Petra Gabriele Meinel

Petra Gabriele Meinel (born March 6, 1951 ; † January 4, 2001 in Cologne ) was a German speech therapist and a committed critic of the so-called "psycho scene" as a non-fiction and radio author.

Under the pseudonym Vera Becker, she triggered a psychiatry debate through the provocative bestseller "When therapies harm", written in collaboration with the Freiburg behavioral scientist and biologist Hansjörg Hemminger , Rowohlt Verlag Reinbek 1985 ( ISBN 3498028642 ). In the interview volume "Die Primadonnen der Psychotherapie", Junfermann-Fachverlag Paderborn 1989, ( ISBN 3-87387-001-0 ) she described her encounters with the most well-known contemporary psychologists such as Paul Watzlawick , Maria Hippius , Viktor Frankl and others. As an author of popular literature, in 1992 a. a. an anthology about the Cologne trams ("Klingel, Klüngel, KVB", Verlag Klein & Blechinger, Cologne) ( ISBN 3-927658-13-8 ), on which Cologne's folk actor Willy Millowitsch and the singer Marie-Luise Nikuta participated. She worked as a reporter for cultural topics for Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Deutschlandfunk in Cologne. She gave speech therapy courses for broadcasters. As a vocalist for electronic-acoustic music, she worked with the French composer Jean-Claude Eloy and his German friend Karlheinz Stockhausen in the WDR studio for electronic music in Cologne. In 2009 Eloy dedicated the composition "Requiem for the Early Death" to her.

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• "And what do you feel about it?" , Article on the psychiatry debate in the weekly newspaper "DIE ZEIT" on March 29, 1985