Jürgen Kriz


Jürgen Kriz is a German psychologist, psychotherapist and emeritus professor for psychotherapy and clinical psychology at the Osnabrück University, Germany. He is a prominent thinker in systems theory and the founder of the person-centered systems theory – a multi-level concept for the understanding of processes in psychotherapy, counseling, coaching and clinical psychology.

Biography

Kriz studied psychology, philosophy and social pedagogy as well as astronomy and astrophysics at the universities of Hamburg, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, where he obtained his doctorate in 1969 with a dissertation about 'Subjective Probability and Decision Theory'. After working as scholar and research assistant at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria, he was an associate professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany. In 1972, he became professor for statistics at the Department of Sociology of the Bielefeld University, Germany. From 1974 to 1999, Kriz was full professor for research methods, statistics and philosophy of science at the Faculty of Sociology of the Osnabrück University, Germany. Beginning 1980, he held the position of a full professor for psychotherapy and clinical psychology at the Department of Psychology of the Osnabrück University. Since 2010, Kriz is professor emeritus.
Kriz held numerous visiting professorships at universities in Vienna, Zurich, Riga, Moscow, Berlin and North Carolina, including the Paul Lazarsfeld Visiting Professorship of the University of Vienna. From 1994 to 1996, he was head of the international expert committee Wissen und Handeln of the Wiener Internationale Zukunftskonferenz WIZK. Since 2000, Kriz is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Gesellschaft für Personzentrierte Psychotherapie und Beratung GwG. From 2004 to 2008, he was a member of the Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Psychotherapie WBP.
Kriz is an advisory board member of various psychotherapeutic journals. From 1994 to 2017, he was an editor of the international multidisciplinary journal 'Gestalt Theory'. He is also the editor of a textbook series titled Basiswissen Psychologie comprising some 30 volumes so far.

Works and philosophy

Kriz has written more than 300 scientific publications including over 20 monographies. His work focuses on statistics and research methodology with particular emphasis on criticism of science as well as the development of a comprehensive approach called person-centered systems theory.

Critique of research practice and science

Having published several textbooks on statistics, data processing, research methods, and philosophy of science, Kriz focused on the limits of the meaningfulness and application of the corresponding formal models in research and working practice. In comprehensive works such as Methodenkritik empirischer Sozialforschung and Facts and Artefacts in Social Science, he argued that invalid or even nonsensical research findings are not so much the result of incorrect calculations or insufficient execution of the formal steps. Rather, they are due to an insufficient consideration of the model assumptions and boundary conditions. In many contributions, Kriz specifically addressed the issues of an inadequate application of the experimental paradigm in psychotherapy research and an inadequate interpretation of the randomized controlled trial. Kriz argues that psychotherapy research usually neither does justice to the fact of non-linear courses in development and change processes nor does it take the human being as subject into account. The conditions for research would not only be determined by manualized effects or interventions, but also to a large extent by the patients' subjective attributions of meaning as well as their interpretations. This, however, makes the so-called "independent variables" of an experimental design dependent on interpretations. The basic concept of an experiment and the RCT logic thus becomes inadequate.
In addition to this fundamental misalignment of RCT research in psychotherapy, Kriz has criticized numerous other problems due to questionable – mostly undiscussed – assumptions.

Person-centered systems theory

Courses of human development and changes through therapy, counseling or coaching are characterized by non-linear processes in which many aspects interact. Kriz tried to take this into account when he developed the person-centered systems theory. It deals with non-linear interactions on four levels: In addition to the interaction of psychological and interpersonal processes – which are reflected in most approaches to psychotherapy or counseling – the impact of somatic as well as cultural processes are considered. Furthermore, the complementarity between "objective" perspectives of scientists, counselors, etc. on one hand and the perspectives of clients on the other plays an important role in Kriz' approach. Kriz points out that, for example, the "objective" findings of diagnostics often have little to do with the sensitivities of the subjects. Many concepts such as "stress" or "resources" are often described on the basis of "objective" factors although other aspects are much more relevant to the subject's experience and actions.
Subjekt und Lebenswelt, in which Kriz summarizes three decades of work on person-centered systems theory, provides an essential analysis of the interaction between the four process levels and the complementarity of "objective" and subjective perspectives. Kriz demonstrates that the distinction between "objective" description – from the 3rd person perspective – and subjective experience – from the 1st person perspective – is a purely academic-analytical concept that contributes little to the understanding of human reality. On the contrary, both perspectives are inseparably intertwined. For in order to be able to understand the very own "inner" impulses, one must apply the cultural tools of one's own social community to oneself. One must, for example, understand and thus symbolize the immediate physical sensation of physiological processes as "longing" or "sadness" or "despair". This is not just a matter of terminology or semantics and syntax of language. Rather, language also automatically conveys the metaphors, principles of explanation and understanding, narratives, concepts of action, etc. of a culture.
Formally, person-centered systems theory is based on the self-organization paradigm within the framework of the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems – synergetics in particular. After more formal works such as Chaos und Struktur or Systemtheorie für Psychotherapeuten, Psychologen und Mediziner, Kriz has in recent years mostly refrained from explicit formal derivations of the fundamentals in order to address a larger circle of readers.

Awards and honors