About the Journal
Focus and Scope
Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft encourages the lasting and sustainable development of psychotherapy with academic articles on psychotherapy practice and research. It takes a stand on current issues and problems and promotes interdisciplinary exchange on fundamental matters such as indication, methodology, efficiency, etc.
A marked feature of the journal is its openness to all fields of psychotherapy, e.g. psychoanalysis, person-centred psychotherapy, behaviour therapy, Gestalt therapy, body therapy, logotherapy, psychodrama, systemic therapy, family therapy, child and adolescent therapy, group psychoanalysis, dynamic group psychotherapy, catathymic image perception, hypnotherapy, etc. and it prints articles from all fields of psychotherapy. All manuscripts submitted are examined by a panel of international experts.
Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft is the successor publication to Psychotherapie-Forum, which was published by Springer-Verlag. From 2013 to 2017 the journal was published by the Swiss Charter for Psychotherapy, a subsection of the Association of Swiss Psychotherapists (ASP). Since 2017 it has appeared in the Psychosozial-Verlag.
All issues are available in open access on the website www.psychotherapie-wissenschaft.info.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides open access to its content in accordance with the basic premise that the free public availability of research benefits the exchange of knowledge throughout the world.
Authors wishing to publish in this journal agree to the following:
- The author/s retain/s the copyrights and consent/s to initial publication of the work in the journal under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, which allows third parties to use the work by citing the name/s of the author/s and this journal as initial publisher (in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 DE-Licence).
- The author/s can enter into additional contracts for the non-exclusive distribution (e.g. publish in a collection or book) of the version published in the journal, if the journal is cited as initial publisher.
Editor
Responsible for publication of the journal Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft is:
from Issue vol. 15 no. 2 (2025)
Herausgeberverein der Zeitschrift Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft
till Issue vol. 15 no. 1 (2025)
Association of Swiss Psychotherapists (ASP)
till Issue vol. 11 no. 2 (2021)
Schweizer Charta für Psychotherapie
till Issue vol. 2 no. 1 (2012)
Österreichischer Bundesverband für Psychotherapie
Schweizer Charta für Psychotherapie
Deutscher Dachverband für Psychotherapie
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Current prices for accessible media information are given at www.psychosozial-verlag.de (www.psychosozial-verlag.de/cms/mediadaten.html).
Benefactors of the Editorial Association should contact the editorial office directly: pschulthess@icloud.com
Publishing frequency
Twice yearly: June and December
From 2018: April and October
Journal History
When a number of European countries initiated steps to regulate the psychotherapy profession in the early 1990s, psychotherapists also began forming national and international alliances and became actively involved in the respective legislative processes. An important first outcome was the Strasbourg Declaration on Psychotherapy of 1990, which establishes that ‘psychotherapy is an independent scientific discipline’, the pursuit of which constitutes an independent and liberal profession.
This gave rise to the wish for a professional academic publishing medium. The Austrian Federal Association for Psychotherapy set up the journal Psychotherapy Forum, which was published by Springer, Vienna. The Swiss Association of Psychotherapists (ASPV) soon became joint editor and was joined shortly afterwards by the German Psychotherapy Society DVP. Circulation subsequently reach around 6,000 copies and the psychotherapy journal became the most widely distributed of its kind. On its formation, the Swiss Charter for Psychotherapy immediately became a further editor. The ASPV withdrew as editor several years later, but remained involved through its membership in the Charter.
After 19 years with Springer, the editors recognized that being a publisher-bound journal not only brought benefits, but also a number of disadvantages. With a view to ending restrictions and increasing circulation, in 2010 the decision was taken to publish the journal with free Internet access under the name Psychotherapie Wissenschaft. This connected the journal to the Open Access movement, whose concepts the editors entirely endorse.
The editors’ intention in renaming the journal is to promote recognition of psychotherapy as an independent profession.
For various reasons, the German and Austrian partner associations withdrew from publishing the journal in 2012, leaving the Swiss Charta für Psychotherapie to publish it alone from then on. Following a merger of the «Charta» and the «ASP», the ASP became the legal publisher.
In 2025, the ASP had to withdraw from publishing the journal for financial reasons. The editorial team succeeded in founding a new sponsorship to continue the journal: the Editorial Association of the Journal Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft.
The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles from all areas of therapy, both empirical and qualitative, research articles, case reports and theoretical articles.
Publisher
Verantwortlich im Sinne des Presserechts, des Datenschutzrechts sowie Diensteanbieter nach § 6 des Medienstaatsvertrages und § 6 des Teledienstegesetzes:
© 2022 Psychosozial Verlag
Psychosozial-Verlag GmbH & Co KG
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35390 Gießen
Vertretungsberechtigter: Johann Wirth und Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Wirth
Tel: 06 41 - 96 99 78 0
Fax: 06 41 - 96 99 78 19
E-Mail: info@psychosozial-verlag.de
Ust-ID-Nr. : DE 231427078
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