapist born in 1960.

He has lived, studied, trained, and worked in various geographical regions that politically belong to Germany, Spain, Great Britain, and France. He gained personal experience in India, Thailand, and California. In terms of identity, Egon Molineus is a supranational global citizen.

Academic Studies:

• University degree in Psychology with specialization in Clinical Psychology. Graduated as Clinical Psychologist (Diplom-Psychologe).
• Six-year study of languages: German, Spanish, English, and French. Graduated as Foreign Language Teacher.
• Five-year state-certified additional training as Psychological Psychotherapist with specialization certification in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Completed with state licensure from the Government of Upper Bavaria.
• Two-year continuing education in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy based on integrative psychoanalysis.

Professional Training:

• Two-year training in Systemic Coaching. BDP Coach Certification.
• One-year training in Occupational Health Management (BGM): Strategies for workplace prevention of stress-related consequences and mental disorders. Completion and certification in Clinical Organizational Psychology (DPTV).
• Two-year training for "Qualification in Specialized Psychotrauma Therapy and Psychotrauma Therapy with EMDR." Graduated as Trauma Therapist and EMDR Therapist.
• Three-year training in Clinical Hypnosis at the Milton Erickson Society for Clinical Hypnosis. Graduated as Hypnotherapist.
• Training in Suggestive and Relaxation Techniques according to the requirements of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. Completed in Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Autogenic Training, and suggestive methods: Hypnosis.
• Three-year training for leading behavioral therapy group therapy according to the requirements of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians.
• Two-year training for leading psychodynamic group therapy.
• Four-year training in humanistic methods of group therapy. Graduated as group leader for self-experience groups.
• Long-term personal experience with passive and active meditation methods and mindfulness training. One-year residential training in four meditation centers: in Zen monastery (http://sotozen.es/presentacion) (Reading: An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki), in Yoga ashram (http://www.sivananda.org/london/), and in Theravada monasteries (http://www.amaravati.org/) (http://www.cittaviveka.org/) (http://www.sharphamtrust.org/The-Barn-Retreat) (Vipassana. Insight meditation) (Reading: Seeking the Heart of Wisdom by Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein).
• Four-year training in Japanese martial arts.

Professional Experience:

Twenty years of international professional experience as lecturer in adult continuing education, communication trainer in companies, tour guide, sociocultural group animator, group leader for international groups, and interpreter.

Multi-year international social-psychological field research in the areas of life in alternative purpose communities, utopias, spirituality, religions, ideologies, dogma, psychosects, group self-experience projects, and personality development through group experience.

Five years of psychotherapeutic work in psychiatric clinics on open and closed wards and in outpatient psychotherapeutic institutions as therapist in the areas of psychoses, affective disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, phobias, personality disorders, addiction recovery, and psychosomatic illnesses.

Psychotherapeutic leadership of mixed-disorder and disorder-specific therapy groups for anxiety disorders, psychoses, personality disorders, depression, mania, addiction disorders, and self-experience groups.

Co-founder of the Trauma Therapists Intervision Group Hamburg Altona, recognized by the Hamburg Chamber of Psychotherapists.

For 20 years active as non-contracted psychotherapist for individual and group therapy, as psychological counselor and coach in two private practices in Hamburg Altona Ottensen and in Hohwacht in the Plön district on the Baltic Sea in Schleswig-Holstein.

Memberships:

Registered in the medical registry of the Hamburg Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians as Psychological Psychotherapist.

Member of the Hamburg Chamber of Psychotherapists.

Member of the Schleswig-Holstein Chamber of Psychotherapists.

Member of VPP Association of Psychological Psychotherapists in BDP Professional Association of German Psychologists.

Member of the Milton Erickson Society for Clinical Hypnosis.

Member of the German Psychotherapists Association.

Personal:

Long and extremely happily married. Next to my premises works my extremely beloved wife, alternative practitioner, hypnotherapist and yoga teacher and very spiritual person (see www.sigridmolineus.de) in Hamburg-Ottensen.

Physical Hobbies: Forestry and garden work, wood sawing, wood chopping. Sitting by the fireplace and contemplating. Meditating in the here and now. Long swimming, jogging, walking or hiking. Kayak paddling or gymnastics. Traveling and discovering. Being in nature. Chilling in Thailand. Willpower from the body.

Intellectual Hobbies: Writing, reading, analyzing. Developing and materializing strategies and infrastructures, structuring, thinking. Understanding history, physical and financial, concrete and abstract mechanisms. Constructing apparatus, creating functional effects. Fascination with psychosocial evolutionary adaptation and self-responsibility. Modern, creative societies. Dialectics between individual and big business interests. Dialectics between human intelligence and system automation. Liberalism, Zen Buddhism, psychoanalysis. Listening to emotional music, dwelling in trance and dreaming. Quality conversations. Being alone for thinking and designing.

Social Hobbies: Deep conversations. Leading groups. Perceiving, deeply enjoying and developing relationships or ending them with liberation.

Personality: Very structured and thorough, slow, very emotional and sensitive. Pronounced self and other perception, deep intuition, deeply probing. Very solution and coping-oriented, inventive-creative, very unconventional, passionate.

Spiritual Hobbies: Very deeply in relationship with the beauty of sun and firelight, plants, water and air, sky and clouds, serenity and understanding, music and feeling, values and brotherhood. Buddha attitude, trance, community and courage to go into the deepest levels of human existence.

For me as a psychotherapist, the following ethical principles are indispensable: honesty, respect, acceptance, responsibility, and transparency.

In my interaction with clients, thoughts and feelings arise within me. These are valuable information for my clients, which I empathetically and didactically share with them so they can benefit from it (principle of complete transparency). Everything I record in my protocols is accessible and copyable for you, including my subjective perceptions and not just objective observations. Only with complete transparency within a protected space is therapeutic support meaningful. Secret files have no place here. This also shows that I only want to work with people who have a mature basic structure in their personality and can grow with self-responsibility in our relationship.

I value working at eye level with the client. Professionalism, efficiency, empathy, and compassion are essential elements in this process.

In every client, I see a self-responsible and self-determined individual. You learn in therapy and coaching to independently handle your own life. Here you are confronted with your own structure. Everyone decides for themselves whether they want to remain in a difficult situation or free themselves from it. It's about clearly recognizing: How do I get in my own way? What resources are available to me?

The (re-)learning of strategies is a joint journey of discovery for both of us. In our communication, I can act as companion, teacher, ally, friend, counterpart, sparring partner, and above all as a fellow human being with openness.

I place great value on structure and intuition. Nature has gifted me with the ability to structure chaos. Meditation practice, the scientific study of psychology, additional training as a psychotherapist, as well as further education and training and years of structured and unstructured self-experience in many countries have taught me to pay attention to my inner processes – both alone and in interaction – and to trust them before I classify them rationally. One could partly call it instinct: This instinct can be life-saving when you courageously follow it! Images, impulses, needs arise in (psychotherapeutic) interaction beyond verbal and nonverbal communication. The art of years of life and professional experience then makes it possible to classify the intuitive and convey it didactically effectively.

I perceive myself as unconventional and creative. For (one's own) boundaries can be transcended or accepted so that hope and new living spaces may emerge. I support my clients caringly and challengingly in facing this reality with the help of their own strengths. On one hand, I respect the client's expressed wish. Additionally, I understand the therapeutic mandate as the task of standing against the disturbed self-part while protecting the part of my client that seeks my support. This can become intense and requires strong rapport, trust, respect, an alliance, as well as clarity, directness, authenticity, and bonding capacity.

I view humans as evolving beings. Humans constantly and willfully change and become different from who they were before. This is made possible through learning processes. Creativity and courage to change are catalysts for this. Humans are influenced daily since birth by millions of stimuli. They decide in their lives what they want to make of these influences. Every person creates themselves anew daily. Culture, media, human relationships, education, training, life experience, reading, studies, conversations, even traumas can be utilized by humans. Humans decide whether to behave passively or actively. One can never know in advance what a person will become, even if one knows much about their background, because humans are free, constant self-creators. Prejudices, superficial standardized beliefs, and enemy images must be abandoned here.

I understand the therapy process as a growth process for both client and therapist. It requires courage and motivation for change from both sides. A controlled, real, professional, personal relationship develops between us both. In this sustainable connection lies the power for change.

I increasingly understand psychotherapy and coaching as a self-modification project. The goal in my work is not only to get to know oneself better or to know more about oneself. By no means only that. As the goal of this profession, I understand the change from the disturbed to the healthy, effective, and satisfying. An active process is absolutely necessary for this. As a goal-oriented personality type, effectiveness is very important to me: Improvement is the goal. Attention is paid to changes in body, thinking, feelings, relationships, and actions. Words, exercises, and insights in the therapy room alone are not sufficient. My clients work all week on their self-development. This process is supported by an infrastructure that I describe here. As in every school of life, practice makes perfect here too.