Profile

Career Focus:

Psychotherapy and counseling sciences, psychotherapy and supervision research with a focus on gender, risks and side effects of psychotherapy and supervision, gender-sensitive psychotherapy, critical psychology, eating disorders, supervision for clinical and psychosocial care structures in urban and rural areas

Biography

Brigitte Schigl is an Austrian clinical and health psychologist, supervisor, integrative Gestalt psychotherapist and expert in psychotherapy and counseling sciences. After decades of lecturing and teaching, her scientific focus is now primarily on gender-sensitive psychotherapy and supervision, as well as on the analysis and organizational development of psychosocial care structures for women in urban and rural areas. To support the establishment of a psychosocial care infrastructure in Vienna and Lower Austria, Schigl is co-founder of the Society for Critical Psychologists (GkPP), as well as the Center for Counseling and Communication in Krems, and the Center for Eating Disorders in Vienna. In addition, she was awarded an honorary professorship at Danube University/University of Continuing Education Krems in 2013, and she directed the former Psychotherapy and Counseling Sciences program at Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences.

Growing up in a small and conservative town, Schigl felt little sense of belonging and quickly developed a will to resist: "Well I remember at 15 or 16, on some school trip [I] memorized the first paragraph of the Communist Manifesto and got up on an armchair there (BS laughs) and kind of proclaimed that, and of course that was terrible for this very conservative school."

The move to Vienna for her psychology studies in 1978 was experienced by Schigl as a liberation, and she enjoyed the many opportunities the city offers and the wide variety of interesting people. It was the time of social reform movements and the spirit of the ‘68 movement is palpable in Vienna. Thus, upon her arrival, Schigl not only witnessed the beginning of the second women's movement in Austria and how psychotherapy became more important socially, but also how the mid-level faculty gained influence at the University of Vienna and how the Psychology program was reformed. Schigl explored various political groups and found that she felt most at home with the anarchists. Parallel to her studies at the Psychological institute, Schigl became active in the student council in 1979. She also began to participate in feminist meetings and helped to establish the first Consciousness Raising group at the University of Vienna. In the group, the participants experimented a lot with themselves, which Schigl experienced as "stimulating and exciting."

Schigl became increasingly politically active during her studies and was involved in the Austrian and German peace movements, as well as the co-founding of the environmental protection organizations Greenpeace Austria and Global 2000, where she engaged in non-violent actions such as the occupation of the Hainburger Au to prevent a new Danube power plant. This period of intensive involvement with grassroots democratic processes and commitment to environmental protection were formative for Schigl's worldview. She learned that processes can be set in motion with a critical attitude and civil courage and experiences herself as self-effective.

In 1987, Schigl then completed her doctorate in the main areas of Psychology and Philosophy. In one of the first qualitative dissertations at the Psychology department of the University of Vienna, Schigl examined the psychosocial care structure in the countryside, using a district in Lower Austria as an example. She recognized that there is a lack of facilities for youth, job-seekers and financially strained people - results that led to the co-founding of the association Center and Counseling for Communication in Krems, wherein Schigl herself actively participated in the board of directors for a long time and which still works very successfully today.

Adjacent to her academic pursuits, Schigl began psychotherapy training in Integrative Gestalt Therapy in order to counteract the scientific orientation of her psychology studies. She was very interested in depth psychology and attended, among other things, the "legendary" Saturday lectures of Professor Hans Strozka (former head of the Institute for Depth Psychology and Psychotherapy at the Medical University of Vienna). Building on her own therapy experiences in the self-organized self-awareness groups, Schigl joined Dr. Peter Bolen's therapy group: "And [I thought] 'ok, I'll just do integrative Gestalt therapy.' I also liked it, because Paul Goodman was there, he was also an anarchist, and Perls was very resistant anyway. So I remember that I always said in the recruitment interviews, 'What's important to me is a psychotherapy training in which I don't have to change or adapt,' and I was assured that I could be who I am there, and I liked that." By virtue of the work done in her dissertation, Schigl already had a good overview of the psychosocial care structure in Lower Austria, and she began offering psychotherapy in 1988, first in Krems, and a short time after also in Vienna in her own private practice.

From then on, Psychology and psychotherapy, as well as practice and research, always run parallel for Schigl. Through her research on rural care structures, an increasing focus on the situation of women developed in her work. Together with Dr. Herbert Rauch, from the Institute for Social Analysis, she worked on a large EU research project on village renewal measures comparing European countries in 1988. Here they develop qualitative-participative "regional analysis and idea workshops,” work conducted with unemployed people in different parts of Eastern Austria within the framework of experimental labor market policy. According to Schigl, her "entire professional career has always emerged very organically.”

At the same time the women's health movement in Vienna was beginning, the book "Our Body, Ourselves" (by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective) was published in German, and the feminist criticism of "mainstream medicine" became increasingly louder. Schigl participated in the founding of the Society for Critical Psychologists (German: Gesellschaft für kritische Psychologen und Psychologinnen, GkPP) in Vienna to push for the inclusion of critical content in Psychology and to establish a second, critical, alternative professional organization in Austria.

After having received an invitation from the student council, Schigl began teaching as a critical Psychologist at the University of Vienna in 1994. In 1995 she graduated as a Gestalt therapist and from then on also has been teaching in the therapeutic preparatory course and in the GkPP as part of the training for clinical and health Pychologists on psychosocial care.

In 1995, Schigl has begun to focus on the topic of eating disorders. Here she tries to bring together critical Psychology and women-specific therapy: "Eating disorders are a topic where critical feminist and psychotherapeutic work go together wonderfully, because eating disorders can also be understood as an exaggeration of social ideals of beauty and a rebellion against the constraints to which women are subjected.” Together with other graduates of a women-specific training course on eating disorders led by Dr. Barbara Krebs and Dr. Verena Vogelbach (of the Frankfurt Center for Eating Disorders), Schigl founded the Center for Eating Disorders association in Vienna in 1997 in order to establish a service for women with eating disorders. For many years she acted as chairwoman of this association, established the first telephone hotline for eating disorders together with her colleagues, and carried out various prevention projects as well as training courses for professionals.

In 1999, the Professor of Psychology Prof. Dr. Roswith Roth and the Coordination Office for Gender Studies brought Schigl to the University of Graz, where she started to offer recurring seminars on eating disorders and gender-specific health promotion for the years to come. In 2000, she also has begun teaching Integrative Therapy at the Danube University Krems and moved her center of life back to the countryside. In order to strengthen and further develop the Integrative Therapy approach, Schigl completed an additional master's degree in psychotherapy, intensively studying "Gender in the Therapist-Client-Dyad", the results of which she published in her book "Psychotherapy and Gender" (2012/2018) in Springer Verlag (a third edition is currently in consideration). In this regard, Schigl is convinced that "gender plays a role in all our interactions" because "psychotherapy is a part of everyday action and in everyday action gender is always present. Why shouldn't it be present in psychotherapy?" Schigl is also intensively involved in psychotherapy research in her further academic work, a work from which the books "Risks, Damages and Side Effects of Psychotherapy: A Package Insert for Therapists and Patients" (2014) and "Supervision on Trial" (2020) result. Currently (2023) she is working on a publication on gender-sensitive integrative psychotherapy with eating disorders.

Schigl's working style is characterized by a constant transfer of theory and practice, and decisively contributory to the establishment of a critical Psychological and psychotherapeutic counterculture in Vienna and Lower Austria. "I was always very practice-oriented and [...] when I learned [something] or when I did something, I always tried to implement it as much as possible. So not just to shed light on it theoretically-academically, but to implement it."

Schigl's academic expertise culminated in 2017 in the academic reform of the bachelor's degree program in psychotherapy and counseling sciences at Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, for which she developed a gender and diversity focus. Regrettably, however, the reaccreditation of the program by AQ Austria failed in 2020 for formal reasons. In addition, Schigl is actively involved on a structural level at Karl Landsteiner University. In recent years, she has created a psychological counseling service for students and staff and acts as an ombudswoman for students. Since the beginning of her work at Karl Landsteiner Private University, she has been part of its Equal Treatment Commission and head of the Contact Point for Equal Treatment Issues. Since 2020, Schigl has served as the private university's women's representative.

Characteristic of Brigitte Schigl’s work is an enduring and special love for independence and working freely: "Because of this rebelliousness, [I] wasn't afraid of authority. Or maybe I did fear them a little bit, but it didn't change the way I acted." Turning to future generations of Psychologists and psychotherapists and her particularly valued supervision work of young psychotherapists, Schigl therefore emphasizes, "Biographically, it is sort of my life's work or my main concern to bring gender and psychotherapy together. And I try to bring this to the woman and the man and the person within the framework of my training activities and [at] congresses and training courses. And within that framework of course [I try] to strengthen female colleagues, so that they too will become courageous psychotherapists and courageous supervisors."

By Emelie Rack (2023)

To cite this article, see Credits

Selected Works

By Brigitte Schigl

Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-96...

Schigl, B. (1987). Die Stellen der psychosozialen Versorgung im Osten Österreichs. Wien, Dissertation an der Abteilung für Angewandte Psychologie an der Universität Wien.

Schigl, B. (1990). Psychotherapie im ländlichen Raum. In: Gesellschaft kritischer Psychologen und Psychologinnen (Ed.), Störfaktor, 4(1).

Schigl, B. (1992). Psychotherapie und Beratung mit Frauen auf dem Land. In: Verein zur Förderung feministischer Projekte (Eds.), AUF, 13.

Schigl, B. & Petzold, H.G. (1998). Evaluation einer Ausbildung in Integrativer Supervision mit Vertiefungsschwerpunkt für den klinisch-geriatrischen Bereich - ein begleitendes Forschungsprojekt. Integrative Therapie, 1-2, 85–145. Available at https://www.fpi-publikation.de...;

Schigl, B. (1999): Frauen-Leben auf dem Land: Psychosoziale Bedingungen einer Lebenswelt, Aspekte von Psychotherapie und Beratung In: V. Lesnik (Ed.): Frauen-Sozialarbeit im Ländlichen Raum. Sozialaktiv Verlag.

Schigl, B. (2000). Wirkungen und Wirkfaktoren von Gestalttherapie aus katamnestischer Sicht der KlientInnen. Ausgewählte Ergebnisse einer praxisnahen evaluativen Untersuchung. Psychotherapieforum, 8(2).

Petzold, H. G., Schigl, B., Fischer, M., & Höfner, C. (2003). Supervision auf dem Prüfstand. Wirksamkeit, Forschung, Anwendungsfelder, Innovation. Leske + Budrich Opladen.

Schigl, B. (2006). Doing gender by doing therapy. Überlegungen zu einer gendersensiblen Gestalttherapie. In: DGV - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gestalttherapie (Ed.), Gestalttherapie. Forum für Gestaltperspektiven, 20(2), 97–107.

Schigl, B. (2007). "Geschlechtskrankheiten-Geschlechtsgesundheiten": Gender-typische Konstruktionen von Gesundheit und Krankheit. Integrative Therapie, 33(3), 299322.

Schigl, B. (2010). Psychotherapie – Emanzipation oder Anpassung? Eine Betrachtung am Beispiel der Feminismus- und Genderdiskurse. Gestalt und Integration, 69, 4–14.

Schigl, B. (2011). Feministische + Gendertheorie - Diskurse und ihre Bedeutung für das psychosoziale Feld Journal für Psychologie, 3. Available at http://www.journal-fuer-psycho...

Schigl, B. (2012/2018). Psychotherapie und Gender. Konzepte, Forschung, Praxis. Springer Nature.

Schigl, B. (2013). Gendersensible integrative Therapie in der Behandlung von Essstörungen. In: R. Reichel & G. Hintenberger (Eds.): Die Praxis der Integrativen Therapie. Österreichische Perspektiven (S. 198-207). Facultas WUV.

Schigl, B., & Gahleitner, S. (2013). Fehler machen - aus Fehlern lernen? Perspektive zur Klassifizierung von psychotherapeutischen Fehlern und dem Umgang damit. Psychotherapiewissenschaft, 3(1), 23–33. Available at: https://www.psychotherapie-wis...;

Leitner, A., Schigl, B., & Märtens, M. (Eds.) (2014). Wirkungen, Risiken und Nebenwirkungen von Psychotherapie. Ein Beipackzettel für TherapeutInnen und PatientInnen. Facultas.

Schigl, B. (2015). Integrative Supervision – Ein intersubjektiver, mehrperspektivischer Prozess. Psychotherapie im Dialog, 46–50.

Schigl, B. (2015). Doing Gender im psychotherapeutischen Prozess – braucht Dekonstruktion. Psychosozial, 2, 39–54.

Schigl, B. (2016). Risiken von Supervision. Perspektiven in ein Dunkelfeld. Psychotherapieforum, 2.

Schigl, B. (2016). Doing Gender in der Psychotherapie: We all are Part of the Game! In: B. Wimmer-Puchinger, K. Gutiérrez-Lobos & A. Riecher-Rössler (Eds.): Irrsinnig weiblich. Psychische Krisen im Frauenleben. Hilfestellungen für die Praxis (p.227-240). Springer.

Schigl, B. (2016). Feminisierung von Psychotherapie und Perspektiven für die Ausbildung: weitere Überlegungen zum von Eva Jaeggi aufgegriffenen Thema. Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft, 6(1), 52–60. Available at https://psychotherapie-wissens...;

Schigl, B. (2016). Wenn gendered individuals einander begegnen: Von der Notwendigkeit genderkompetenter Psychotherapie und Beratung. Zeitschrift für Psychodrama und Soziometrie, 15(2), 7–20. DOI: 10.1007/s11620-016-0367-4. Available at http://link.springer.com/artic...

Schigl, B. (2018). Psychotherapie und feministische Wissenschaft – eine notwendige Verknüpfung. Psychologie und Gesellschaftskritik, Special Issue Feministische Psychotherapie, 42(165), 81–102.

Schigl, B., Höfner, C., Artner, N., Eichinger, K., Hoch, C.B., & Petzold, H. (2020). Supervision auf dem Prüfstand 2. Wirksamkeit, Forschung, Anwendungsfelder, Innovation. Springer.

Schigl, B. (2020). Doing gender while talking about sex. Sexualität als Thema im psychotherapeutischen Prozess. Sozialkonstruktivistische und diskursanalytische Erkundungen. In. E. Hermann-Uhling (Ed.), Psychotherapie und Sexualität. Interdisziplinäre und methodenübergreifende Positionen (p. 115-127.). Facultas.

Schigl, B., Klar, S., Kobbé, U., Macke, K., & Tenschert, E. (2022). Ebenen therapeutischer Verantwortung –multiple Perspektiven in einer komplexen Welt. Psychotherapieforum, 1–2.

Schigl, B. (2022). Gender als maßgebliche Perspektive in der Psychotherapie. Die Psychotherapie, 68(2), 283–287. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00278...;

Schigl, B., (2022). Internationale Supervisionsforschung revisited: Trends, Highlights und Desiderate. Organisationsberatung, Supervision, Coaching, 29, 365–380. Available at https://link.springer.com/arti...;

Schigl, B., Siller, B., & Hofer-Moser, O. (2022). Körperliche Berührung in der Psychotherapie. Journal für Psychologie, 30(2), 29–49. DOI: https://doi.org/10.30820/0942-...

By and about Brigitte Schigl

Schigl, B. (07. July 2022). Interview with E. Rack [Video Recording].

Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9646-3074

Website Karl Landsteiner Privat University: https://kris.kl.ac.at/de/persons/brigitte-schigl

Gahleitner, S.B., & Schigl, B. (2019). Psychotherapie als Beziehung und Prozess: Chancen, Risiken, Fehlerquellen: Silke Birgitta Gahleitner und Brigitte Schigl im Gespräch mit Uwe Britten. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Britten, U. (März 2021). Interview mit Dr. phil. Brigitte Schigl, Psychotherapeutin, Gesundheitspsychologin und Lehrtherapeutin: „Vergleichbar mit einem kreativen kunsthandwerklichen Prozess.“ Ärzteblatt.de, PP20. Availabe at https://www.aerzteblatt.de/archiv/218165/Interview-mit-Dr-phil-Brigitte-Schigl-Psychotherapeutin-Gesundheitspsychologin-und-Lehrtherapeutin-Vergleichbar-mit-einem-kreativen-kunsthandwerklichen-Prozess