Luc Ciompi

He is the founder of the concept of Affect-logics, an interdisciplinary theory of the rules of interaction between emotion and cognition, and the founder of Soteria Berne, (s. below) He also proposed a conceptual framework towards an integrative, psycho-socio-biological understanding of mental illnesses, and promoted community-based halfway institutions for crisis intervention and social reintegration of the mentally ill. Luc Ciompi studied medicine in Berne, Geneva and Paris from 1951 to 1956.

After his retirement in 1994, he spent one and a half years as guest professor at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg near Vienna, studying the evolutionary roots of emotion and cognition.

[1][4] In his studies on rehabilitation, Ciompi and his collaborators found that social and professional reintegration of long-term mental patients depends more on the expectations of their environment (family, psychiatrists, nurses etc.)

Since the 1980s, Ciompi has also been developing the above-mentioned concept of affect-logics, an interdisciplinary synthesis of neurobiological, psychological psychoanalytical, sociological and evolution-theoretical notions aimed at understanding the interactions between cognition and emotion.

[5][6][7][8][4] A practical application of these principles is the therapeutic community Soteria Berne, founded in 1984 and functioning for almost four decades, entirely focused on a sustained reduction of emotional tensions in and around the psychotic patient.