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Lectures in English & German · Films & DVD in English & German · Biography · German Books & CD · Articles about D .S. Buck-Zerchin · Imprint Lectures
Born April 5, 1917, as the fourth child of five, by Hermann Buck and his wife Anna Buck, nee Lahusen, I spent my first 19 years in a cosmopolitan parsonage in Naumburg/Saale, in Oldenburg/Niedersachsen and on the island of Wangerooge (Northern Sea). Five weeks after a mental jolt my first psychosis broke out in the morning of March 2, 1936, with the disturbing certainty of a coming 'dreadful war'. In the asylum of Bethel near Bielefeld, being kept there for nine months, I was confronted with a psychiatry which left us unoccupied and only kept, enforced sterilization included, without any chance of a dialogue with a physician. This disciplinary action included the prohibition to marry and various rigorous restrictions re education and career. I had to give up my vocation to become a nursery school teacher and was only allowed to accept a freelance job. Starting with pottery I became a sculpturer. My first episode was followed by four more: 1938, 1943, 1946 und 1959. I then began to learn my psychosis, labelled as 'schizophrenia', as a break-through of my own subconscience in order to solve former mental jolts or conflicts the same way nightdreams do, in form of awakenings of symbols, identifications, with a different feel for the world and otherwise not felt connections of sense. Ever since I began to live by my inner impulses, which came to the top in my five psychoses and receded with them to a weak instinct, in order not to let them stop and reappear in new episodes. From 1959 on I have been healthy. My early suggestions to prominent psychiatrists of introducing group-talkings for a mutually gained understanding of psychosis and of a conception the way one sees o.s. in psychiatry, was neglected by them. A severe hiatus in my life after my enforced sterilization in 1936 has been the hidden medical patient-murders of so-called Euthanasia. During the Eichmann trial in 1961 I first heard of numbers of psychiatric victims named for the first time. Except a minor chapter in "Medical Science Without Humanity" by A. Mitscherlich und F. Mielke, nothing could be found about these crimes in those days. I researched archives. In a record of the Military Court of Nürnberg of 1946, the number of the murdered inhabitants of asylums and homes rose to "at least 275.000". These hidden medical crimes and the unchanged degrading and inhuman German asylums disturbed me deeply, although I could have needed my concentration for my artistic work. As a sculpturer I lived of public comissions in Hamburg, which could only be gained through competition. When in 1965 my last bronze objects were placed, I stopped this work. As long as there was no elementary humanity, art seemed less important. I revised the researched facts of 'euthanasia' in a play with a followed satyr play for a patient drama group. As the long prepared big 'euthanasia' trial did not take place, because of the suicide of the main prisoner at the bar/defender Professor Heyde, I would have preferred the announcement of these crimes on stage from the view of the patient. In 1970 we founded our Club 70 with people who experienced psychiatry and lonely. In 1971 'Aktionskreis '71' (Action circle '71) followed as the first self-help group of people who experienced psychiatry in Hamburg. If we want psychiatry to be based on our experiences rather than on theory, we are asked to defeat its dogma of physical und genetic 'uncurable, endogenous psychosis', as this psychiatric dogma prevents any dialogue about the contents and early history of our psychosis and its meanings. Without any dialogue psychiatrists could not get to know and meet us as human beings. This is why they could transport hundreds of their patients to the gas chambers of the six deathcamps and poison them by overdosed medication and starve them to death after the official gas stop in August 1941. In my manuscript following my 'Euthanasia' play I examined psychiatrical theories and confronted them with my own experiences with psychosis. Hans Krieger, contributor to the big German magazine DIE ZEIT, advised me, to make my experiences the main substance for my book. I wrote during the mornings, and from 11.30 h on, since 1969, I taught as a lecturer, and from 1974 on as a teacher for art and handcraft at the College for Social Pedagogics of Hamburg. In 1990, my report about schizophrenia and self-healing "On The Track Of The Morning Star – Psychosis As Self-Realization" was published under the anagram of 'schizophrenia' = Sophie Zerchin by List Publishers. The book was reviewed in many newspapers as a self-healing process. A year before – 50 years after the beginning of 'euthanasia' – Prof. Dr. Dr. Dörner offered me the opening lecture for the 41st training week of Gütersloh: "Now it's getting serious – the reform of psychiatry begins!" To understand schizophrenia as an attempt in solving a problem was new to the audience. From then on I got invitations for lectures and readings. The first and only hearing, we forced sterilized and survivors of psychiatric deathcamps got at the Deutsche Bundestag in June 1987. I was asked to write down my critisism on todays still suppressing psychiatric methods of medication for the Federal Health Department. In June 1988 I handed my 22 pages "petition for a working group for more participation of those from self-help groups in psychiatry" to Ms. Rita Süssmuth, the German Health Minister. Its assembly should be by (ex-)users and survivors of psychiatry, relatives, psychiatric staff members of all occupational groups and both theological leaders of a catholic or lutheran clinic. All in all 30 members, meeting monthly in the department, should, by help of a working paper, initiate the foundation of further working groups within Germany. A better understanding of psychosis taught by people who are experienced in psychosis would also help to improve the social circumstances of the (ex-)users and survivors of psychiatry, for people burden only those they do not understand and thus regard inferior with things unbearable themselfes. The Federal Health Department placated us with the advice to form the petition "locally". In the summer term of 1989 I suggested, as a guest student in a regular psychosis seminary, initiated by the psychologist Dr. Thomas Bock for students and professionals, not just to talk about psychotic people, but to talk with us, the (ex-)users and survivors of psychiatry. In winter term of 89/90 the psychosis seminar became open for people who are experienced in psychosis and for relatives. In the meantime about 80 psychosis seminars exist in Germany at universities, colleges, evening classes etc., and since October '96 also in Zurich, Bern, Basel and Vienna, in which psychosis- and people who are experienced in depression, relatives and psychiatric staff members exchange their experiences. Our first psychosis seminar in Hamburg brought about two books in consequence, in 1992 and 1994. Our third project: "A Guidance Aid – Psychosis Seminars – Aid For A Dialogue", we have just finished for the Psychiatry Publishing House. During the last seven years I have written articles for many books
and magazines. Year by year I get more invitations to conferences
and trainings (lectures, work groups, readings, psychosis groups
as an exchange of experiences). Since May 1996, in cooperation with my sister, the publisher Dr. Anne Fischer-Buck, I have been working on information and on a collection of signatures against medical research on "persons who have not the ability to consent" – even when the research is not for their personal benefit – as it is being planned by the Bioethic-Convention of the European Council. We keep collecting signatures till April 30, 1979. In January 1, 1997 we have gained 30.000 signatures. We experienced the fate and life-destroying psychiatric interventions
of forced sterilization and medical massmurder on patients, its
missing insight and knowledge because of their withheld dialogue
with us. Now we demand an empirical psychiatry, based on the experiences
of the (ex-)users and survivors of psychiatry. As we all –
the psychiatrists included – can only know for sure, what we
have experienced personally. Articles about Dorothea S. Buck-Zerchin Woman's harrowing account of forced sterilisation when a psychiatric patient. Article in PsychMinded on November 14, 2007, by Adam James |
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