Lorenz studied applied psychology at Magdeburg-Stendal (D) and at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), where his master's thesis investigated experimentally how a diagnostic label affects the way people describe their own symptoms. He works on epistemological questions about psychiatric diagnosis and tries to make them accessible to empirical research. His interests include phenomenological psychopathology and the consequences of an expanding concept of mental disorder. He is committed to an anthropological psychiatry in which first-person experience of mental distress counts as knowledge in its own right.

In this group, he is involved in a survey on researchers' mental health experiences.