Made in Czechoslovakia - Education & Psychology

Professor Balcar is a legendary Czechoslovak psychologist. He has over 40 years of experience in psychology and education. During his psychological practice, he has developed methodology of psychological research and assessment and carried out his own research, especially into the field of normal and disrupted personality and family in terms of evaluation and therapy. He also focuses on individual and family psychological evaluation, counselling and child and adult psychotherapy, especially in the area of emotional deviations, behaviour and family interrelationships, and psychosomatic and somatic illnesses. He taught methodology of research and medical psychology at the Division of Medical Psychology of the Third Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Prague.

Currently, Karel Balcar is Head of the Department of Science and Research at Prague College of Psychosocial Studies where he teaches personality psychopathology and methodology of research. He is involved in training and practical-skill programmes of the Department of Psychology and Sociology of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, especially in the area of staff recruitment, psychological dynamics and intervention in interpersonal conflicts, state of stress and critical or traumatizing situations. He is also a part-time clinician at the Centre for Pain Treatment of the General University Hospital in Prague. Besides teaching psychology, psychotherapy and psychosomatics for doctors, psychologists and students, he has been giving practical training and lectures on psychotherapeutic methods, dealing with stress, solving personal problems and interpersonal conflicts, effective interpersonal communication and psychological methods of recruitment for already three decades. Professor Balcar is an author of numerous textbooks and a long-time teacher at the Department of Psychology of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague and the Faculty of Psychotherapy in Prague where he is Vice-chancellor for Science and Research.

In Made in Czechoslovakia programmes, he teaches Introduction to Existential Approach to Working with a Person and Personality Theory. As a methodical supervisor of our organization, professor Balcar has been granted the right to revise the full extent of the syllabi of our training programmes, if necessary, provide analysis of individual psychological profiles and hold a position as an examiner at the state and world examinations. It is a great honour to our organization and an exceptional privilege to be able to cooperate with professor Balcar, whose professional reputation gives our organization undoubtedly a guarantee of high quality.

Professor Haškovcová, author and philosopher of great importance in European terms, received her degrees from the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. In her professional career, she has held positions of the highest ranks. She started working in the field of transplantation and clinical immunology, followed by gerontology and geriatrics, and finally focusing on the area of medical and health-care ethics.

In 1993, she became the first professor in the newly established field of medical ethics in the Czech Republic and has been considered a global expert in this field ever since. She teaches at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in Prague where she is guarantor of the doctoral programme of Applied Ethics.

Professor Haškovcová is an author of more than 700 academic papers and 21 books such as the textbooks Medical Ethics (3.ed. 2002) and Thanatology (2.ed. 2007). Her published monographs include: Informed Consent: Why and How (2007), The Phenomenon of Lifespan (2.ed. 2010), Social Gerontology – the Elderly Among Us (2012).

In the Made in Czechoslovakia’s training programme, she teaches Ethics in Helping Professions and is also an examiner and committee chair of the programme’s state and world examinations. Her participation in our programmes is not only a great honour to our company, but also proof that having an expert of such caliber, who has been receiving recognition from across the spectrum of medical and philosophical society, among our faculty, sends a clear message about the quality of our programmes and their importance in today’s world, encouraging the development of critical thinking in society with the aim to defend freedom and protect human rights.

Mgr. Ivan Úlehla is a respected expert who has trained and supervised hundreds of psychologists, doctors, social workers and managers. His education background is psychology. Since 1990s, he has been promoting the systemic approach, becoming the leading figure amongst systemic psychologists. On the international scale, he has collaborated with leading global experts who have an extensive portfolio of published work of constructivist theories such as Imelda McCarthey, Kurt Ludewig and Ernst Salomon. His trainings in the systemic approach to working with a client are not only based on post-modern philosophy, but also inspired by the traditional findings in psychology and clinical social work.

Ivan Úlehla co-established the GI group, which has been organizing trainings in the systemic psychotherapy for many years and is guarantor of the training’s methodology and curriculum. He also co-founded the GI projekt o.p.s. and the ISZ-MC institute, formerly known as the Institute for Systemic Experience in Prague.

Ivan Úlehla is the author of the textbook The Art of Helping, a social-work book of methods, and university textbooks on the systemic approach. Because of general respect for his professional skills, developmental methods and practical training, he is the supervisor of our students who take part in our training in coaching in occupational psychology, where he also gives masterclasses and supervision in front of a group.

Since 1994, Anna Wackermannová has worked as a volunteer psychotherapist and crisis intervention specialist at the Diakonie SOS Centre in Prague. She has many years of experience in counselling and using a developmental interview in her practice, which makes her a well-known professional in the psychotherapeutic society. She received a comprehensive training in the SUR approach, together with other, highly recognized fellow alumni such as Ivan Úlehla. For the last five years, she has led group therapy sessions aimed at helping indviduals deal with aggressive behaviour of their significant others – a project that has been perceived by the expert public as unique and one of a kind in our country.

She runs her own psychotherapy practice, focusing on one-to-one therapy and counselling. As a counselor-psychologist, she works with dynamic-oriented approaches in psychotherapy while respecting the traditional therapeutic fields. She also lectures in courses which focus on working with aggressive behaviour.

As a specialist in social-pathological phenomena in relationships and teams, Anna Wakermannová is a lecturer of the self-experiential modules of our world training-in-coaching programme where she is also the supervisor of future coaches, using techniques of personality development of future practitioners in occupational psychology. The students of the World Business Coach – Level 2 training work with her predominantly during self-experiential group-work sessions.

Mgr. Klára Dušková is a respected businesswoman and a clinical social worker with a completed comprehensive accredited training in coaching of doctors, nurses, sales teams and staff in helping professions. Her wide experience in this field enables our daughter company, Medical Care Psychology s.r.o., to work together on composing the curriculum and teaching methods of our psychological courses, designed for doctors and medical staff. As a lecturer, she draws from her business and managerial experience on the one hand, and her knowledge of practical methods of fulfilling client’s psychological and social needs on the other.

Klára Dušková received her master’s degree in social work from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, and as a clinical social worker she specializes in working with patients undergoing renal dialysis or transplantation. Beginning of 1990s, she worked for the Society for Dialysed and Transplanted Patients, a patient organization of people suffering from the chronic kidney disease, where she supervised projects that focused on social work, fundraising and public awareness of the problem of the chronic kidney disease. She participated, for instance, in a media campaign to support kidney donation for transplantation from living donors, which was run by the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague (IKEM). She was also member of editors’ board of the Society’s magazine Stěžeň. Later, she became Chief Social Worker of the Dialcorp dialysis centres, where she worked not only with their pre-/dialysed patients, but also with their staff, both on one-to-one basis and in a group. She also lectures in the course Social Services Worker, of which she is the author and which she provides for the Czech Red Cross.

Social workers are often defined as “agents of change”. Their job is to use professional intervention in order to bring about desired change in interpersonal relationships as well as psychosocial aspects of life of an individual. This concept is just a step away from the idea of perceiving change as an element of personal development, in the same way that coaching (another related helping profession) does. After becoming HR Director of Dialcorp, Mgr. Dušková completed training in coaching, accredited by WABC and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, which has enabled her to use both qualifications in practice. Apart from her her clinical practice, she focuses especially on coaching in the health-care sector (doctors and nurses in chief positions, management) and social services. She is, therefore, rightfully regarded as one of the most qualified experts in our organization.

Doctor of philosophy, Jitka Lorenzová, received her degree in the Czech language and pedagogy from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. Her specialty is ethics and social pedagogy. She has experience of lecturing abroad, and for the last five years, her work on ethics and social pedagogy has been regularly published. She is a frequently cited author in the field of social pedagogy, who also uses applied pedagogy in the social field and helping professions.

Since 1985, dr. Lorenzová has taught at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. Her rich teaching experience includes mainly ethics and social pedagogy. She lectures in social pedagogy courses and teaches subjects such as Crisis Intervention in Social Services, Fundamentals of Social Pedagogy, Educational Ethics, Social-Pedagogy Methods and many more. She is also guarantor of the social pedagogy programme at the Department of Education of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague.

In Made in Czechoslovakia programmes, Dr Lorenzová teaches personality theory, philosophical and pedagogical anthropology and fundamentals of the Transactional Analysis. She is a popular lecturer among students and a respected teacher.

Doctor of philosophy, Markéta Niederlová, received her master’s degree in psychology from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague where she also received her doctoral degree. She started her career as an academic assistant at the Institute of Psychology of Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Children’s Crisis Centre where she worked as a clinical psychologist. Thanks to her rich professional life, dr. Niederlová already has 20 years of experience as a psychologist and 15 years as a lecturer in different psychological programmes and educational modules.

Currently, dr. Niederlová is an academic assistant at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague and guarantor of programmes such as Fundamentals of Clinical Psychology, Psychological Assessment of Adults, Interactive Psychological Training, Psychological Assessment Training, Psychology for Teachers II, among others.

Markéta Niederlová also teaches psychology at Secondary Grammar School and Higher Vocational School of Information Services. The extensive scope of subjects she teaches includes Clinical Psychology, Psychological Assessment and Socially-interactive Psychological Training.

In Made in Czechoslovakia programmes, dr Niederlová teaches future intervention professionals and developmental specialists in organizations the subject Fundamentals of Test Methods for Occupational Psychology. Thanks to dr. Niederlová’s lecturing, participants of our courses are able to get a clearly-structured and sophisticated overview of different types of psychological assessment and testing which are used by occupational psychology, but also by coaching when such assessment becomes a tool for developing personality and uncovering its potential.

After receiving her master’s degree in Cultural Studies from the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, Jana Tkáčová started her career at the Slovak Union of Visual Arts where she organized numerous exhibitions. As a specialist in theory of art and creative work, she was later offered a position at the Internet portal Zoznam.sk as a catalogue content editor, eventually becoming the team leader of the company’s catalogue department. After two years in this position, she began to take interest in the psychology of sales and took charge of the sales department where she was responsible for sales of the company’s key products.

Soon after, she was offered a position at the Internet agency Digita.sk where she spent many years working as a Senior Digital Media Manager. Her client portfolio includes brands such as Mondelez, H&M, GlaxoSmith Kline, OMV or Avon. While staying in the digital media field, working independently as a creative professional on projects that concern women on maternity leave or women-managers in business, she has also been working as a business coach, using her wide experience in marketing, client and employee care.

Jana Tkáčová received a comprehensive training in developmental methods and business coaching in organizations and is a member of the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches (WABC) with a CBC designation as a certified coach. At the Made in Czechoslovakia s.r.o. company, she coaches groups of junior teams and also focuses on the field of motivation and performance. She inclines to work-life balance coaching and puts emphasis on the issue of women in management, gender and cultural differences in various job positions held by women. This makes her one of the few business coaches in the Czech Republic and Slovakia who specialize in this particular area.

Dr. Daniel Tůma received his 5-year-programme master’s degree in education with a specialization in education and psychology counselling and social pedagogy from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. He received his second master’s degree in clinical counseling psychology from La Salle University Philadelphia, and his bachelor’s degree in single-subject psychology from State University of New York. He completed his doctoral degree at Charles University in Prague with his thesis on education and psychology counselling for child oncology patients.

In the last 13 years, dr. Tůma completed a number of trainings, including a comprehensive psychotherapy training for the health-care sector (750 hours, ISZ/GI), coaching training (Mediat Coaching Paris), training in the narrative approach in psychotherapy, and training in fundamental principles of Transactional Analysis (TAT 101), among others. He is expert guarantor of our 600-hour training in occupational psychology and developmental methods/coaching for employees in organizations. He is also the programme’s concept designer, including its didactic methods and curriculum.

Daniel Tůma is Founding Fellow of the Institute of Coaching, which is part of the Faculty of Medicine of Harvard University in Belmont (US). He is also a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), the first Czech psychoterapist ever to become accredited by the World Council for Psychotherapy and until recently, he was an outside teacher of Counselling Principles and Therapeutic Techniques for Helping Professionals and Introduction to Organizational Education and Coaching at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague.

Dr. Tůma is an accredited psychotherapist with a comprehensive training in psychotherapy for the health-care sector in compliance with the terms and conditions of the European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP), Czech Association for Psychotherapy under the Czech Medical Association of J.E. Purkyně (ČLS JEP), and the Slovak Association for Psychotherapy. His primary specialty is psychological assessment, evaluation and correction of social pathology inside work teams. He also leads psychological interviews with managers and leaders and coaches them; he carries out psychological evaluation of highly exposed professionals and personalities with an increased social impact, which includes ruling out traits of psychopathology in a personality.

Besides providing an in-depth analysis of personality profiles, dr. Daniel Tůma leads our state- and world-accredited comprehensive training in coaching (600 hours, WABC) and coordinates our team of lecturers in all our programmes.