Prof. Heinz Stefan HERZKA - a visionary European child & adolescent psychiatrist, pan-cultural dialogical therapist and youth advocate

It feels like a timely moment in commemoration of the many youth oriented activities of Prof. Herzka - Born 1935 in Vienna, fleeing 1938 to and within Switzerland, he died in Zürich Feb. 14th 2021.

Why it's timely to remember? Prof. Herzka promoted dialogical cultures as an ethical foundation of medicine, of psychology and as a humanistic essence by leaving room to co-consider opposing principles and utilize them wisely to protect from harm, ignorance or cancel cultures and separating in favour of profound ethical educating and deep integrating of many cultures and healing communities.

He listened to a protesting youth in Zürich that he strived to empower; Prof. Herzka opened constructive dialogues with musicians and music therapists, trainings with school teachers, psychologists, remedial teachers in highly interdisciplinary circles as colleagues of ethics to make good qualities of life for all.

When decency was attacked Prof. Herzka took side with those in need of support and he advocated for universities that open to it's people - away from a hierarchical and intolerant "Korpsgeist" that he openly criticized - very much in a citizen-science and community-oriented way current WHO Europe flagship initiatives and modern health and wellbeing promotion research suggest.

Therapeutic medicine in general and child and adolescent mental health services in particular could give better care if investments of science, policy and people-serving pragmatism would be directed along the legacy of Prof. Heinz Stefan HERZKA - that is to allow for more cross-cultural resonances and warmth and compassion to take care of each other - and yes, heal with music and arts and take time for this !!!

With room for personalities and uniqueness - not with "one-size-fits-all" medicine. And with muse to constructive debates around enriching differences within local communities - not by cancel cultures or exclusion. And with integral thinking that supports a sustainable living in decent and loving circumstances in peaceful co-existence.

Prof. Herzka was truly one of the great creative minds within the last 100 years of Zürich child and adolescent psychotherapy/psychiatry development.

It's an honour to supplement and share Prof. Herzka dialogical, multi-disciplinary and even musical way of healing for the recent world child and adolescent psychiatry journal issue No. 23 (2022, pg 21-22) -

https://www.wpanet.org/_files/ugd/842ec8_3223ba3d804c4a4aa347b4c42e481388.pdf

Prof. Herzka shall be part of cherishing his pan-regional impact and appreciate his legacy. Musically we can appreciate the shawm instrument collections at the https://music-ceret.com/ that Prof. Herzka promoted or read his unique 2017 book "Schalmeien / Let Hautbois" (so far in French & German - who works on the English translation? ).

As an additional supplement I'd like to share a 2018 text from him as a call to young CAP colleagues that he contributed generously for a regional CAP jubilee with the Swiss-German title ?Was ein ?L?mpetokter“** braucht – 10 Thesen“

English translation: ?What a conflict-doctor needs – 10 theses?

1) Warm interest for our counterpart, empathy, sympathy, ability to communicate and reflect, expertise, experience.

2) Considering the complexity of an entirety – physically, mentally, socially

3) Serenity and time for trust building and development

4) Perception of individuality and uniqueness, together with the participation and functionality as a member of a family in it’s social situation.

5) Openness for the current problems of development, upbringing und training, but also for the history and the career of the youth and her/his family.

Mindfulness for the unsaid.

6) Endurance to uncover the creative, emotional, cognitive and social resources

and promoting their realizations in daily life.

7) Sensitivity for the integration of delicate issues like cultural traditions, popular beliefs, prejudice, discrimination, feelings of guilt, traumata, sexuality, religious connections.

8) Realism in evaluating possibilities and limits of the practicality of advises and provisions.

9) Farsightedness in regarding improvements as a sustainable development of the youths’ quality of life and it’s environment.

10) Loyalty to the task – next to ad hoc interventions – to allow for long-term and recurrent counseling or therapy"

Those therapeutic principles are visionary and sustainably long-lived as they are very close to the common factor dimensions that are supported by latest 2022 therapeutic research findings of the Anna Freud Centre Evidence Based Practice Unit ( https://bit.ly/3Uavv9K or https://www.annafreud.org/research/) and very close to the WPA educational work and engrained in it's highly valued ethical code.

Prof. Herzkas legacy has the potential to bridge the gaps that were created by unnaturally separating reductionist cell and brain science from holistic societal, anthropologic and a public health science of well-being and preventive health promotion. So reflecting his dialogical medicine can undo some mistakes made in times of Bleuler - imagine Prof. Bleuler inviting Anna Freud as his new science and innovation co-director.

Prof. Herzkas work also reminds us of the merits of an inclusive & peace-promoting research, with science connected and serving societal stakeholder discources and policies that serve planetary health and the UN sustainability developmental goals with and for the youth included and empowered, of course.