Peter Schneider ● Is there still a place available on the therapy programme?

A philosophical discussion on what psychotherapy means today – moderated by Elizabeth Högger Klaus.

ICD diagnoses, comorbidities, guidelines, standardised interventions: psychotherapy has become increasingly scientific with great zeal. So is psychotherapy now a form of ‘mini-medicine’? And is the therapeutic relationship now merely an interface between evidence-based intervention and a diagnosed disorder? Peter Schneider asks how this shift came about, why it has become so appealing – and what is being lost in the process. For one question seems to have been overlooked in the process: what does ‘science’ actually mean? Psychotherapies need epistemological self-reflection – not psychotherapeutic games of ‘playing doctor’. Do come along and join the discussion!

Peter Schneider, psychological psychotherapist and private lecturer in clinical psychology at the University of Zurich (recent publication: Peter Schneider, ‘Is there still a place in therapy? Psychotherapy as a simulation of medicine’, Tiamat, 2026)

Elizabeth Högger Klaus, EMSc., studied psychology and philosophy in Zurich and completed the “Master of Advanced Studies in Psychoanalytic Therapy” at the University of Zurich. After several years of teaching clinical psychology at the University of Phnom Penh, she now works in a psychoanalytic practice in Zurich. Her main areas of interest are the transgenerational transmission of trauma, intercultural psychology and philosophical anthropology.

An event organised in collaboration with entresol