Dipl.-Psych. Gabriele Marx, Hamburg
I studied psychology in Tübingen and Hamburg, and have been working as a psychotherapist since 1974. after having been trained in Verbal Psychotherapy, Interactive Psychoanalysis (Heigl/Heigl-Evers) and Integrated Therapy (Petzold), and I listened to one of Hermann Schmitz’s presentations for the first time in 1989 at the »Hamburg Open days« (the FPI-Regional Institute of Hamburg Congress). I was fascinated and had the feeling that I was listening to something new and sensational; at the same time, it felt like coming home and rediscovering something that I had lost without noticing. I possibly felt from the beginning onwards that even though I could only partially follow what was being covered, Schmitz’s system (re)opened a door for me to grasp everyday and psychotherapeutic reality, as far as this is possible within the known psychological concepts.
I joined a casuistic research group of psychotherapists and corporate consultants that regularly met with Hermann Schmitz to evaluate and to develop the potential to apply his system to their fields of work.
Ever since, verbal therapy as conditioned by reality able to be experienced has become indispensable for my work. This has become so indispensable as to be able to name something is the most important precondition to both being conscious of what you have experienced and to be able to create a distance to that which was experienced. Precisely this is what defines our work as psychotherapists – that we, embedded in possession of our knowledge, provide ourselves with the aid of our perception, allow ourselves to be affected and, almost at the same time, are able to recreate an inner distance in order to transfer things experienced into helpful interventions.