It came to pass on the Ides of March in the year 2020, more precisely on March 16, when the Swiss Federal Council, in a fit of solicitous siege mentality, proclaimed the "extraordinary situation" and decided to de facto shut down the country's medical operations.1 Hospitals, clinics, and outpatient practices had to close their doors to "non-urgently indicated" treatments.1
Among them were the branches of the Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich in Zurich and Rapperswil-Jona.
The logic was captivating in its almost Dadaist elegance: To protect the population from a health danger, they were denied access to physicians and psychotherapists. In particular, mental health, so the official calculus seemed to dictate, was a negligible luxury good that could safely be checked at the cloakroom of pandemic control.
Do you notice the paradox? The Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich, which helps people cope with irrational fears, had to close as a psychotherapeutic facility, even though Cognitive Anxiety Therapy is exactly what people urgently need when anxiety and panic run rampant — or are generated by the media.
Medially Orchestrated Hysteria in Zurich
But the true punchline of history followed only the next day. While I was still contemplating the practice premises in Zurich and Rapperswil, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) – that paper once considered the beacon of bourgeois prudence – headlined in its print edition on March 17, 2020, with a title that must have made every psychotherapist doubt the nation's state of mind:
«We are hysterical. Are we hysterical enough?»
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich, Mar 17, 2020, page 10.2
One rubbed one's eyes. A leading medium elevated hysteria – that irrational state of emotional loss of control – to a cardinal bourgeois virtue. Anxiety and hysteria were no longer a problem; anxiety and hysteria were the required reason of state. Anyone not panicked became suspicious. Anyone not "sufficiently" hysterical, likewise. Cognitive Psychotherapy for anxiety and hysteria had suddenly become subversive.
Anatomy of a Coup Against Reasonable Thinking
To understand what happened from March 17, 2020, onwards, one must appreciate the absurdity of the situation in its full glory.
The Federal Council closed outpatient practices. Among them: the Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich — an institution whose sole purpose was to liberate people from irrational fears.
Simultaneously, the venerable Neue Zürcher Zeitung, that paper regarded as the voice of reason since 1780, published a call for hysteria. The NZZ editor wrote in all seriousness:
«Have we all gone hysterical? We are far too little so!»
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich, Mar 17, 2020, page 10.2
Read that sentence again. Slowly.
Fig.: Title of the online edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on March 17, 2020. The NZZ and its editor Roman Bucheli dictated how the intellectual challenge of Corona was to be handled in Zurich: Hysteria was «reasonable and advantageous».2
A memorable historical event: One of the most renowned newspapers in the German-speaking world propagated hysteria as «reasonable and advantageous» — on the exact same day that the government eliminated professional facilities for the treatment of hysteria and anxiety by decree.
What Does Psychiatry Say About This?
The clinical picture of hysteria is precisely characterized by excessive or uncontrollable emotions such as anxiety or panic. Hysteria is a psychological disorder accompanied by emotional excitability, amnesia, physical deficits such as paralysis, or sensory deficits without organic cause. In the frenzy of hysteria, the hysteric can lay the world to ruins, only to step out of the rubble smiling friendly shortly thereafter, without any memory of their deed.
«In these mental disorders, motives of which the patient seems unaware produce either a restriction of the field of consciousness or disturbances of motor or sensory function which may seem to have psychological advantage or symbolic value. ... In the conversion variety the chief or only symptoms are the psychogenic disturbance of function, e.g., paralysis, tremor, blindness, deafness, seizures. In the dissociative variety, the most prominent feature is a narrowing of the field of consciousness which seems to serve an unconscious purpose and is commonly accompanied or followed by a selective amnesia.»3
Mass hysteria as a virtue of reason — propagated by the mass medium Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Franz Kafka could not have placed this punchline more precisely. Had he invented it, it would have been dismissed as exaggerated.
Teaching of Epictetus, Reinterpreted
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus (approx. 50 to 120 AD) taught the foundations of reasonable thinking around two thousand years ago. Cognitive Psychotherapy has empirically underpinned these insights and developed them into the most effective treatment method for anxiety and panic disorders as well as depression.
«It is not things themselves that trouble people, but their opinions and judgments about them. For example, death is nothing terrible - otherwise it would have appeared terrible to Socrates - but the opinion that it is terrible, that is what is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, troubled, or grieved, let us never blame another, but ourselves, that is, our own opinions and judgments.»
Epictetus: Enchiridion. Zurich, 1994, page 15.4
But what if society itself begins to elevate dysfunctional judgments and opinions to virtue?
What if a government deliberately fuels and institutionalizes fear, and a leading newspaper sanctifies this fear as «reasonable»?
What if the lunatics are no longer sitting in the clinic but taking charge and locking up the mentally sane?
Voltaire, in his writings against religious fanaticism and dogmatism, warned in 1767 of what psychologists like Stanley Milgram scientifically proved in obedience experiments 200 years later: «Whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.»5
In this situation, the cognitive psychotherapist who wants to keep his sanity and avoid criminalization for promoting reasonable thinking – Cognitive Psychotherapy – has only one option: He must leave.
Immunization Against «Hysteria» and «Mass Hypnosis»
At that moment, I remembered arguably the most important advice of my first mentor at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (Charité) of the Humboldt University of Berlin over 40 years ago. He said: «Colleague, when the inmates take the keys and the orderlies start hearing voices, don't argue. See that you get out.»
And so I did the only thing a cognitive realist can do when reality turns into satire: I withdrew myself and the Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich from the physical grasp of madness.
When the state defines that an anxiety clinic represents an infection risk, but collective fear-mongering in the media is «system-relevant,» then physical space is no longer safe. It is compromised by the stupidity that arises from fear, and by the arbitrariness of those who confuse their power with responsibility and their fanaticism with reason.
Fig.: Government Councilor and Head of the Health Directorate Zurich Natalie Rickli (SVP) began her career in advertising, marketing, and communications consulting. Swiss Radio and Television (SRF)6 show her as a master of psychological manipulation: With perfidious refinement, Natalie Rickli twisted the meaning of the term «personal responsibility» into its opposite.
"The unvaccinated should really forgo a place in the intensive care unit — that would be personal responsibility." These words by Zurich's Director of Health Natalie Rickli - broadcast by Swiss public television SRF6 - are a textbook example of how psychological warfare works: One deploys hysteria to generate those primal fears that paralyze people into the stupor of absolute obedience. Independent thought is shut down — and those who still think for themselves are ostracized from society by their own families.
In fact, Ueli Maurer (SVP), who as a Federal Councilor supported this collective fear-mongering in March 2020, publicly admitted the politically «deliberately stoked hysteria» in an interview7 four years later:
«Of course, Corona was a hysteria!»
Former Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer in an interview. Tagesanzeiger, Zurich, Feb 3, 2024.7
Medical critics of this political hysteria were threatened with professional bans and put into psychiatry. Former Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer literally described these reactions to the pandemic as «mass hypnosis» and criticized the stigmatization of critics as conspiracists or right-wing extremists.7
The realization: If madness becomes endemic, it is considered normal.
Not a Loss, but a Distillation
The Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich was not closed on the Ides of March 2020. It was sublimated. It left the material plane of Switzerland, where Federal Councilors ban anxiety therapy by decree and prescribe «mass hypnosis,» and transcended into the only space where thinking is still duty-free: the Internet. Legally anchored as a Limited Liability Company in the US state of Delaware and protected in the harbor of Anglo-American legal understanding, far away from the grasp of European bureaucrats.
The visitor searching for the physical practice rooms of the Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich today will not find them. And I tell you: That is your good fortune.
What began as coercion in Zurich on March 16, 20201, proved to be the necessary evolutionary pressure to free psychotherapy from its ballast. In the Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich, we have thrown overboard all the theatrical junk of conventional psychotherapy: the waiting room with old magazines, the stress of appointments, the commute in traffic jams, the ritual hand-holding that often represented emotional caretaking rather than cognitive healing.
What remained was the distillate:
Written Cognitive Psychotherapy (WCP)
Our digital anxiety clinic is not a place where you can «drop off» your anxiety. It offers you no room where you can wait for a psychotherapist to save you while outside the world celebrates the blossoming of madness.
Written Cognitive Psychotherapy (WCP) of the digital anxiety clinic offers you instead a cognitive Alpine fortress of rationality. A place where you sharpen the tool that Voltaire identified as the only effective weapon against fanaticism. He called for opposing «the orders to believe the impossible» with the «intelligence that God has put into your mind.»5
That is exactly what we do. With our instruction and your self-therapy, you work precisely, in writing, and adamantly on your thinking. Writing itself becomes an act of cognitive immunization against the daily madness of anxiety and hysteria. You work on the perfection of your mental sovereignty – freed from viruses, freed from mask mandates, and freed from the illusion that anyone other than yourself is responsible for your peace of mind.
«Mental health is not a service of the healthcare system — it is the achievement of the self-thinking human being upon themselves.»
Luchmann, D.: Switzerland as a Paradise of Psychotherapeutic Inefficiency. Psychotherapie. Aug 14, 2025.8
Dear Swiss Citizens
So, should you have landed here with the nostalgic expectation of being able to proceed to the Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich in Zurich or Rapperswil-Jona for a personal and immediate psychotherapeutic encounter: Do not be disappointed that I no longer practice on Lake Zurich. Be grateful.
As part of that Swiss sovereign who chose or tolerated this politics, you created a Switzerland that criminalized reasonable thinking and the personal and immediate encounter in March 2020. I have drawn the consequences. I did not follow the hysteria; I ran ahead of it — into a sphere where it cannot reach me.
You now have to live with the consequences of your political choice or toleration, as researchers from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid and the Universidad Autónoma de Chile described in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health9:
«Mass hysteria can have enormous public health costs in terms of psychological stress, anxiety, and even physical symptoms. To these costs must be added indirect adverse health effects from alcoholism, suicides, or damage from deferred treatment and delayed recognition of illness. Policy failures in mass hysteria can lead to economic decline and poverty, which in turn negatively impacts public health and life expectancy.»9
Not thinking reasonably costs far more in the end than just prosperity – it costs freedom, health, and in the worst case, life.
To Those Seeking Help
If you are ready to use WCP and our secure cognitive therapy space for online psychotherapy – not to be comforted, but to learn how to attain your mental sovereignty and intellectual immunity through reasonable thinking in a world gone mad –, then you may assume responsibility for your self-therapy here.
The work on thinking has only just begun. Do not wait until the chaos of the world destroys your inner order. Become active beforehand. Test yourself and write, or book an initial consultation to organize your cognitive self-healing:
Suitability Assessment
In the first step, determine how well Written Cognitive Psychotherapy by Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, aligns with your needs. The anonymous and complimentary suitability assessment provides the answer in less than two minutes.
Goal Definition
In the second step, follow the instructions on the form and describe the situation you wish to improve and the resistances you intend to overcome. Within 24 hours, you will receive a complimentary response from Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, containing an offer or a recommendation.
Telephone Consultation
Do you prefer a fee-based consultation with one of the psychotherapists at Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, prior to the complimentary steps 1 and 2? You can book your telephone appointment here.
Cognitive Psychotherapy with encounters in the Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich in Zurich and Rapperswil is history.10 The wind of freedom blows elsewhere.
Voltaire retreated to Ferney to be able to write at a safe distance from the powerful. Thomas Mann went into exile when madness broke out in his homeland. The Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich went to the United States when reason died in Zurich and the birth of hysteria was celebrated as «reasonable».
Methods change. The flight from institutionalized unreason remains a constant of history.
1 The Swiss Federal Council: Ordinance 2 on Measures to Combat the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Amendment of March 16, 2020. Section 4, Art. 10a Para. 2, p. 786.
2 Bucheli, R.: Wir sind hysterisch. Sind wir es auch genug?. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich, Mar 17, 2020, p. 10.
3 Degkwitz, R.; Helmchen, H.; Kockott, G.; Mombour, W. (Eds.): Diagnosenschlüssel und Glossar psychiatrischer Krankheiten. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 1980, p. 50 (transl. from ICD-9).
4 Epiktet, Teles, Musonius: Selected Writings. Greek - German. Edited and translated by Rainer Nickel. Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1994, p. 15.
5 Voltaire: Collection des Lettres sur les Miracles: Écrites a Geneve, et a Neufchatel. (Letter XI, Écrite par Mr. Théro à Mr. Covelle). 1767. [Original text p. 150: «Certainement qui eſt en droit de vous rendre abſurde , eſt en droit de vous rendre injuſte. Si vous n'oppoſez point aux ordres de croire l'impoſſible , l'intelligence que Dieu a miſe dans votre eſprit , vous ne devez point oppoſer aux ordres de mal faire , la juſtice que Dieu a miſe dans votre cœur.»]
6 SRF: Sollen Ungeimpfte ihre Spitalkosten selber tragen? Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), News Plus, Sep 1, 2021.
7 Bandle, R.: Ueli Maurer im Interview: «Natürlich handelte es sich bei Corona um eine Hysterie!». Tagesanzeiger, Zurich, Feb 3, 2024.
8 Luchmann, D.: Die Schweiz als Paradies der psychotherapeutischen Ineffizienz. Psychotherapie. Aug 14, 2025.
9 Bagus, P.; Peña-Ramos, J.A.; Sánchez-Bayón, A.: COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2021, 18 (4), 1376. [Original text pages 10-11: «Mass hysteria can have enormous public health costs in terms of psychological stress, anxiety, and even physical symptoms. To these costs must be added indirect adverse health effects from alcoholism, suicides, or damage from deferred treatment and delayed recognition of illness. Policy failures in mass hysteria can lead to economic decline and poverty, which in turn negatively impacts public health and life expectancy.»]
10 While other cantons do not unreasonably restrict freedom of therapy, § 12 para. 3 of the Health Act in Zurich, unchanged since July 1, 2008, forbids any form of distance psychotherapy to this day – and in conjunction with the Federal Council's ordinance of March 16, 2020 (see item 1), forced the US exile of the Anxiety Clinic on Lake Zurich.
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