Bernardus Cornelis Johannes Lievegoed was a Dutch medical doctor, psychiatrist and author. He is most famous for establishing a theory of organizational development. He founded the N.P.I., or Netherlands Pedagogical Institute, which works with organizations and individuals to help these realize their economic, social and cultural goals. He also founded the Vrije Hogeschool in Driebergen.
Life
Bernard Lievegoed was born in Medan, Sumatra in 1905. At nine, his family moved for three years to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. From 1917-22, Lievegoed attended high school in Java. In 1924, he began a study of medicine in Groningen, taking a doctorate in 1928. In this same year he first became aware of anthroposophical remedial education; this encounter was to play a large role in his further development. In 1930 he completed the medical degree in Amsterdam and became a general practitioner in Bosch in Duin. In 1931 Lievegoed founded the Zonnehuis, a home for children with disabilities, in Bosch in Duin. The Zonnehuis was later relocated to Zeist and, in the course of its expansion its name was changed to the Zonnehuizen Veldheim Steinia te Zeist. Lievegoed was the director of this institution from its founding until 1954. In 1932 Lievegoed helped to found the Vrije School of Zeist. In 1939 he did a higher doctorate with a thesis about the therapeutic use of music. In 1946 he published the first of a number of books, Ontwikkelingsfasen van het kind; this was translated into eight languages and appeared in English as Phases of Childhood. From 1948-1953 Lievegoed was a consultant for assistance to uneducated working-class children. During this time he published Planetenwirken und Lebensprozesse in Mensch und Erde. In 1952 he cofounded the Vrij Geestesleven publishing house, oriented towards publishing works related to spiritual science. He became a member of the national commission on technical high schools; he served in this capacity until 1962. In 1954 he founded the institution that became his life-work, the NPI. The original name, the Dutch Pedagogic Institute for Economics, was later changed to NPI: Institute for Organizational Development. He led this institute for the next 17 years publishing The Developing Organisation in 1969 with colleagues in the firm, notably Hans von Sasson, arguably the first influential European book on organisation development, which opened in 1964. Here he served as professor of social economics and Dean of the Economics Department until 1973. During this time he supported the work of the Kind en Instrument Foundation, out of which the international Choroi instrument-making workshops arose, and founded an association for therapeutic educators. With his colleagues in NPI he developed Theory U, which later developed as an influential management concept popularized by Otto Scharmer. Between 1968 and 1976 Lievegoed was chair of a governmental commission on education that was given the task of transforming the educational system in the Netherlands. During this time he published a number of works : Organizational Development, Social Structures in Therapeutic Education, The Spiritual Impulse behind the Movement for Therapeutic Education, Towards the 21st Century and, together with his wife Nel Lievegoed-Schatborn, Aspects of Therapeutic Education. In 1971 he founded an independent university, the Vrije Hogeschool, in Driebergen. He was Dean of the University for the next eleven years. In 1973 he left Erasmus University to cofound and become the managing director of the Vrije Pedagogisch Akademie, now Hogeschool Helicon. Over the next years, he published several more books: Phases, Mystery Streams in Europe and the New Mysteries, and Organic Architecture. He joined the governmental commission on alternative medicine. In 1983 Lievegoed published a play and another book, Man on the Threshold: Possibilities and Problems of Inner Development. He received the Gouden Ganzenveer honoring his cultural contributions; the report cited his complete works as the basis for the prize. Further publications: Contemplations on the Foundation Stone, About Cultural Institutions, Through the Eye of the Needle and About the Salvation of the Soul. Lievegoed died on 12 December 1992 in Zeist.
Books by Bernard Lievegoed
Man on the Threshold - The Challenge of Inner Development
