What is special about the Zurich School, you’re asking? Well, that is very easy to explain, so easy, that it’s almost difficult again, because people can’t imagine that the explanation is so simple.
It could have become the most important school of life in Europe, because Freud and Adler's pioneering insights into the social nature of man were taught in understandable language.
It is not surprising that this aroused scepticism and rejection - for reasons of competition from other psychological schools or for ideological and political motives of various origins - in addition to a great deal of serious interest, which was reflected in the enormous popularity.
Because we have published a great deal about war and social grievances in recent years, we will increasingly turn our attention to the causes of war and provide you with valuable material from the educational work of the "Zürcher Schule". We invite you to read and think along with us, support our work and spread the word. Sincerely, Margot and Willy Wahl
A person who comes to us, a person who has difficulties in his life, with his wife, husband, child, neighbor, boss or subordinates, a person who has problems with learning or otherwise cannot cope in life, is not a case, a patient or a client with us.
Nor is he sick. No, he was misinformed in his childhood.
And what is it that we do? We provide the correct information. That is, we explain the basics of modern psychology to him. He explores his own life story, recognizes the way he has become, what opinions he has about life, his fellow human beings and himself. By explaining the nature of man to him, he begins to experiment for himself.
It is that simple and yet so difficult to understand. Because, when the layman comes to us, he has the opinion that psychology is something mystical. He believes that the psychologist or psychiatrist will treat him with a very special method. The psychologist sees through him, sees things in the depths of his soul that are quite unearthly. Man believes in fate and destiny, in heredity and prenatal influencing.
If you explain to him that he is able to shape his own life and understand himself, it seems weird to him. Because until then he believed that others determine his destiny, deities, dark forces, deeply hidden drives and desires.
But in fact, a person – every person – is the sum of all his or her past experiences. And if he or she discloses and understands them, he or she can change himself or herself and his or her life.
The mother who comes to us with her problem child is not a case in our school. She joins the ranks of the other learners, sitting in the courses and groups next to the professor, who is also a learner. She contemplates and does research together with us. She participates. Her word has the same weight as that of all the other participants. When she asks a question, she is taken as seriously as anyone else. Everyone will endeavor to answer this mother’s question. The work will not continue until she has understood.
Or the youngster who comes, because he cannot cope with life. Or the student who is afraid of the exams, or the medical doctor after graduating. Everyone ranks the same. Everyone’s questions are equally important.
Every person who comes to us tests anew whether the findings of modern depth psychology are correct. They hear that character traits are not inherited and they begin to test whether this is true.
They hear that humans are pro-social by nature and they begin to test whether this is true.
He hears that every person in full possession of his senses can learn, and he carries out the experiment on himself, on his child, on his student, on his apprentice. And he sees that it is true.
That is the success of the Zurich School: there are no hidden means, tricks or methods. There is only the knowledge of the human soul, which everybody – if they are informed – can understand.
Why is this so difficult to understand?
Basically, it is as easy as learning French or cooking: If I know what ingredients to use and how to use them, I can bake a nice cake. If I know what the French words mean when someone explains them to me, then I learn French.
This is so difficult to understand because we have not learned to think.
That means, for example, that someone who has failed at school believes that those who study at university have simply got it – by inheritance or divine inspiration. Matter of fact is, however, that the student has learned everything he knows. And if he was able to learn it, then in principle anyone can learn it, as well.
If I know that I can learn anything, then I can start practicing. For example, understanding my child, my student, my partner. Then I know that it’s not just the way it is, and that it does not have to stay that way until the end of my life.
Then I look out for someone, who has already gone through the subject matter which I want to learn and ask him to explain it to me. And then I study.
It’s the same with psychology: I look for someone who is already well-versed and ask him to tell me what he already know, and I appropriate it to myself.
I’ll explain it more clearly with the following example:
I study with students, and so far I have not met a single student who studies in a scientific way. Rather, my students – and, unfortunately, there are no exceptions – have practiced to give the best answer quickly, and the teacher then tells them whether the answer was correct.
When they come to me, they have to start thinking for themselves. We go through a subject matter, for example accountancy, which I myself know little about. We try to find out together what it is about, how to do it.
It happens that the student and I come up with different results. Quickly, quickly, the student deletes his result. He thinks mine must be right. Why does he think that? Because he has not been taught to think for himself.
I tell him, but how do you know that my result is correct? Yes, simply because I am an adult, or the teacher or the psychologist? Yes, but that is not a criterion. You have to see if it is factually correct.
And he begins to check, and he sees, for example, that my result was wrong and his was right. He learns to think, he learns to trust his own mind, he learns to check. He becomes a scientist.
There is no difference in psychology. The person learns to think, learns to do scientific research, learns to check scientifically. This makes him independent, strong and mature.
Why then the question again and again, what it really may be, the special thing about the Zurich School? Actually, we have explained it in detail. But people are not satisfied, they do not understand, they think there must be something very special behind it, behind the success of the Zurich School, something particularly clever, some special trick, some method. The psychologist as magician and with doctor, who knows how to influence people with dark means, some hocus-pocus. There is something fishy about a school of psychology attracting so many people.
What is so difficult to understand about the fact that scientific knowledge, presented in a way that everyone can understand, is successful? What is so difficult to understand about the fact that the person who does the experiments on himself and can live his life in a better way attends the Zurich School?
He simply feels better, begins to learn, to understand his children, to improve his marriage, to manage his business better. That is why he comes to the Zurich School.
Every discovery in all fields of science is simple once you have discovered them. In everyday life everybody gains such an experience: “Aha, that’s how it works, it’s that simple.”
The difficult thing about psychology is to change one’s feelings.
Because we have acquired them as very young children, before we were able to think and judge, through the way our parents treated us, we have difficulty becoming aware of them.
An example: a young man comes and says that he would like to have a girlfriend, but he doesn’t dare to talk to a girl. He doesn’t know why. He is simply afraid, blushes, doesn’t know what to say, starts to stutter, or says nothing at all, walks past. He thinks it’s just the way he is. He’s just a particularly shy, introverted person. That’s his fate and won’t change throughout his life. And anyway, it is certainly determined in advance whether he will ever find a woman – the right woman.
And yet he would like to, so much...
His life story explains to us exactly why he has these difficulties. I don’t want to go into it here, but just tell you an example: when he was 14, he was sex educated by his father – before that, they had never spoken about love and sexuality. He had also never seen his parents being affectionate towards each other.
His father now informed him, he says: “Boy, pay attention, keep your hands off, as a man you shouldn’t have indecent thoughts and you shouldn’t molest decent women.”
Deep down, this young man was afraid of molesting women with his advances. He always wanted to be decent.
When he learned that it was not indecent to have a girlfriend and to court a woman, he probably realized his error, but still his feelings prevented him from taking a step towards his beloved at the crucial moment. The feeling was stronger than his knowledge, because feeling rules reason and not the other way around, as one often thinks.
Only when he had developed a deep trust in a person who understood him and encouraged him, and whom he believed would not disdain him even if he behaved in a so-called indecent manner – when, in other words, the kind of transference happened which we call trust – did he try it. He was successful, he was heard. He found that the woman was very happy about his advances, because she had been waiting for them for a long time.
The first success leads to the second one, he tried more and tried more often and overcame his fears. That is one example. And I could tell you hundreds of them.
The success of the Zurich School can be explained by the fact that the people who come to us are able to organize their lives better. Everyone can understand that, because he experiences it himself.