The WAPCEPC Board members are deeply sad at the passing of our esteemed colleague, Prof. Dr. Peter F. Schmid.
Peter died on 15 September 2020, having sustained major injuries in a serious car accident in July.
Author of numerous books, lecturer and trainer at the APG-IPS Academy, Vienna, Peter was a very prominent and respected representative of the person-centred approach worldwide.
A student of Carl R. Rogers, in 1969 Peter founded the person-centred psychotherapy training in Austria. Over the ensuing decades, his drive and commitment fundamentally shaped the person-centred approach in Austria and globally, and he contributed greatly to its development while also retaining fidelity to its distinguishing features - it was particularly important to him to preserve Rogers’ genuine basic assumptions.
Peter is regarded as the founder of the dialogical approach in person-centred psychotherapy and in 2009 he received the Carl Rogers Award from the American Psychological Association (APA) for “outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of Humanistic Psychology.”
A man of energy and passion, Peter’s many contributions include: founder of APG•IPS (The Austrian Institute for Person-Centred Studies), and initiator of both the World Association for Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapy (WAPCEPC), and the European Network for Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counselling (PCE Europe). He was also co-founder and co-editor of international journals: Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies and PERSON.
In addition, Peter was a member of Saybrook University in San Francisco, USA and had worked at universities in Austria, Germany and the UK.
His special love was the theatre. As a playwright, he most recently published Faust III (premiered in Vienna in 2010).
Peter was not only an outstanding psychotherapist, psychotherapy scientist and practical theologian, but someone who lived the person-centred approach with all his heart.
Current members of the WAPCEPC board remember him as an extraordinary, warm and open-hearted person and a kind, helpful and generous colleague. The person-centred world has lost a leading light.
Our condolences and sincere sympathy go to Peter's family and all those who were close to him.
- from the 2020 – 2022 WAPCEPC Board
