Who benefits from psychotherapy studies?

On academicization policy, standardized psychotherapy, and the significance of a young discipline for the academic future of schools-based psychotherapy

Abstract

The new Austrian Psychotherapy Act (2024) requires psychotherapy to have an academic and scientific foundation through institutional links to universities. Psychotherapy can find an academic anchor in various university subjects, such as the established fields of psychology, medicine, pedagogics, etc., or in the young field of psychotherapy studies (Psychotherapiewissenschaft, PTW). On the one hand, this article highlights the strategies and trends in academicization policy in German-speaking Central Europe (DACH), thereby establishing a framework for discussion in which a dominant trend is becoming increasingly apparent, one that could be described as »from schools-based psychotherapy to uniform psychotherapy.” On the other hand, this essay presents an alternative academization dynamic that works in the opposite direction and strives to scientifically secure the diversity of therapy schools. Psychotherapy must decide whether it wants to transform itself into a unified discipline in the medium term or whether it wants to continue to see itself as a polymorphous culture of knowledge and practice. In the latter case, psychotherapy will find great support in psychotherapy studies (PTW).