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Five years ago, the German «Scientific Advisory Board on Psychotherapy» (WBP) not only rejected Humanistic Psychotherapy as a «scientifically recognized procedure» in an expert opinion, but even withdrew the «recommendation for advanced training» from Person-centered Psychotherapy – an approach which had already been recognized by the WBP in 2002. After initial protests by many scientists and institutions against this evaluation, a standstill must be reported. The WBP evades discourses about this critique and the evaluation complained. This paper takes the 5-year anniversary as an opportunity to provide a report of the contexts and circumstances of this blockage of Humanistic Psychotherapy in Germany. This is because many are unfamiliar with this German administrative regulatory framework. The report focuses on publications after 2018. For it is becoming increasingly clear that the German ideology of strictly separated approaches, whose «scientificity» must be proven exclusively by experimental RCT studies with regard to specific factors, does not stand up to findings from international psychotherapy research. Increasingly, research supports a view which has prevailed especially by Wampold since 2001, according to which contextual factors in particular contribute significantly to the success of therapy. These are above all aspects that play a central role in Humanistic Psychotherapy. The article concludes with the hope that the WBP will register these discourses and come to a changed evaluation of Humanistic Psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the experience of a peer chat service for young people that was launched in 2019 in Italian-speaking Switzerland and is still ongoing. It is a type of counselling where young people help other young people during a specific time. The peer chats are avatar-based, so this type of counselling is confidential, digital and written. In this preliminary evaluation, we wanted to take into account both the experiences of those who have used this service and the characteristics of the peer chats. The results show that satisfaction with the service and certain dimensions of life skills assessment such as self-knowledge, problem solving, empathy and many others were good. The conclusions explore both the limitations and the possibilities of this new way of providing digital support to young people by young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the transformation and finitude of bodies in the lifelong aging process and the social conditions that predispose them focussing on close relationships in a pandemic context. The material was generated during virtually conducted group discussions with people between the ages of 60 and 80. The virtual space formed both a boundary and a space of possibility to (re)read bodies retrospectively. The narrated »body biographies« represent negotiations of the subject in the context of the pandemic situatedness and agency. Participants reflected on the ambivalence of the restrictions imposed by regulations and lockdowns, the construction as a risk group, and the resulting perception of corporeality. The data points to the lack of physical closeness relationships and the possibilities of closeness in virtual spaces. The reflexive, intra-biographical encounters oscillate between self-assurance and transformative processes of self-formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]