The PIB was founded in 1973, as one of the most prominent psychotherapy training institutes. Since then, it supported doctors, therapists, HRD specialists, and other professionals with systemic and scenic training based on humanistic psychodrama.
The PIB was founded in 1973 as the Psychotherapeutic Institute Bergerhausen by Prof. Dr. Hans-Werner Gessmann (1950-2023), the prominent representative of humanistic psychodrama. After his sudden death, many areas of the PIB remained without continuity, such as the medical tongue muscle training for sleeping apnoe, the training for psychotherapeutic assistant professions and his transgender consultations.
2018 Prof. Dr. Gessmann went for early retirement and handed over his institute to Prof. Dr. Jochen Becker-Ebel, Hamburg. Becker-Ebel continued to run the PIB from Hamburg as a psychodramatic training institute with locations in Germany at Hamburg, Breitenbrunn (Erzgebirge) but even beyond at Doha (Qatar), Dubai (UAE) and in India (Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai, Mangalore). His offer had been multi-year diploma course in psychodrama within psychotherapy and coaching training. The PIB was renamed to Psychodrama Instructors Board, as Becker-Ebel and his team mainly focussed on mentoring other trainers, give supervision and conduct exams.
Since 2011, the PIB has been active in India under the name Vedadrama. PIB assumed the activities of Dagges Blomquist, Savita Dhawan, and Zerka Moreno, who founded the Indian Moreno Institute in Bombay (Mumbai) at the end of the 1990s. From 2011 to 2020, Becker-Ebel (supported by Savita Dhawan) was able to train a total of eighty psychodrama directors in 880-study hour courses. Every quarter he went to India for a month. All training with him as primary trainer had been in presence. Becker-Ebel received his life-time award at the first Indian psychodrama conference at Ahmedabad in Jan. 2025.
Gessmann was appointed Adj. Professor for Psychotherapy and Psychology since 2007 at the faculty for Social Psychology at the Nekrasov-University, Kostroma (Russia) and 2009 as Professor for Psychology at the State Academy of Social Administration, Moscow. Later he served as Adj. Professor at the Madras Social Work Academy, Chennai / India and as HoD Psychology at the DMI - St. John the Baptist University in Malawi. He had been teaching at New Delhi, Bengaluru (India) and Baku (Azerbaijan).
Becker-Ebel had mainly been teaching at Germany and India and with some short-term commitments at Madrid (Spain), Teheran (Iran), Doha (Qatar), Dubia (VAE) and in future at Vietnam (Ho Chi Ming City).
In 2021, under the direction of Ms. Rashmi Datt, Gurgaon, the work of PIB in India has become independent under the name Vedadrama in India. Information can be found here: www.vedadrama.com. At the same time Ms. Sadhana Mishra jointly with the Montfort College for Psychotherapy at the University Bangalore North started a four-year masters study in Psychodrama. In 2025 the first 7 students graduated to CP – certified practitioners / Psychodrama Directors after 880 hours of training and practice under supervision. The role of Becker-Ebel and the PIB became to mentor the trainers, give supervision and help in exams.
For the PIB, Dr. Jochen Becker-Ebel on 13.04.2025