I was born in Baarn, a small village in the Netherlands, February 17, 1949, as one of six children in a Catholic family. I was deemed to become a priest but at the age of 16 had to acknowledge that it would give me considerable difficulty to meet the celibacy requirements. Studying (clinical) psychology seemed a logical extension of my earlier priesthood aspirations, albeit without a real understanding of what the study of psychology actually involved.

When I graduated with a master's degree in clinical psychology at the University of Utrecht in 1971, I decided to stay a few years longer at that university. I succeeded in getting a research grant to conduct a PhD project on the behavioral treatment of agoraphobia, ...