With this description of reality, Dietmar Luchmann opened his article of August 14, 2025—Switzerland as a Paradise of Psychotherapeutic Inefficiency1. The cognitive psychotherapist's critique was picked up and republished by several online media outlets.2 In response, the architects of the Swiss psychotherapy debacle declared war on the critic.
The ASP and Natalie Rickli
The Assoziation Schweizer Psychotherapeutinnen und Psychotherapeuten (ASP)—the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists—promptly dispatched its president, Gabriela Rüttimann, to file a formal association complaint with various cantonal health departments on September 1, 2025. The complaint perfectly confirmed Luchmann's diagnosis of "professional guild thinking errors"1 and verified his observation that these professional associations serve only to protect "psychotherapists who refuse to think for themselves."1
The ASP, which describes itself as "the only professional association in Switzerland that is fully and exclusively dedicated to the field of psychotherapy,"3 has assembled "approximately 700"3 psychotherapists who, as full members, pay an annual membership fee of "CHF 760"3 for the protection of their inefficient psychoanalytic, depth-psychological, existential-analytical, bioenergetic, and body-centered offerings.
In addition, roughly a dozen psychoanalytic, depth-psychological, existential-analytical, bioenergetic, and body-centered training institutes hold collective memberships—among them the CGJI C.G. Jung Institute Zurich and the IKP Institute for Body-Centered Psychotherapy Zurich, whose "professional directorship" is held by Gabriela Rüttimann.
By using the title "Psychotherapist ASP,"3 these individuals signal their identification, as members of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP), with its particular determination to be "disturbed"4 by the fact that more efficient psychotherapists using more efficient methods cure "anxiety disorders [...] in eight to ten hours,"4 as the ASP president stated in her "complaint"4 about Dietmar Luchmann's patient education efforts.
Read the "complaint"4 slowly:
"We are particularly disturbed by [...] [claims that] anxiety disorders could be cured in as few as eight to ten hours, or that a life could be fully worth living again after just a few hours of therapy. Furthermore, [... Ms. Rüttimann and her ASP colleagues are disturbed by the] alleged possibility of healing without the use of psychotropic medication [...]. Such claims lack scientific evidence and could raise false expectations among patients."
Gabriela Rüttimann, President Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP)4
Curing "anxiety disorders"—the most common mental illnesses, no less—"in as few as eight to ten hours [...] without the use of psychotropic medication"4 thus disturbs the business models of a therapy market that provides inefficient psychotherapists with a comfortable living through decades of psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic accompaniment.
It is self-evident that psychotherapists operating such business models have no interest in allowing public education about the state of research that could prompt patients to choose the more efficient cognitive psychotherapy and make their "life fully worth living again after just a few hours of therapy."4
Only one of the cantonal health departments contacted by the ASP identified with the folly of the psychoanalytic, depth-psychological, existential-analytical, bioenergetic, and body-centered lobbyists—by declaring the therapeutic success of cognitive psychotherapy a disciplinary matter: The Zurich Department of Health, headed by Cantonal Councillor Natalie Rickli.
In response to their official demand for a "statement,"5 Natalie Rickli now receives this complimentary cognitive analysis.
The Cognitive Autopsy of Folly
In the following, Psychotherapie.com will perform a cognitive autopsy on the pathological thinking, the professional guild's cognitive distortions of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP), and the conduct of the Zurich Department of Health under Natalie Rickli.
The interplay between the ASP and the Zurich Department of Health demonstrates that, more than three decades after the findings of Klaus Grawe's6 psychotherapy efficacy research, the swamp of psychotherapeutic inefficiency still dictates Zurich's licensing standards.
The question arises inescapably: Is Health Director Natalie Rickli protecting inefficient psychotherapy in Zurich?7
Readers may answer that question for themselves after considering the facts presented here and in the articles on Natalie Rickli7 and the IKP Institute for Body-Centered Psychotherapy Zurich.8 In any event, this affair is a case study in the mating of malice and stupidity.
"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. Against evil, one can protest; it can be exposed; if need be, it can be prevented by force—evil always carries the seed of its own destruction within itself [...]. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one's own prejudice simply need not be believed."9
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these lines in 1943, from his prison cell. He was analyzing a different phenomenon, yet his observation possesses timeless validity: Whoever is confronted with authorities that do not examine but merely execute faces a communicative impossibility.
Bonhoeffer also noted: "The stupid person is often stubborn. But this must not deceive us into thinking he is independent. In conversation with him, one senses that one is not dealing with the person himself, but with slogans and catchwords that have taken power over him."9 The Zurich Department of Health's bureaucratic subservience to the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) has created precisely such a situation. That is why we address not the authorities, but the public.
Bonhoeffer's analysis provides the key to understanding a grotesque alliance currently forming in Zurich against efficient psychotherapy: self-interested malice and institutional folly.
Zurich: The Chronology of a Farce
The catalyst was the article "Switzerland as a Paradise of Psychotherapeutic Inefficiency,"1 in which the psychotherapist Dietmar Luchmann dared to state the obvious: Switzerland's psychotherapy landscape suffers not from a shortage of resources, but from inefficiency. While evidence-based research has demonstrated for decades that anxiety disorders require no more than "a total of 7 to 14 hours"10 of cognitive psychotherapy—without psychotropic medication—the average treatment duration in Switzerland, according to the OECD, is approximately 60 months. Dietmar Luchmann criticized psychiatrists and psychotherapists for "selling sentimental chit-chat, grossly overpaid, as psychotherapy."1
The article was widely received. Over a hundred comments, the majority supportive. "The best article yet,"2 wrote one reader. "I can already hear the outcry from the guild: traitor!"2 wrote another. One affected individual reported: "For over 20 years I went to therapy, and at the end I was sicker than when I started. Constantly new suspected diagnoses, pathologized personality traits. You are systematically conditioned into a helpless victim."2 Evidently, the article struck a nerve.
This called the guild of long-term therapists into action, as was to be expected. The Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP), whose business model of endless talk therapy and psychoanalysis is delegitimized by the demand for efficiency, responded swiftly. They chose not the path of professional discourse, but the route of administrative denunciation. This is the level of malice—strategically transparent, but comprehensible as interest-driven politics.
But now the second actor enters the stage—the one Bonhoeffer identified as the more dangerous: the bureaucracy.
Rather than examining the complaint for its professional substance, the Zurich Department of Health—politically overseen by Cantonal Councillor Natalie Rickli with her personal "micromanagement"11—adopted the accusations of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) virtually verbatim, by copy and paste:
"It is claimed, for example, that anxiety disorders could be cured in eight to ten hours, or that a life could be fully worth living again after just a few therapy sessions. [...] [that it is possible] to cure mental health conditions without psychotropic medication [...] Such claims, on the one hand, lack scientific evidence; on the other, they could raise false expectations among patients regarding rapid therapeutic outcomes. [...] For these reasons, we consider your [...] websites to be misleading and therefore impermissible."
Sophie Köhler, MLaw, Legal Counsel Office of Public Health, Zurich Department of Health5
In so doing, the Zurich Department of Health has accomplished a feat without parallel in the history of medical supervision: It accuses a psychotherapist of working in accordance with the clinical guidelines of the British National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)—an institution renowned worldwide for its ruthless commitment to evidence—which, in its clinical guidelines for anxiety and panic disorders, recommends precisely "a total of 7 to 14 hours"10 of cognitive psychotherapy without psychotropic medication.
In their singular ignorance of the research landscape and their obstinate refusal to recognize the ASP complaint as an absurd act of malice—by so much as glancing at the evidence—the Zurich Department of Health equally fails to notice that the psychotherapist under attack and his Anxiety Clinic at Lake Zurich12 have, since the outbreak of the hysteria in Zurich,12 vacated the theater of absurdity and no longer fall under Zurich's local or subject-matter jurisdiction.
The Zurich weekly WOZ reported on April 3, 2025, "that Rickli engages in micromanagement and concerns herself with the minutest details of day-to-day operations, as sources within the Department confirm. In the process, she routinely overrules her own experts."11 The result of this "micromanagement"11 reveals the Zurich Department of Health as a supervisory authority whose supervision must be described, in Goethe's formulation, as "active ignorance."13
"Nothing is more frightful than active ignorance."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, 1833.13
Dietmar Luchmann's attempt, on February 9, 2026, to offer Zurich Health Director Natalie Rickli a face-saving exit from this farce foundered on the Zurich Department of Health's stubborn refusal to conduct "its own preliminary review of the facts" before demanding a "statement"—that is, to think for itself. The cognitive psychotherapist's offer of assistance in recognizing the ASP provocation was rebuffed by the Department via email on February 10, 2026, with the remark that this was not "the customary procedure in supervisory proceedings" within the Rickli administration.
Where Therapeutic Success Is Decreed Deficient
The Zurich Department of Health objects, in all seriousness, that Dietmar Luchmann's informing patients that anxiety disorders can be successfully treated in an average of eight to ten hours constitutes a "promise of cure"5 that is "misleading and therefore impermissible."5 The Zurich Department of Health writes, verbatim:
"Such claims lack [...] scientific evidence."
One must let that sentence dissolve on the tongue. The largest cantonal health authority in Switzerland declares the gold standard of modern cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and cognitive psychotherapy to be heresy, just like that. Had anyone in Rickli's department consulted so much as a single standard reference work of international efficacy research, they would know that cognitive psychotherapy for anxiety and panic disorders, as well as phobias, works in precisely this timeframe.
What is more: This knowledge is not new. As early as 1994—over 30 years ago—Klaus Grawe of the University of Bern published his landmark work, Psychotherapie im Wandel (Psychotherapy in Transition).6 His meta-analytic findings were already devastating for the chatter guild:
"Never, in any review of the comparative effectiveness of therapies, has any other form of therapy been shown to be superior to cognitive-behavioral therapies. [...] The actual state of evidence could therefore not be more unambiguous: Cognitive-behavioral therapy is, on average, significantly more effective than psychoanalytic therapy and person-centered psychotherapy."
Klaus Grawe Psychotherapie im Wandel: Von der Konfession zur Profession (Psychotherapy in Transition: From Confession to Profession). 1994, p. 670.6
Grawe demonstrated: "The timeframe in which effective therapies achieve their results is measured in months, not years. Precisely in those forms of therapy that have proven most effective, the positive effects emerge in astonishingly short periods or are achieved with an astonishingly small number of sessions. This is particularly pronounced for many cognitive-behavioral procedures. [...] The view still held by many psychoanalytic therapists today—that severely disturbed patients require years of therapy—has been definitively refuted" (1994, p. 696).6
That the supervisory officials who decide on professional practice licenses for psychotherapists in Zurich dismiss this 30-year-old foundational knowledge of psychology as "scientifically unsubstantiated" is no mere oversight:
It is the declaration of bankruptcy of the Zurich Department of Health under the political leadership of Natalie Rickli, who is evidently unable to distinguish between evidence and lobbying.
Were it otherwise, one might expect that Natalie Rickli would have long since directed her supervisory authority—which is supposed to protect patients from the business models of untrustworthy psychotherapists—to revoke the training accreditation of all institutes that cannot produce scientifically recognized evidence of their methods' efficacy, thereby draining the swamp of psychotherapeutic inefficiency.
The Pathologization of Health by ASP Psychotherapists
The second accusation leveled by the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) is more absurd still. The Zurich Department of Health adopts this malicious charge as its own and criticizes the statement that successful psychotherapy makes life "fully worth living again" as "misleading."5
In the bureaucratic cosmos of the Zurich Department of Health, the notion that a psychotherapeutic intervention might actually lead to recovery appears to be suspect. Anyone who defines "cure" as the goal violates the unwritten law of the medical-psychiatric cartel, which regards the perpetual patient as the ideal case of stable revenue.
On September 20, 2002, the Deutsches Ärzteblatt (German Medical Journal) published the rare confession of a psychiatrist who taught psychiatry at the University of Witten-Herdecke and served as medical director of the Westphalian Psychiatric Hospital in Gütersloh from 1980 to 1996. This board-certified psychiatrist and longtime chief of medicine explains the logic of profit maximization in the healthcare system with unmistakable and almost brutal candor:
"Competition forces the opening of new markets. The goal must be the transformation of all healthy people into sick ones—that is, into people who regard themselves, for as long as possible throughout their lives, [...] as psychologically in need of therapeutic, rehabilitative, and preventive manipulation by experts in order to 'live healthily.' This is already working quite well in the domain of physical illness, but even better in the domain of mental disorders—especially since there is no shortage of theories according to which almost no one is healthy."
Klaus Dörner Gesundheitssystem: In der Fortschrittsfalle (The Healthcare System: Trapped by Progress). Deutsches Ärzteblatt. September 20, 2002.14
The goal of cognitive psychotherapy is not to teach patients to cope better with their misery so that they do not kill themselves and remain available for lifelong exploitation by the medical-psychiatric cartel. The goal is to eliminate the misery and make their lives "fully worth living again." The data from international research and from Dietmar Luchmann's cognitive psychotherapy have demonstrated for over 30 years that this can often happen very quickly—once the resistance to change is dissolved.
Lars-Göran Öst, a now-emeritus professor of clinical psychology at Stockholm University, reported in 1989 that cognitive therapy procedures in "cases of specific phobia show that 90% of patients achieved marked improvement or complete recovery after a mean treatment duration of 2.1 hours."15
That cognitive psychotherapy requires, on average, only ten hours for anxiety disorders has been the standard of care for decades. These therapeutic outcomes can surprise only those who have fallen victim to the misleading advertising of physicians and psychotherapists whose goal is the "transformation of all healthy people into sick ones."14
After the revealing "complaint"4 in which Gabriela Rüttimann, as president of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP), de facto admitted that it is in fact their members who mislead patients in order to exploit them through inefficient and unnecessarily prolonged psychotherapies, a functioning Zurich supervisory authority would immediately summon all ASP psychotherapists to submit a statement explaining how they reconcile their misleading promotion of inefficient therapies with the requirement, under Article 24 of the Psychology Professions Act (PsyG), to be "trustworthy."
Psychotropic Medication as a Ball and Chain for Inefficient Psychotherapy
Third count of the indictment: The members of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) are "disturbed"4 by the "alleged possibility of healing without the use of psychotropic medication"4 in cases of "anxiety disorders,"4 as Dietmar Luchmann points out. The Zurich Department of Health adopts this absurdity from the ASP as well, calling the "possibility of curing mental health conditions without psychotropic medication [...] misleading and therefore impermissible."5
The Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) and the Zurich Department of Health have turned the scientific standard on its head.
The scientific state of knowledge holds: For anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, and specific phobias, cognitive psychotherapy is the most effective primary intervention—one that, when correctly applied, requires no psychotropic medication.
That subordinate clause is not insignificant: The cognitive psychotherapy that has been scientifically demonstrated to be the most effective method requires correct application to cure anxiety disorders in "a total of 7 to 14 hours"10 without psychotropic medication, as the British National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) stipulates in its clinical guidelines.
Correct application, however, is rather rare in cognitive psychotherapy—which works with the instrument of thinking—when "psychotherapists [...] refuse to think for themselves."1 Aaron T. Beck, who helped bring cognitive psychotherapy to prominence, wrote in 2021: "The practice of CBT is not simple. Too many mental health professionals call themselves CBT therapists but lack even the most basic conceptual and treatment skills."16
Readers who think for themselves need only answer this question: What do psychiatrists and psychotherapists who have never learned an efficient method of psychotherapy use to keep their patients satisfied?—Psychotropic medication. What do psychiatrists and psychotherapists use to bind their patients to them?—Psychotropic medication.
Psychotropic medication creates the appearance of therapeutic activity without changing anything about the cognitive distortions that cause the anxiety disorder—or, heaven forbid, threatening a "cure" that the members of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) find "particularly disturbing."4
Peter C. Gøtzsche, Professor of Research Design and Research Analysis at the University of Copenhagen and a specialist in internal medicine, stated in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, with a clarity that "disturbs" ASP psychotherapists:
"I estimate that we could save 95 percent of the money we spend on drugs without patients coming to any harm. In fact, more people would be able to live longer and happier lives."
Peter C. Gøtzsche "The Pharmaceutical Industry Is Worse Than the Mafia." Süddeutsche Zeitung. February 6, 2015.17
Anyone who has understood this understands the business model and therapeutic principle: In anxiety disorders, psychotropic medication serves as a ball and chain to keep patients available for lifelong exploitation. This explains the malice of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) toward any public education that anxiety disorders can be "healed without the use of psychotropic medication."4
And the Zurich Department of Health dutifully serves this cynical exploitation by treating the renunciation of chemistry in psychotherapy as a potential professional offense.
Addressing "Smart" Independent Thinkers? Officially Prohibited!
The most dramatic loss of contact with reality on the part of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) was revealed by Gabriela Rüttimann in another sentence of her "complaint,"4 in which she demanded that the Zurich Department of Health prohibit "the targeted outreach to an affluent and 'smart' clientele"4 as "impermissible advertising."4
"Psychotherapists who refuse to think for themselves"1 are bad enough for public health, but ASP psychotherapists who want to prohibit others from thinking should have their professional practice licenses revoked!
Anyone who believes that a professional practice license for psychotherapy transforms a human being into a competent expert capable of curing mental disorders should reconsider that expectation. It is contradicted not only by the many "psychotherapists who refuse to think for themselves"1 but also by the scientifically documented fact that psychotherapists are often sicker than their patients—and thus can scarcely provide the "physical and psychological assurance of irreproachable professional practice" that Article 24 of the Psychology Professions Act (PsyG) requires as a precondition for a professional practice license.
Eva Jaeggi held the chair of Clinical Psychology at the Technical University of Berlin and uncovered alarming data:
"Mental illness among therapists is widespread. The figures vary, but overall they are quite depressing: 73% anxiety disorders, 58% depression, 82% severe personal problems, 11% substance abuse; the suicide rate is estimated to be higher than the average."
Eva Jaeggi Die Angst des Therapeuten vor sich selbst (The Therapist's Fear of Himself). In: Psychotherapie in Psychiatrie, Psychotherapeutischer Medizin und Klinischer Psychologie. 2003. p. 195.18
What is alarming about these data is that these psychotherapists—despite years of additional psychotherapy training following the completion of their medical or psychology degrees—failed to successfully overcome their own anxiety disorders, anxiety conditions, or social phobias through psychotherapy. This raises an inescapable question: What good is psychotherapy training if it does not enable psychotherapists to overcome their own problems?
Smart independent thinkers are welcome to ask their local health authorities whether, 30 years after Klaus Grawe's psychotherapy research, they still do not know that the root cause of all problems in psychotherapy provision is this: the inefficient psychotherapy methods cultivated as "confession" are simply unfit to cure mental disorders.
Neither the body-centered psychotherapy practiced by the IKP Institute for Body-Centered Psychotherapy Zurich8 under Gabriela Rüttimann's professional direction, nor Gestalt therapy as its foundation, are scientifically recognized psychotherapy methods. These IKP methods simply lack efficacy evidence, as the Scientific Advisory Board for Psychotherapy (WBP) determined in its expert opinion published by the Deutsches Ärzteblatt in August 2018.19
The "complaint"4 of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) proves: The transition of psychotherapy "from confession to profession,"6 as Klaus Grawe at the University of Bern demonstrated in 1994, has not yet taken place in Switzerland.
Political Consequences: Will Natalie Rickli Clean House?
With the hubris of her letter of September 1, 2025, Gabriela Rüttimann has delivered her IKP Institute for Body-Centered Psychotherapy Zurich and the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) to the guillotine of scientific progress.
Gabriela Rüttimann deserves gratitude for her unambiguous health-policy confession that anxiety disorders, which efficient psychotherapists cure with effective psychotherapy "in as few as eight to ten hours,"4 "disturb"4 the decades-long exploitation of these mental disorders by members of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP). The sinfully expensive dominance of Swiss long-term psychotherapy, in its arrogance, stands before its fall.
The political class is beginning to realize that Switzerland can no longer afford the blanket financing of psychotherapeutic chat sessions. Martina Bircher had already initiated the parliamentary process of enlightenment with Motion 23.4108: "Feel-Good Events Are Not Medical Treatments."20
On December 16, 2025, Philippe Nantermod introduced Motion 25.4533 in the National Council—a motion capable of draining the swamp of psychotherapeutic inefficiency. Its title: "Remove Psychotherapies From the List of Covered Services to Reduce Premiums."21
The psychotherapy associations' response to criticism of psychotherapy inefficiency demonstrates: The cure is only possible if Motion 25.453321 turns the psychotherapy fee into an instrument of quality assurance.
The conduct of the Zurich Department of Health is not merely a farce—it has a tangible political dimension. While for Cantonal Councillor Natalie Rickli, evidently, "Only the Image Matters,"11 health insurance premiums are exploding. The populace is beginning to revolt.
While Bern debates cost containment, the Zurich Department of Health punishes those who solve the problem: psychotherapists who work quickly, efficiently, and in accordance with the evidence—and who educate the public about it. Anyone who cures in ten hours deprives the system of revenue—and is consequently persecuted by the system.
As the nonchalance demonstrates with which the Zurich Department of Health adopts the interests of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP) as its own, those charged with supervision are protecting not patients from charlatans, but the paradise of psychotherapeutic inefficiency1 from competition.
Cognitive Psychotherapy: Thinking Instead of Pigeon Chess
Why does the psychotherapist Dietmar Luchmann not respond to the Zurich Department of Health after their email of February 10, 2026? Why does he not refute these points in a detailed statement to the authorities?
Because it would be futile. Bonhoeffer knew: "Against stupidity we are defenseless."9 A health authority that, under the aegis of Cantonal Councillor Natalie Rickli, classifies efficiency as charlatanry and cure as a false promise has abandoned the terrain of rational discourse. It has become the blind enforcer of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP).
Were Dietmar Luchmann, after the futile effort in his email of February 9, 2026, to move the Zurich Department of Health to think for itself, to respond to them as well, he would be accepting their premises. Although the Zurich health authority has no jurisdiction whatsoever, he would have to justify himself for disseminating the research findings that Klaus Grawe established three decades ago. He would have to apologize for the fact that the patients of his Anxiety Clinic12—through his cognitive psychotherapy, in just a few hours, in full compliance with clinical guidelines10—recover and find their lives "fully worth living again."
Perhaps the inquisitorial stupidity of the authorities would ultimately demand that he renounce his professional ethics, much as Galileo Galilei was compelled by the Inquisition in 1633 to abjure his purportedly "misleading" enlightenment. The Tagesspiegel, Berlin, reported on August 20, 2004, on page 25, about the psychotherapist Dietmar Luchmann: "His maxim is: efficient treatments, limited to an average of ten hours—instead of years of therapy in which therapists exploit their clients."22
It is beyond question that this professional ethic and Dietmar Luchmann's therapeutic outcomes "disturb"4 the business models for the health-damaging long-term exploitation of patients by members of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP). The central question is: Why does Natalie Rickli allow the whistleblower to be threatened with regulatory measures up to and including a professional ban?
Why does Cantonal Councillor Natalie Rickli not put an end to the misleading of patients through inefficient therapies by the members of the Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASP)?
This correspondence is not a legal proceeding—it is a symptom. It shows why Switzerland, despite the world's highest density of psychiatrists23 and the increase in the number of psychotherapy practices24 from 2,340 in the third quarter of 2022 to 4,834 in the second quarter of 2024 (206 percent in two years), complains of a shortage in psychotherapy provision. The system is not sick. It is, in the Bonhoefferian sense, stupid. And against stupidity, the only remedy is public enlightenment.
1 Luchmann, D.: Die Schweiz als Paradies der Psychotherapie-Ineffizienz (Switzerland as a Paradise of Psychotherapy Inefficiency). Psychotherapie. August 14, 2025.
2 Republications appeared on insideparadeplatz.ch, infosperber.ch, medinside.ch, among others.
3 Quotations taken from the website of the "Assoziation Schweizer Psychotherapeutinnen und Psychotherapeuten (ASP)" (Swiss Association of Psychotherapists) at the time of this article's publication.
4 Quotations from the letter of the "Assoziation Schweizer Psychotherapeutinnen und Psychotherapeuten (ASP)," signed by Gabriela Rüttimann as "President," dated September 1, 2025, addressed to the Zurich Department of Health. The letter is available as a PDF copy.
5 Quotations from the letter of the "Gesundheitsdirektion Zürich" (Zurich Department of Health), signed by Sophie Köhler, MLaw, as "Legal Counsel," dated October 22, 2025, addressed to the author. The letter is available as a PDF copy.
6 Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC: Klaus Grawe, University of Bern: Cognitive psychotherapy is "significantly more effective" than person-centered psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Psychotherapie. February 16, 2026.
7 Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC: Is Natalie Rickli protecting inefficient psychotherapy schools? Psychotherapie. February 16, 2026.
8 Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC: IKP Institute for Body-Centered Psychotherapy Zurich. Psychotherapie. February 16, 2026.
9 Bonhoeffer, D.: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, Vol. 8: Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft (Letters and Papers from Prison). Ed. Ch. Gremmels, E. Bethge, and R. Bethge. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998. [Quotations: Von der Dummheit (On Stupidity), pp. 26–28.]
10 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE): Generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder in adults: management. Clinical guideline. June 15, 2020. [Section 1.3.15: "CBT in the optimal range of duration (7 to 14 hours in total) should be offered." Section 1.3.20: "Benzodiazepines are associated with a less good outcome in the long term and should not be prescribed for the treatment of individuals with panic disorder."]
11 Beck, R.: Natalie Rickli: Nur das Image zählt (Natalie Rickli: Only the Image Matters). Die Wochenzeitung, Zurich, No. 14/2025. April 3, 2025.
12 Luchmann, D.: Angstambulanz am Zürichsee: Als Zürich die kognitive Psychotherapie von Angst und Hysterie verbot (Anxiety Clinic at Lake Zurich: When Zurich Banned the Cognitive Psychotherapy of Anxiety and Hysteria). Psychotherapie. August 20, 2025.
13 Goethe, J.W.: Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens (Complete Works by Epochs of His Creative Life). Vol. 17. Maximen und Reflexionen (Maxims and Reflections). Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1991. [Quotation: No. 367, p. 782.]
14 Dörner, K.: Gesundheitssystem: In der Fortschrittsfalle (The Healthcare System: Trapped by Progress). Deutsches Ärzteblatt, September 20, 2002, Vol. 99, No. 38, pp. A2462–A2466. [Quotation: Section 11, pp. A2464ff.]
15 Öst, L.-G.: One-session treatment for specific phobias. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 1989, Volume 27, Issue 1, 1–7. [Original text, p. 6: "The results for the present group of 20 consecutive cases of specific phobia show that 90% of the patients were much improved or completely recovered after a mean of 2.1 h of therapy."]
16 Beck, A.T.: Foreword. In: Beck, J.S.: Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond. 3rd edition. New York: Guilford Press, 2021. [Original text, p. XI: "The practice of CBT is not simple. Too many mental health professionals call themselves CBT therapists but lack even the most basic conceptual and treatment skills."]
17 Schulte von Drach, Markus C.: Peter C. Gøtzsche interview—"The Pharmaceutical Industry Is Worse Than the Mafia." Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich. February 6, 2015.
18 Jaeggi, E.: Die Angst des Therapeuten vor sich selbst (The Therapist's Fear of Himself). Psychotherapie in Psychiatrie, Psychotherapeutischer Medizin und Klinischer Psychologie. 2003, Vol. 8, No. 1, 194–198. [Quotation: p. 195. The psychologist and psychotherapist Eva Jaeggi reported these research findings only in the safety of retirement, following her emeritation from the chair of Clinical Psychology at the Technical University of Berlin, where she served as professor from 1978 to 2000.]
19 Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Psychotherapie (Scientific Advisory Board for Psychotherapy): Wissenschaftliches Gutachten: Gestalttherapie kein Psychotherapieverfahren (Scientific Expert Opinion: Gestalt Therapy Not a Recognized Psychotherapy Method). Deutsches Ärzteblatt PP, Issue 8/2018, p. 342.
20 The Swiss Parliament: Wohlfühlveranstaltungen sind keine Krankheitsbehandlungen (Feel-Good Events Are Not Medical Treatments). Motion 23.4108, September 27, 2023, submitted by Martina Bircher (SVP).
21 The Swiss Parliament: Psychotherapien wieder aus dem Leistungskatalog streichen (Remove Psychotherapies From the List of Covered Services). Motion 25.4533, December 16, 2025, submitted by Philippe Nantermod (FDP).
22 Kast, B.: "Der Graben ist größer denn je" (The Divide Is Greater Than Ever). Psychotherapeuten streiten darüber, welche Methode von der Kasse bezahlt werden soll (Psychotherapists argue over which method should be covered by insurance). Tagesspiegel, Berlin, August 20, 2004, p. 25.
23 The Swiss Parliament: Psychiater-Schwemme in der Schweiz (Psychiatrist Glut in Switzerland). Interpellation 14.4178, December 11, 2014, submitted by Sylvia Flückiger-Bäni (SVP).
24 Tuch, A.; Fischer, F.B.; Jörg, R.: Monitoring zur Neuregelung der psychologischen Psychotherapie (Monitoring the New Regulation of Psychological Psychotherapy). Second report commissioned by the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG). Obsan Report 07/2025. Neuchâtel: Swiss Health Observatory, 2025, p. 20.
Your Comment
Do you have remarks, suggestions, or additions regarding this article? Do you have personal therapy experiences? We welcome substantial feedback.