Published: March 2023

Keywords:
Systemic Psychiatry, Jochen Schweitzer, SYMPA, Heidelberg New School, intervention in psychiatry, diagnosis, rehabilitation, training of the staff.

Jochen Schweitzer

Prof. Jochen Schweitzer – University of Heidelberg and Helm Stierlin Training Institute, Heidelberg.

Valeria Pomini

Coordinator of the Day Conference, Clinical Psychologist – Psychotherapist, Coordinator of The Couple and Family Clinic, A’ Psychiatric Clinic, University of Athens.

vpomini@med.uoa.gr

Abstract

The following text is a transcript of Jochen Schweitzer's speech in English at the HESTAFTA and Aeginitio Hospital Day Conference held on 27th of June 2015 in Athens. It was sent as a personal document to the translator by Jochen Schweitzer a few months after his speech. The translation was rendered based on this document.

Apart from the enormous importance of the presented SYMPA project as an intelligent and realistic systemic intervention in psychiatry, this text is of great significance for what it says about the personality of Jochen Schweitzer: his frankness in addressing the Greek public, starting with a message of solidarity to the struggling Greek people amid austerity measures, the note at the beginning that the speech has taken place one day before the 2015 referendum, his public criticism of German politics at the time – and not only -, the extent he gives to the history of German and not only psychiatry and the development of systemic therapy, before focusing on the presentation of the project – these and other facts demonstrate a scientist who takes political and personal responsibility for his public presence at every moment and at any chance he gets and a person of deep solidarity.