Being in The World Selected Pa Ludwig Binswanger

Selected Papers of
LUDWIG BINSWANGER
Translated with
an Introduction by
Jacob Needleman
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Being-in-the-World
9 —
RESEARCHES IN THE SOCIAL, CULTURAL

AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
EDITED BY
BENJAMIN NELSON
ADLER, ALFRED: Problems of Neurosis: A Book of merton, ROBERT K. : *Science, Technology and Society
Case Histories. Edited by P. Mairet, Introduc- in Seventeenth-Century England. New Introduction
tion by H. L. Ansbacher. TB/1145 by the author.
BiNSW ANGER, LUDWiG: Bcing-in-thc- World Selected : MERTON, ROBERT K.; BROOM, LEONARD; COTTRELL,
Papers. Translated and with critical Introduction LEONARD s. JR., editors: Sociology Today:
by Jacob Needletnan. TB/1365 Problems and Prospects. Vol. I, TB/1173; Vol. II,
BURRIDGE, kenelm: *Mambu: A Melanesian Mil- TB/1174
lennium. MicHELS, ROBERTO: First Lectures in Political
CANTRiL, hadley: The Invasion from Mars: A Sociology. Translated with an Introduction by
Study in the Psychology of Panic. New Intro- Alfred de Grazia. TB/1224
duction by the author. TB/1282
MOORE, BARRINGTON JR.: PoliticalPower and
DAVIS, ALLISON and DOLLARD, JOHN: Children of
Social Theory: Seven Studies. TB/1221
Bondage: The personality development of
Negro youth in the Urban South. TB/3049 MOORE, BARRINGTON JR.: Soviet Politics —
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DURKHEiM, EMiLE, et al.: Essays on Sociology and Dilemma of Power: The Role of Ideas in Social
Philosophy, with appraisals of Durkheim's life

Change. New Introduction by the author.
and work. Edited by Kurt H. Wolff. TB/1151 TB/1222

FESTINGER, LEON, RIECKEN, HENRY W. and MOORE, BARRINGTON JR.: Terror and Progress
SCHACHTER, STANLEY: When Prophecy Fails: USSR. TB/1266
A social and psychological study of a modern ROSEN, GEORGE: 'Madness in Society: Chapters in the
group that predicted the destruction of the Historical Sociology of Mental Illness
world. TB/1132 SAINT-SIMON, HENRI DE: Social Organization, the
FiNGARETTE, HERBERT: The Self in Transforma- Science of Man, and other writings, edited by
tion: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and the Life Felix Markham. TB/1152
of the Spirit. TB/1177 SAMUEI..SSON, KURT: Religion and Economic Action:
GOULDNER, ALVIN w.: Wildcat Strike: A Study in A Critique of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Worker-Management Relationships. TB/1176 and The Spirit of Capitalism. TB/1131
GRANA, CESAR Modernity and Its Discontents French
: :
SCHAAR, JOHN H.: Escape from Authority: The
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teenth Century. TB/1318 SHERiF,MUZAFER The Psychology of Social Norms.
:
HAMMOND, J. L.: *The Rise of Modern Industry. TB/3072

Introduction by Max Hartwell MUZAFER 'Group Relations at the Crossroads.
SHERIF, :
HAMMOND, J. L. and Barbara: *The Village siMMEL, GEORG, et al.: Essays on Sociology,
Labourer. Introduction by H. J. Habakkuk. Philosophy and Aesthetics, edited by Kurt H.
*The Skilled Labourer. Wolff. TB/1234
HEGEL, G. w. The Phenomenology of Mind.
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THOMAS, w. I.: The Unadjusted Girl: With Cases and
Introduction by George Lichtheim. TB/I303 Standpoint for Behavior Analvsis. Introduction by
LANDY, DAVID Tfopical
: Childhood: Cultural
M ichael Parcnti . TB/ 1 3 1
Transmission and Learning in a Puerto Rican TiRYAKiAN, EDWARD A., cditor: Sociological Theory,
Values and Sociocultural Change: Essavs in Hotter
Village. TB/I235
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.
Field Theory in Social Science:

Selected Theoretical Papers, edited by Dorwin
WARNER, w. LLOYD and ASSOCIATES: Democracy
Cartwright. TB/I135 in Joncsville: A Study in Quality and In-
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equality. TB/1129
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Introduction by Ralf Dahrendorf ZNANiECKi, florian: The Social Role of the Man of
Knowledge. Introduction by Lewis Coser. TB/1372
* In Preparation
Being-in-theAVorld
Selected Papers of
LUDWIG BINSWANGER
Translated and
with a Critical Introduction
to His Existential Psychoanalysis
B Y
Jacob Needleman
with a new Preface for the Torchbook edition
HARPER TORCHBOOKS
Harper & Row, Publishers
New York & Evanston
FOR
my mother and father
BEING-IN-THE-WORLD
Copyright © 1963 by Basic Books, Inc., Publishers. Preface to the
Torchbook edition copyright <r) 1967 by Jacob Necdleman.
Priiucd in the United States of America.
This b(H)k \va.s originalK- published in 1963 bv Basic Books, Inc.,

Pubhshers. and is here reprinted by arrangement.
I'irstiiAKi'KR roR<:MB(H)K edition published 1968 by Harper & Row,

Publishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10016.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-18674.

CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION Vlll
PREFACE Xviii
INTRODUCTION I
PART ONE: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

TO LUDWIG BINSWANGER'S
EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOANALYSIS 7
I The Concept of the Existential A Priori 9

Kant's "Copemican Revolution"
The Concept of the Constitutive Function of the Un-
derstanding and the Corresponding New Method
of Philosophy
Heidegger: The Notion of Constitutive "Function"
and Its Corresponding Method Applied to the
Science of the Being of Man
HusserVs A Priori
Over-all Characterization of the Concept of the Exis-
tential A Priori
II Systematic Explanation and the Science of Psycho-

analysis 32
The Ideal of Explanation

Natural Science as an Explanatory System
The Possibility of Psychology as a Natural Science
The Science of Medicine
The Science of Psychoanalysis
Binsivangef s Vieiv of Freud
Medical Psychology: Psychopathology
ni The Symbol in Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalyse 59

The Symbol
THE COMMON UNIVERSAL
Contents
REVERSIBILITi'
SIGN AND SYMBOL
IV The Unconscious 84
The Existential A Horizon of Experience
Priori as the
Denotation of "'Uficonscious" and "Existential A
Priori"
The Unconscious and "Throivnness"
V Psychopathology 102
VI The Dasein as Constitutive: Binswanger, Heidegger,

Sartre 120
Kant and Heidegger
Binsivangefs Relation to Heidegger
Binswanger and Sartre
Conclusion 139
Power and Poiverlessness (Macht und Ohnmacht)
PART TWO: SELECTED PAPERS OF

LUDWIG BINSWANGER 147
Freud's Conception of Man in the Light of Anthro-
pology 149
The Idea of Homo Natura
The Development of the Idea of Homo Natura into a
Natural Scientific Theory a7id Its Significance for
Medical Psychology
The Idea of Homo Natura in the Light of Anthro-
pology
Freud and the Magna Chana of Clinical Psychiatry 182
Heidegger's Analytic of Existence and Its Meaning
for Psychiatry 206
Dream and Existence 222
Introduction to Schizophrenie 249
The Case of Lola Voss (translated by Ernest Angel) 266
Report
HEREDrrV
ANAMNESIS
OBSERVATIONS DURING LOLa's STAY AT THE SANATORIUM
Psychological Report
CATAMNESIS
Contents
Exist e?itial Analysis

THE UNCANNINESS OF THE DREADFVL
The Word-Play Oracle
The "Taboo"
THE SURREPTITIOUSNESS OF THE ENEMIES AND THE UN-
CANNINESS OF THE DREADFUL
Verbal CoTfrnmni cation
Temporalization
Spatialization
THE MATERIALITY OF THE "WORLO"
Fsychopathological-Clinical Analysis
THE SUPERSTITIOUS STAGE: THE "READING COMPULSION"
AND THE "clothes PHOBIA"
The "Reading Compulsion"
The "Clothes Phobia"
THE DELUSIONS OF PERSECUTION
AUTISM AND ANXIETY
THE HALLUCINATION PROBLEM
Extravagance (Verstiegenheit) 342
INDEX 35 I
PREFACE TO THE
TORCHBOOK EDITION
The thesis of this is that no science of the mind is possible

study
unless joined to amethod of description that is free from the
metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions of contempo-
rary natural science. It is argued that these presuppositions are
very phenomena
historically such as to rule out the reality of the
to be explained. Thus, psychology which attempts to stay
a
totally within the fold of Western science is an unproductively
circular enterprise that can never be sure it is addressing its
proper subject matter.
The explicit focus of this book is the existentialist-phenomeno-
logical critique of Freud's psychoanalysis. However, the line of
criticism it develops can be extended to some of the developments
in and around psychotherapy that have gained prominence since
the book first appeared. In this new preface I wish to give one
or two general indications of how this may be done.
Lately, psychotherapy seems to be moving with great speed
in two opposing away from Frcudianism. The one
directions
direction is an attempt to find a more "rigorous" natural-scientific
basis for curing patients. Chemotherapy and what has been called
"behavior therapy" arc clear examples of this tendency. In the
other direction we find many schools of thought going under the
name of "existentialist," "phenomenological," "iiumanistic," etc.
which in varying degrees reject natural science altogether or
relegate it to a secondary status. Certainly, these two tendencies
arc signs of a growing dissatisfaction with psychoanalysis. Indeed,
it .seems to some that psychoanalysis has become one of the con-
srcllation of individual and collective "pathogenic" forces of
which it purports to be the cure, that it is a symptom of a prob-
lem rather than a way of resolution.
I viii ]
Torchbook Edition
But of course the interesting question is whether these other

directions,which we can roughly label Scientism and Humanism,
represent a fundamental improvement over the supposed short-
comings of psychoanalvsis. In the light of the analysis of ade-
quate explanation that is offered in Chapter II, Scientism is
clearly an instance of over-reductionism. For example, the attempt
simply to correlate behavior patterns with physiochemical
changes might seem to be conceptually a relatively neutral under-
taking. Yet the recognition and description of "behavior pat-
terns" is itself based on certain presuppositions, certain principles
of selection which may naively beg the question as to the nature
of psychological phenomena. How much more, then, is taken
for granted when the Scientist begins by separating "pathological"
and "normal" behavior! Rarely, if at all, does the Scientist con-
sider, let alone justify, the value-judgments that may be an
essential part of his presumably "objective" description of
behavior. I have tried to argue Chapter
in V
that all concepts of
pathology, especially of psychopathology, are predominantly
valuational. If this is so, the Scientist will have to bring forth
a scientific demonstration of the existence of the objective cor-
relates of his value concepts.But since natural science, as I have
tried show, is based on the eliuiination of value from its
to
encountered universe, this effort is doomed.
To this the Scientist, panicularly the behavior therapist, has
an interesting reply: his techniques îvork; patients get better.
And they do so incomparably faster than by means of psycho-
therapy. The behavior therapist understands his task to be the
use of conditioning techniques for the removal of neurotic and
psychotic symptoms. As a behaviorist and positivist, he refuses
to acknowledge that there is an entity, called a "disease," that
underlies these symptoms; for him the symptoms are the disease.
Since the symptoms are forms of behavior, and since all behavior
is learned, or conditioned, response, his task is clear: when a
patient comes to him and complains of a symptom, such as homo-
sexuality or a phobia, the therapist conditions the symptom away.
It does seem that, seen this way, the behavior therapist is
simply the purveyor of a technical ser\Mce, much like a tailor or,
to recall a Socratic example, a cosmetician. For if one thinks of
therapy as a method of producing health, then it is certainly
[ ix]
Preface
a dubious procedure to allow the patient to dictate to the thera-

pist the treatment of his ailment. It is precisely because there is
a discrepancy bet\êen what bothers me, as a patient, and what

may really be wrong with me that it is necessary for there to exist
such a thin^ as therapy, either somatic or psychological. It is one
things for me to go to a doctor and complain about a pain in the
abdomen; it is quite another to enter his office and request that
he remove my gall bladder. Just as it is one thing for a physician
to perform the senice of enlarging a woman's breasts with sili-
cone injections so that she will feel more attractive to men, so it
is quite another for him to refuse this task and to warn the
patient of those physiological or even psychological ramifications

which he knows about much better than she. So regarded, the
various techniques classified as "behavior therapy" might be more
appropriately termed "behavioral cosmetics."
In a wiv, there is a certain appealing frankness and clarity
in such a discipline. If a patient is afraid of cats and doesn't like
to be afraid of cats, she can go to the behavior therapist to have
the fear "removed" much might go to the cosmetic sur-
as she
geon to have her breasts enlarged. It goes without saying, how-
ever, that the behavior therapist docs not think of himself in
quite this way. He speaks of "disorders," "neurosis," "psycho-

pathology," and so forth, his standard of pathology being what
he calls "maladaptive behavior." But I think there are few con-
cepts more problematic than this.
Obviously, to think of behavior as adaptive or maladaptive
is to treat it as instrumental toward the realization of an end. But
how^ is the goal or end to be known? For, surely, there arc levels
of instrumcntaHty; that is, there arc goals which arc themselves
instrumental for further ends. And, of course, the immediate
goal of a particular pattern of "adaptive" behavior mav itself
be "maladaptive" with respect to a more fundamental goal, etc.,
etc. In addition, therefore, behavior thcrap\- on its very own

terms is obliged to consider the well-known problem of adapta-
tion to a "sick society," that is, it raises the ethically and psycho-
logically formidable issue of "the well-adjusted stonntrooper."
And, of course, it must also consider on an individual basis the
"adaptability" of the patient's relatively fundamental life-goals.
Any refusal, under the banner of a positivistic rejection of
IxJ
ToTchbook Edition
the "unverifiable," to scrutinize these more fundamental goals

would be to lapse again, though more subtly, into cosmetics.
Thus, the very project of therapy should force the behavior
therapist to question in the most serious way the often careless
equating of what is desired with what is desirable. If he does
not do this he ought to change his title to cosmetician.
In the space of this brief and general introduction we must
pass by many other relevant issues. But in the light of the pre-
ceding discussion there emerges one point of utmost importance
related directly to what is presented in this book as a phenomeno-
logical delineation of "mental illness." The fact that behavior
therapy "works" so well points to the possibility that all human
behavior, all aspects of our personality, are acquired by a mechani-
cal conditioning process. Indeed, this is the core of the contem-
porary theory of learning upon which the techniques of behavior
therapy are based. Thus, the "success" of behavior therapy
points, though perhaps unwittingly, to at least a partial con-
firmation of the idea presented in Chapter of this book: the V
distinction between psychic health and illness must be based upon
the mechanicalness of human behavior. (Naturally, behavior
therapy in substituting one mechanical pattern for another— and
in a mechanical way— contributes, in this sense, absolutely nothing
toward the patient's health.)
Furthermore, if— as various experiments in learning theory
and hypnosis seem to suggest— human behavior, including patterns
of thought and feeling, is the result of mechanical conditioning
processes, and if psychic health is measured by the degree of
freedom from this mechanicalness, then it follows that the organi-
zation of human life, as we know it, is essentially pathological
and pathogenic.
It is argued in this book that the failure of Scientism seriously

to engage the question of the nature of health and illness is a
result of a reductionism in which all entities, including man, are
described, i.e. perceived, as essentially the non-vital, non-purpose-
ful materiality of the Cartesian res extensa. Simply stated, the
general issue is how to understand man as a part of nature. I
believe that some of the enormous difficulty of this problem
[xi]
Preface
becomes visible when we see how^, in its own way, the human-
istic, existentialist reaction to Freudianism also fails to offer a
realistic understanding of human nature, its potentialities and
limitations.
The Humanist therapist sees man as inherently free, spon-
taneous, creative and loving. He sees psychopathology as that
in the individual which impedes the expression of these elements.
His mode of treatment is, fundamentally, to relate to the patient
in such a manner as to bring forth this expression— that is, to
relate to the patient in a free, spontaneous, creative and loving
way. So formulated, the Humanistic psychotherapeutic enterprise
seems founded on the assumption that the therapist is healthy,
i.e. free, creative, etc.— at least much more so than the patient.
That is, psychotherapy is here based on the therapist's faith in
his own powers. How does he know he is free, creative, etc.?
I think the final answer is that he feels that way. And what he
tries to bring his patient to is also this feeling of freedom. In
thiscontext, the Humanist complains of Scientism's underesti-
mation and devaluation of man, whereas he claims to have faith
in human beings, and to see the positive and strong side of his
patients as well as their negative side.
To my mind the critical issue here is not the possible vague-
ness of such concepts as freedom, creativity and so forth, but
the fact that the Humanist denies that these elements can ever
be known in any exact fashion. That is, the mode of apprehend-
ing them totally at variance with the mode of apprehending
is
and obtaining knowledge of nature. Not only is it totally at

variance, but it must always be so by the very nature of the
case. Thus is the order of human experience seen as utterly
severed from the order of nature. Behind this severance is the
metaphysical postulate of a radical separation between man
and nature.
The irony of this position is that it occurs within a general
trend of tiiought which violently disputes the Cartesian dualism
of mind and matter and what is called the subject-object split.
In however. Humanism remains in essence Cartesian be-
fact,
cause fundamentally it never (jucsrions the Cartesian concept

of nature, however much it criticizes the Cartesian concept of
the self. Thus contemporary natural science still remains credited
Torchbook Edition
with the only knowledge of nature, and thus nature is

reliable
still seen as inherently non-vital and non-purposive. Man, being
conscious, is thus an ontologically unique specimen who, roughly
speaking, stands over against the world of nature. This is so
even if his consciousness is spoken of as a relational reality. That
is, the power of relating, Hving, purposing, is still his alone.
Nature remains blind, non-relational, non-intentional.
If the knowledge of self is to such a degree cut off from
the knowledge of nature, the knower can never be interested

in the possibility of external forces that may influence him, or
perhaps determine him. He
on his own feelings about
rehes
himself because, essentially, he sees no meaningful external cor-
rective to them. And so the idea of development or movement
toward a better personal existence, or health, becomes linked to
an active striving to êel better either by doing certain things
or by relating to other people in certain ways. Thus the thera-
pist's faith in himself and in his patients is based on a trust in
the Cartesian estimation of the material world and the unjusti-

fied assumption that this is the only sort of nature that could
exist. What he feels in himself seems totally different from that
nature, and so he becomes, in this special sense, a law unto him-
self. At the best he may speak of a dualism of I-thou and I-it,
but it is a dualism in which nature as an object can have no

influence on his subjective sense of relationship.
But if the Cartesian view of nature is seriously put to ques-
tion, and if nature is seen as being itself organic and purposeful
with man one sort of purposing entity among others, then my
knowledge of self depends more on a search for the way nature
influences me than on an attempt to exercise powers whose gen-
eral natural function I do not yet understand and which I may
not even possess. From the perspective of an organic view of
nature, Humanistic psychotherapy becomes another example of
cosmetics, because from such a perspective the feeling of power
must be distinguished from the actual possession of it.
If, in some sense or other, I am not the only sort of entity
which can love, if this "power" of loving or creating or willing,

etc. is not ontologically unique, then my capacity to feel is not
ontologically unique cither. This implies that it can be the effect
of something external to myself, and that it can include an illu-
[ xiii
Preface
sional element. That is, if thoughts and ideas and feelings are
part of nature then they are not a law unto themselves, but have
to be approached as effects at least as much as they can be con-
sidered to legislate our activity.
All of these quite general remarks taken together with the

more detailed criticism of psychoanalysis itself that is offered
in this book may very tentatively suggest the possibility that
the history of psychology and psychiatry during the last hun-
dred years is the history of an illusion. Phenomenology's role
in revealing that illusion is to suggest that our perception and
description of the self is conditioned by our conception of nature
(or "reality"), and that this conception, in turn, cannot be justi-
fied by the scientific method which is based on it since all the
objects which the scientist attends to will be perceived and
described in its light.
The illusion of the "pragmatic" criterion is, for its part, based
on several unexamined assumptions about the job we wish done
by our scientific concepts. These assumptions are, first, that the
purposes our conceptual schemes are designed to serve are con-
gruent with the essentially real, and, second, that these purposes
or desires are relatively uninfluenced and unchanged by
that reality.
The first assumption, or hope, can result in our being satis-
fied with a theory simply because it "works," without our ques-

tioning those human purposes which it "works" for— that is, it
may we do not, in a sense, ask enough of nature (and
be that
our thought), and thus we bar ourselves from the discovery of
our ignorance. An ultimate consequence of this first assumption
may also be the idea that the universe is non-purposive simply
because it docs not manifest the kind and scale of purpose which
we would like it to have.
The second assumption bcliind the pragmatic criterion, namely
that our purposes and desires arc uninfluenced by "external
reality," can block us from considering the possibility that our
general and particular ideas of what knowledge is may them-
selves he an effect of natural forces which we do not, in some
larger sense, understand.
Torchbook Edition
Though these illusions are not peculiar to psychiatry and

psychology they are compounded there by the fact that the
pragmatic criterion is not ultimately applied to a reality external
to the mind, so that even the restricted practical success of the
physical sciences is unobtainable. When, in addition, the idea
of health and illness is brought into the picture, the enterprise
becomes almost ludicrous, being the attempt to ascertain the
purpose of non-purposing phenomena, and, once this impossible
aim is reached, to assist the organism to function optimally in
a universe where the very idea of optimal function has no ultimate
objective correlate. As for the Humanistic trend, we have seen
that it docs not deny the metaphysics of natural science, but
merely seeks to make no use of it, equating the feeling of free-
dom with the fact of freedom and thereby indirectly supporting
what is essentially a Cartesian separation of consciousness
and nature.
The recent growth of interest in religion, particularly

Eastern religion, might suggest that a healthy questioning of
modern. Western presuppositions is beginning to take place.
Many therapists and theoreticians have attempted in one way or
another to make use of Zen Buddhism, for example, or Indian
philosophy, or various yoga and meditation techniques. Others,
staying more within the Judeo-Christian fold, seek to integrate
such religious concepts as and salvation, etc.
atonement, sin, faith
with concepts pertaining to mental health and illness and the

process of psychotherapy. Still others, of course, cite Jungian
theories along similar lines.
One of the central ideas of many Eastern religions concerns
the ultimately illusory nature of the world men normally live in.
This doctrine, as far as I can judge, was not meant to apply only
to those we call psychotics or neurotics, but includes— indeed
stresses— the illusory nature of the world and life of so-called
"normal" man. And
from the perspective of these teachings
so
the psychiatric distinction between the healthy and the ill appears
to dwindle to a very secondary status. Furthermore, this doc-
trine does not seem to pertain to all entities in the world with
[xv]
Preface
the exception of psychotherapists and their concepts, but very

much pertains to the reahty of the therapist himself.
Thus, for a psychotherapist to take seriously this doctrine
of Maya it would be necessary for him genuinely to consider the
possibihty that everything he bases his thought upon is in error,
that every purpose he wishes his thought and action to serve
(including the ideal of "helping" people) and that
is a deception,
he himself, without special guidance and difficult work, must
remain a mirage of many colors and httle substance which im-
agines it is a man. That is, the doctrine of Maya, if not taken to
apply directly to the inquirer himself, ultimately becomes but
another deception. This, of course, is the great embarrassment of
genuinely religious ideas: they are meant to be taken personally.
A very similar state of affairs exists with respect to Judaic
and Christian ideas. To take only one example, the proscription
against idolatry in Judaism and the concept of the poverty of
spirit in Christianity both, in their own way, seem to suggest
that movement toward human transformation can begin
the
only as a man can turn some part of himself away from the
imaginings of strictly human thought, feeling and action. That is,
help comes from God and not from man, not even from such
men Freud or Heidegger. The Judaic "broken heart" and the
as
Christian "despair" which are understood as the precondition
of the religious search do seem worlds apart from the psycho-
therapist's confidence in his judgment as to what in a religion
can be selected out to serve a humanly defined goal of "mental
health"— not to mention the confidence he has in his, or his
school's, ability to help his fellows. In any event, we ought cer-
tainly to question whether a genuinely religious idea can be
used to serve aims put forth by men who do not themselves
properly suffer the application of these ideas to their own lives
and thought.
It is clear to me that the various new trends in psychotherapy,

though they may be directed away from psychoanalysis, are
still movements in the same plane and dimension. That is, they
arc all, directly or indirectly, intentionally or unwittingly, chil-
(xvi I
Torchbook Edition
dren of the modern natural-scientific metaphysics. As such, they

must endure the criticism of the school of phenomenology, a
criticism which requires of them a drastic re-evaluation not only
of their mode of explanation, but of their very perception of
the phenomena they seek to explain. Of course, whether phe-
nomenology in any of its forms can itself provide a reliable basis
for the understanding of consciousness is quite another question.
Perhaps, despite all appearances to the contrary, modern man has
not yet learned how to hear the ancient question: "What is man?"
December, tp6j Jacob needleman
[xvii ]
PREFACE
Ludwig Binswanger's Daseinsanalyse is an effort to complement

and correct the view of man and human experience impHcit in
Freudian psychoanalysis. As such, it is eminently philosophical and
must be so understood if its relevance to practical psychological
and clinical issues is eventually to be appreciated. Unfortunately,
the tendency in America has been to approach Binswanger's work
primarily as a clinical alternative to Freudian psychoanalysis with-
out careful attention to the philosophical ground of both schools of
thought. For, as I hope to have shown in this book, it is there that
the battle is joined. Daseinsanalyse cannot but seem impotent and
superfluous if it is treated as an Ersatz for scientific psychiatry. One
must realize that its strength is of a different sort than that of natu-
ral science, a strength sorely needed if science is to succeed in tak-
ing man as its object.
In this study I have used the term "existential a priori" in order
to emphasize what I take to be the Kantian elements in Binswang-
er's and Heidegger's method of thought. In singUng out this one
aspect of Binswanger's work, I have underplayed some facets that
he himself considers vital: toname but one, the unique conception

of love as presented in his Grundformen und Erkenntnis 7nensch-
lichen Daseins. I saw my choice as lying between a faithful exposi-
tion and an interpretive focus, and felt that by choosing the latter I
would be able to discuss more clearly some of the issues that divide
Binswangcr and Freud in their philosophical context. If I have suc-
ceeded in this, then perhaps whatever distortion by selection is in-
herent in such an undertaking has been justified.
American interest in Daseinsanalyse has, unfortunately, raced far
ahead of the material available in English. Except for the excellent
[ xviii ]
Preface
translations in Existence,^ readers in this country have had to settle
for secondhand presentations of Binswanger's thought, particularly

in its relation to Freudian theory. The attempt to rectify this situa-
tion somewhat has been the main principle guiding my choice of

translation. But I have also sought to make my study of Bins-
wanger's work and the selections from his writings integral and
interrelated. It is to be hoped, therefore, that an English trans-
lation of his Grundformen will soon be undertaken. This monu-
mental and closely-welded work argues that human existence can-
not be understood solely under Heidegger's aspect of "Care"
(Sorge), and presents an extensive analysis of the equally fun-
damental ontological mode of love. Although Binswanger later
claimed this work was based upon a "creative misunderstanding"
of Heidegger's philosophy, to my mind it still stands as a valid,
necessary, and remarkably far-seeing supplementation of Heideg-
gerean thought.
I should like to thank Dr. Ernest Angel (who must take much
of the credit for the first importation of Binswanger's thought to
America) for turning over to me his translation of "The Case of
Lola Voss," and for helping me navigate certain of the troubled
waters of Binswanger's prose. I wish also to express my gratitude
to theSamuel F. Pels Foundation, under whose auspices I was able

to work in Europe; to Professor Binswanger, whose profound
hospitaUty and conversation in Kreuzlingen showed me the man
behind the work I so admired; and above all to Professor John E.
Smith of the Yale University Department of Philosophy, who
shepherded my ideas when I was working them into the form of a
doctoral dissertation.
Iam grateful to Max Niemeyer Verlag of Tubingen for grant-
ing me permission to include the essay "Extravagance," which ap-
pears as Chapter 1 in Binswanger's Drei Fonnen Missgliickten
Daseins. "Freud and the Magna Charta of Clinical Psychiatry"
("Freud und die Verfassung der klinischen Psychiatrie"), "Hei-
degger's Analytic of Existence and its Meaning for Psychiatry"
("Die Bedeutung der Daseinsanalytik Martin Heideggers fiir das
Selbstverstandnis der Psychiatrie"), "Freud's Conception of Man
in the Light of Anthropology" ("Freuds Auffassung des Men-
1 RoUo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri Ellenberger (eds.). Existence (New
York: Basic Books, 1958).
[xix]
Preface
schen im Lichte der Anthropologic"), and "Dream and Existence"

("Traum und Existenz") were all published by A. Francke Ver-
lag, Bern, in the two volumes of Binswanger's Ausgewahlte Vort-
rage und Aufsdtze. "The Case of Lola Voss" and "Introduction
to Schizophrenie" were published in Binswanger's Schizophrenic
by Gunther Neske Verlag, Pfullingen.
August 1963 JACOB NEEDLEMAN
(xxl
INTRODUCTION
In "Freud and the Magna Charta of Clinical Psychiatry" Ludwig

Binswanger writes:
Itwas on a September morning of the year 1927. Having broken

away from the Congress of German Neurologists and Psychia-
trists that was meeting in Vienna, I hurried to Semmering, full of
impatience to return the unforgettable visit he [Freud] had paid
me in those difficult times. I was about to leave and we were talk-
ing about the old days. Soon, however, the conversation turned
to that which twenty years ago had brought us together and
which, in spite of clear differences of opinion, had held us to-
gether, namely his life's work, his "great idea." With respect to
a concrete example—
clinical a serious case of compulsion neurosis
—that had occupied us both a good deal, I threw out the question
as to how we were to understand the failure of this patient to take
the last decisive step of psychoanalytic insight and to thus con-
tinue in his misery in spite of all previous efforts and technical
progress. As a contribution to the solution of the problem, I sug-
gested that such a failure might only be understood as the result
of something which could be called a deficiency of spirit [Geist-
igkeit], that is, an inability on the part of the patient to raise him-
self to the level of spiritual communication with the physician.
Thus the patient was barred by his own lack from encompassing
and overcoming his unconscious instinctual impulses at the last
decisive point. I could barely believe my ears when the answer

came: "Yes, spirit [Geist] is everything." I presumed that by
spirit, Freud meant something like intelligence. But then he con-
tinued: "Man has always known he possessed spirit: I had to show
him there is such a thing as instinct. But men are always unsatis-
fied, they cannot wait, they always want something whole and
Introduction
finished; but one has to begin somewhere and very slowly move
forward." Encouraged by this concession, I went a step further,
explaining that I found myself forced to recognize in man some-
thing like a basic religious category; that, in any case it was im-
possible for me to admit that "the religious" is somehow and from
somewhere a derivative phenomenon. (I was thinking, of course,
not of the origin of a particular religion or even of religion in gen-
eral but of something which I have since learned to call the reli-
gious I-thou relation.) But I had stretched the bow of agreement

too far and began to feel its resistance. "Religion arises," so Freud
declared, quickly and curtly, "out of the helplessness and anxiety
of childhood and early manhood. Indisputably." With that he
went to the drawer of his desk: "This is the moment for me to
show you something," laid before me a finished manuscript that
bore the title "The Future of an Illusion," and looked laughingly
and questioningly at me. I easily guessed from the situation what
the title meant. Meanwhile the moment of farewell had come.
Freud accompanied me to the door. His last words, spoken with
a knowing, lightly ironic smile, were: "Forgive me that I cannot
^
satisfy your religious needs."
This reminiscence of Binswanger's is noteworthy not only be-

cause it up an attitude toward religion at variance with
points
Freud's. It is much more significant in that it epitomizes an orien-
tation toward man within psychiatry that, more than any single
diflFerence of viewpoint, has set Daseinsanalyse apart from psycho-
analysis. In that same year, 1927, Heidigger's Sein tind Zeit was
published and provided Binswanger with the vocabulary and con-
ceptual tools he needed to articulate his approach to psychiatry.
His major work under the influence of Heidegger appeared as
first
Archiv fjir Neurologic und

a series of articles in the Schaveizcr
Psychiatric from 193 to 1933, a series entitled "On the Flight
1
of Ideas" ("Obcr Idccnflucht"). Freud's remark, "Man has always

known he possessed spirit; I had to show him there is such a thing
as instinct," was no doubt in Binswanger's mind when, at the con-
clusion of this scries, he wrote:
1 Binswanger, Ausgewahltc Vortrage und Aufsdtze (Bern, 1955), Vol. II, pp. 81-
82.
[2]
—
Introduction
Spirit (in its widest sense, by which is not meant the strictly reli-
gious, ethical and aesthetic) and instinct are limiting concepts in

the sense that "the instincts" remain as residue when man is taken
as stripped of spirit and spirit remains when man is totally devital-
ized. But human existence never goes forth exclusively as spirit or
instinct, it is always both. Only theoretically and abstractly can
instinct and spirit be sundered. ... If Nietzsche and psychoa-
nalysis have shown that instinctuality, especially in the form of
sexuality, extends its reach up to the highest pinnacles of human
spirituality, then we have attempted to show the degree to which
spirituality extends its reach down to the deepest valleys of "vital-
ity." We have, in other words, tried to demonstrate how one must
speak also of the religious, moral and aesthetic life in those spheres
of human existence which till now have seemed dominated exclu-
sively by the vital or instinctual hfe. Hand in hand with this goes
the notion that one speaks of religiosity, morality and aesthetics
not only where man has won to a clear self-consciousness of a
persistent independent self, but in all those cases where a self
permanent, persistent or otherwise —intends an object (Gegen-
Stand) which stands over against it. So much for the positive
clarification of such a term as "unconscious" spirit.^
In 1936 Binswanger delivered his address in commemoration of

Freud's eightieth birthday. This paper, entitled "Freud's Concep-
tion of Man in the Light of Anthropology," described the extent
to which psychoanalysis as the doctrine of homo natura oversimpli-
fies and constricts full human While Binswanger saw this
reality.
oversimplification as a necessary price for the power of scientific
explanation, at the same time he proposed that scientific psychol-
ogy and psychiatry must found themselves on a discipline that in-
cludes the ontological problem of man's total being. For only thus
could that which is being explained and simphfied retain its whole-
ness as the science progresses.
Binswanger sent a copy of the lecture to Freud, who responded
with a warm and amused reaffirmation of his own stand:
Dear Friend! A sweet surprise, your lecture! Those who heard

you and reported to me were visibly untouched by it; it must
2 Binswanger, "Uber Idecnflucht," Schweizer Archiv fiir Neurologie und Psy-

chiatrie, Vol. 30 (1932-}}), pp. 75-76.
[3]
Introduction
have been too difficult for them. In reading it I rejoiced over

your beautiful prose, your erudition, the scope of your horizon,
your tact in disagreement. Truly, one can put up with infinite
amounts of praise.
But, of course, I don't believe a ivord of ivhat you say. I've al-
ways lived only in the parterre and basement of the building. You
claim that with a change of viewpoint one is able to see an upf>er
story which houses such distinguished guests as religion, art, etc.
You're not the only one who thinks that, most cultured specimens
of homo natura believe it. In that you are conservative, I revolu-
tionary. If I had another lifetime of work before me, I have no
doubt that I could find room for these noble guests in my little
subterranean house. . .
.'
If he were alive today and able to witness the growth of Bins-

wanger's Daseinsanalyse, Freud would doubtless have stronger
words against this "reactionary" movement back to the "spirit."
But would he be justified in rejecting as reactionary a school of
thought that gives the heartiest assent to all his discoveries and that
could not even have come into existence without them? To be
sure, Daseinsanalyse attempts to reinstate spirit in the science of
psychiatry, but it is emerged
a notion of spirit that could only have
after Freud. No longer freedom" seen as sepa-
is "man's essential
rate from his participation in matter and body; no longer is science
seen as warring against freedom and spirit. Rather, science is em-
braced by the spirit as a movement of spirit, and the instinctuality
that it discovers in man is welcomed as man's insunctuality. Bins-
wanger does not seek spheres of man's existence that argue against
the explanatory power of psychoanalysis. What he asks is a Kantian
question: "What is it in man that enables his existence to be ex-
plained by psychoanalysis?" When, therefore, Binswanger com-
plains of the reductionism of natural science as appHed to man, he
is not questioning science's ability to explain, he is rather urging
that that which is being explained be kept in mind in its full phe-
nomenal reality. He is not saying to science: "You cannot explain
the spirit of man"; what he says is: "Be sure it is the spirit of man
you arc explaining!"
Whether we call this "spirit" consciousness, freedom, or mind,
'Ludwig Binswanger, Erinnerungen an Sigmund Freud (Bern, 1956), p. 115.
(4]
—
Introduction
there ultimately comes a point in the science of spirit where we are

faced with an antinomy or contradiction. For example, the ques-
tion as to the origin of consciousness, both in mankind and the in-
fant, presents us with two possible answers, neither of which is
satisfactory. We seem forced to choose between a mysterious leap

in the continuum of nature upon the arrival of consciousness, or
we must relegate consciousness to the level of organic nature and
with bad conscience maintain that "nothing really new" has
emerged. As with the Kantian antinomies, the first alternative is
"too large" and the second "too small." Perhaps what is needed
here is a new "Copernican Revolution" that will side with neither
alternative, but will undercut the legitimacy of the question itself.
In psychology, those antinomies, paradoxes, dilemmas, and

blind alleys that are the legacy of a separation of consciousness and
its world were first noted by a contemporary of Freud's: the
philosopher Franz Brentano, His doctrine of intentionality as de-
fining the essence of consciousness may be seen as a first step in this
new Copernican Revolution. Brentano's chief disciple, Edmund
Husserl, expanded and extended his teacher's insight into the fun-
dament of method of philosophy. Consciousness was now
a new^
understood as It was no
consciousness-oj , as pure reference-to.
longer a strange and unprecedented thing or process whose work-
ings were somewhat more puzzling than those of its neighbor ob-
jects, the things of this world. Nor was it a distant spectator,
alien and sufficient unto itself, moving like a ghost in the earth.
Consciousness was "what it intended," it was a going-out-to-
something. "We must convince ourselves," Husserl wrote,
that the psychical in general in the psychological sense, that psy-

chical personalities, psychical properties, experiences or states are
empirical unities, and are therefore as realities of every kind and
degree, mere unities of an intentional "constitution" — în their
own sense truly existing [ Wahrhaft seiend] : intuitable, experi-
enceable, and on empirical grounds scientifically determinable
and yet "merely intentional," and therefore merely "relative." *
It was but a step

—
perhaps from a stricdy Husserlian point of
—
view an unwarranted one from the notion of consciousness as
* Edmund Husserl, Ideas, trans, by W. R. Boyce Gibson (London, 1952), pp.
167-168.
[5I
Introduction
intentionality to Heidegger's concept of the essentially human as
being-in-the-world (Dasein). Heidegger speaks, not of conscious-

ness, but ofhuman consciousness; moreover not in isolation from
all elsehuman, but as human being. Just as consciousness for Hus-
serl was its intention, so man is his "world. Heidegger seeks to bring
man out of Cartesian exile from his world by showing how human
being in the context of Care structures the being of his world
and his known self. Husserl had said "the whole being of the world
consists in a certain 'meaning' which presupposes absolute con-
sciousness as the field from which the meaning is derived. ." " . .
He had, however, added, "But we must note that our aim has not
been to present a detailed theory of such transcendental constitut-
ing, and therewith to sketch a new Theory of Knowledge in re-
spect of the spheres of reality so constituted. ." ^ But with . .
Heidegger the new Copernican Revolution is complete. By mov-

ing the Husserlian cargo back "within" the phenomenological
brackets, Heidegger has attempted to found a new ontology based
on the fiat that man is essentially being-in-the-world. Just as Kant
had placed the source of necessary truth within man, so Heidegger
placed the source of meaning in general, and hence of Being,
within man.
Binswanger took Heidegger's analysis of the structure of hu-
man being as it constitutes world and self by being essentially being-
in-the-world as the instrument with which to understand the exist-
ence of his patients. He saw that science, as a human endeavor,
also makes its world as it knows it. He saw, too, that when science
as psychology focuses its methods upon its own source, human
existence, it brings down upon its head all the paradoxes of the
separation of subject and object, consciousness and thing, man
and world. By claiming that each individual is his own unique
world, he demanded a prcsuppositionlcss entering into that world
as the precondition for explanation of it. By maintaining that
the world and human Freud showed holds human
reality that
spirit at its mercy, itself depends on that spirit, Binswanger points
the way to an enlightened anthropoccntrism based in Freud on a

chastened awareness of limit and finitude.
^ Ibid., p. 169.
* Loc. cit.
[6]
"PART ON8: a crit-
ical INTRODUCTION
TO LUDWIG BINSWANGER'S
EXISTENTIAL PSYCHO-
ANALYSIS
I
The Concept of the
Existential A Priori
Kanfs "Copernican Revolution''^
When Descartes severed reality into the isolated realms of mind

and matter, he bequeathed to subsequent philosophers the problem
of bringing the two sufficiently together again so that our knowl-
edge of nature could be rendered intelUgible. Following Descartes'
unsatisfactory appeal to God as ultimate guarantor of knowledge,
a long line of subtle thinkers tried their hand at answers. The result
was that philosophy, as well as its world, has long been split into
two irreconcilable regions, which may be called (among other
things) rationahsm and empiricism. The former had finally to claim
that the mind need not come into contact with nature in order to
have knowledge of it. The latter claimed, eventually, that the only
knowledge we could have of the world would come from the pas-
sive and comparatively meager contact with nature provided by
our senses. Thus rationalism could offer some certainty of knowl-
edge, but could not guarantee that this was knowledge about na-
ture. Empiricism could speak of the contact with nature provided
by the senses, but could not guarantee it to be certain knowledge.
Thus the two axioms that, as will be shown, generate the
philosophical outlook of Kant's epoch-making The Critique of
Pure Reason could only appear equally incompatible to both ra-
tionahsm and empiricism. These two axioms are: (i) that the mind
of itself gives us certain knowledge about nature (synthetic a
priori knowledge) and (2) that all knowledge must involve con-
tact with the thing known. For rationalism, the incompatibihty
[9]
Introduction to Binswanger's Existential Psychoanalysis
stems from the view that mind is a substance (jes cogitans) alien
to and separate from nature {res extensa). For empiricism, the in-
compatibility arises from the view that since nature, as opposed to
mind, is a fixed order of reality, the only contact possible be-
tween mind and nature is that of sensory impressions, i.e., the in-
fluence of nature upon mind. Therefore, it is impossible to obtain
true knowledge from the mind alone, since its contact with the
known is merely passive, waiting upon nature for its objects.
There remained for Kant only one reasonable way to account
for his two axioms. He compared his line of thought to the revolu-
tion brought about by Copernicus in astronomy. Before Coperni-
cus it was thought that the sun and stars moved around the earth.
But Copernicus, in order to explain certain changes in the posi-
tions of the heavenly bodies, introduced the hypothesis that the
earth itself moved. Before Kant it was thought that our knowledge
had to conform to its objects; Kant introduced the hypothesis*
that the objects conformed to our ways of knowing. The mind,
that is, is constitutive of its objects. It creates them in knowing
them. By this hypothesis Kant could explain how we could have a
priori knowledge of objects. So long as one supposed that knowl-
edge conformed to, or simply copied, objects that were given
ready-made in our experience, one could not explain how any a
priori knowledge was possible. But if the objects conformed to our
ways of knowing, if the mind were constitutive and objects were
determined by our faculty of knowledge, then to the extent that
they were so determined, they might be known even prior to ex-
perience.
Thus Kant accounts for the fact that we can have certain and
direct knowledge of nature by cutting through the basic presup-
positions of both the rationalists and the empiricists. He claims two
things: first, that the mind is not utterly separated from nature;
and, second, that the kind of contact it has with nature is not lim-
ited exclusively to a passive subjection to the influences of nature.
In this he is by no means saying that there is 720 influence upon
mind by nature. Quite the contrary. What he is saying is that, while
knowledge consists of impressions derived from passive contact
with nature, it also requires elements supplied by the faculty of
knowledge itself. "This leaf is green" is a piece of knowledge. But
• It is actually a fiat; cf. below.
[10]
The Concept of the Existential A Priori
the mere "green" impression of the senses does not represent knowl-
edge until it is organized by ideas of substance (leaf) and quality
(green): ideas supplied by the understanding. Our faculty of
knowledge, however, cannot work unless it gets its material from
sense impressions. Knowledge, then, is a union of the active, or-
ganizing (constitutive) function of the mind with its more re-
ceptive and passive function called "sensibility." All we can know
with certainty about nature is the general way all sense impressions
must be organized by the mind. The general ways in which the
mind orders its material are called by Kant "categories of the Un-
derstanding." One might say that this kind of knowledge is not
knowledge about things, but is knowledge of how we know
rather
things. This is true, but since in knowing things we are at the same
time dictating to them some general structure, then such knowl-
edge is also knowledge of the object in general. Such "knowledge"
is, in Kant's terminology, "transcendental." That which the mind
of itself can supply is transcendentally true. It is knowledge of the

way things must appear to us if we are to have the kind of expe-
rience that we, in fact, do have. Thus such a priori truths as "every
event must have a cause" are truths about the way the Understand-
ing orders the manifold of sense impressions in order to make ex-
perience possible.
Kant's philosophy delivered a death blow to the deep convic-
tion orhope of traditional metaphysics that it could achieve posi-
tive knowledge of reality as it is in itself, independent of our
knowledge of it. Since in knowing a thing we shape it, we can
never know what it is in itself. Kant is not, however, denying a
dualism of mind and nature. Certainly he is not collapsing one into
the other, as both Idealism and Materialism tend to do. What he is
saying is that we can have certain knowledge of reality only to
the extent that we ourselves give it shape. Things as they are in
themselves must forever remain hidden from us. In Kant's lan-
guage: we can know phenomena, but we are forever barred from
having knowledge of noumena (things in themselves). Thus, though
the mind is distinct from nature as it is "in itself," it is intimately
and essentially related to nature as humanly known and experi-
enced.
Here it is important to stress that the Kantian categories of the
Understanding (categories of quantity: unity, plurality, totality; of
[II]
quality: reality, negaidon, limitation; of relation: substance-and-

accident, cause and effect, reciprocity; of modality: possibility, ex-
istence, necessity) have no meaning or significance unless we can
point to the sensory objects that correspond to them. All the cate-
goriesmust be related to sensory contact (or "intuition")- The
Kantian statement that there are categories in the mind that make
experience possible should not be taken to mean that such cate-
gories "exist" by themselves "in" the mind empty of any "con-
all
tent," like so many empty pitchers waiting to be filled. The cate-

gories are only their use and function of ordering the sensory
manifold. They are not ideas that have functions and can be used
in certain ways. They are that use. To reason to the constitutive
function of the mind is not to hypothesize some state of things ex-
isting prior in time to experience. The constitutive functions of the
mind are those that make it possible to apprehend things as before
or after, as real or not real. They therefore are not possible ob-
jects of their own organizing principles.
These categories of the Understanding, then, are entirely lim-
ited to the sphere of sense-experience. Since they cannot otherwise
describe the real properties and relations of things in themselves,
the utmost Understanding can achieve is to anticipate the form of a
possible experience in general; cannot give us a priori nontauto-
it
logous knowledge of things in general. There is, however, another

—
function of the mind which Kant terms Reason that organizes —
the activity of the Understanding in a way similar to that in which
Understanding organizes sense impressions. Just as Understanding
orders the manifold supphed by sensory contact (initution), so rea-
son unifies the concepts and judgments of Understanding, thus re-
lating itself to objects not directly but indirectly. Reason may thus
be called pure in that no sensory data correspond entirely to its
organizational principles. The goal of pure reason is to provide
principles or unconditioned, absolute starting points for theem-
ployment of the Understanding. But the unconditioned is not
anything that can be found within experience. Our experience of a
cause, for example, does not include experience of an absolutely
cause. The ideas of reason, which may be said to regulate the
first
Understanding, are not constitutive because no experience corre-

sponds to them. Philosophy's search for answers to such questions
as to whether the world had a beginning or not is thus a misem-
[12]
ployment of reason (which cannot in itself tell us about the world)

and is the quest of a chimera. The ideas of reason are transcendent,
i.e., they pass beyond the limits of possible experience. The con-
cepts or categories of the Understanding are transcendental, i.e.,

they are that which makes experience in general possible.
The Concept of the Constitutive Function

of the Understanding and the
Corresponding New Method of Philosophy
In The Critique of Pure Reason Kant asked: what are the condi-
tions that the mind must account for the fact that
fulfill in order to
we know the world and the laws of nature in the way that we do? ^
Such reasoning to preconditions is a hallmark of the transcendental
philosophy as Kant conceived it, a philosophy that asks not pri-
marily "What do I know?" nor "How do I know what I know?"
but, rather, "This is what I know and this is how I know it what —
conditions are being fulfilled by the Understanding in order for
this to be possible?" It is, ideally, a particularly certain form of
philosophizing, but a certainty fully dependent on the truth of
particular premises. In The Critique of Pure Reason, if all experi-
ence must have a sensory component and if there are such things
as synthetic a priori judgments about the objects of knowledge,
then the Copemican axiom follows: the Understanding is constitu-
tive.
The peculiarity of Kant's thought, however, has to do with

those very synthetic propositions that he claims exist and that, if
they do, necessitate the transcendental approach. These proposi-

tions are, if closely examined, found to be transcendentally true:
that they are necessarily true only insofar as their truth is a
is,
necessary precondition of experience. For example, if the quantity

of matter did not remain unchanged, it would mean either that
something absolutely new had appeared, or that something had
vanished completely. In either case the unity of experience would
itself would not be possible.
never be possible, and thus experience
Itcan be shown that in the perspective of Kant's philosophy
these synthetic judgments are such that the "third thing" that con-
1 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pttre Reason, trans, by Norman Kemp Smith
(London, 1953), B229.
[13I
nects subject and predicate must be this particularly Kantian notion

of possible experience. Any other alternative would lead, in the
Kantian frame of reference, to one of four unsatisfactory conclu-
sions. First, the judgment in question would not be necessary and
universal (i.e., would have an empirical element in it). Or, second,
it would be universal, but not directly related to the objects of

knowledge (a regulatory principle). Third, it would represent a
function of the mind that does not exist (intellectual intuition). Or,
finally, it would be merely analytically true (the apparent connect-
ing hnk being simply another form of a predicate that is contained

in the subject).
There is thus a peculiar doubhng back in Kant's critical philoso-
phy. If there is a given, sensory component to experience and if
there are synthetic a priori judgments about the objects of knowl-

edge, then, for experience to have the unity that it does have, the
Understanding must be constitutive. But synthetic a priori judg-
ments about the objects of knowledge are the result of the mind's
constitutive power, which is what, ostensibly, was to have been
"deduced" or "justified."
Kant, therefore, cannot claim as a given fact that there are
synthetic a priori judgments about the objects of knowledge. He
can say only that if there are such propositions, then the Under-
standing is constitutive. Since such judgments are only possible as
the result of the mind's constitutive power, the imphcative de-
pendence is mutual: if and only if the Understanding is constitutive
are there synthetic a priori judgments. Both sides of the implica-
tion have to be antecedently true for the statement itself to be
true. One side cannot be deduced from the other.
There are only two alternatives here. Either the notion that the
Understanding is is a fiat of sorts, or we must examine
constitutive
the nature of experience from a standpoint independent of that
of the critical philosophy. But the latter attempt would mean
either seeking necessary laws in the object itself, or seeking neces-
sary laws in the manner in which wc experience and know objects.
The first alternative, of course, is automatically excluded since it is
the most blatant negation of that critical standpoint that we hope

to justify. As to the second alternative, we might find through
empirical psychology or somehow through a metaphysics of reason
the fact or disposition of the mind to experience and know its ob-
[14I
jects under the aegis of categories. However, such an endeavor

would have to treat the mind either as an object among objects or
as an entity in itself. We should still have to justify the transcen-
dental epistemological status of these categories by recourse, again,
to that critical standpoint that we had hoped to justify independ-
ently.
The notion of the constitutive function of the Understanding
is a fiat, then, and we arrive at the tentative formula: the Under-
standing can never find its own functioning in the world itmakes
and, making, experiences; nor can it rigorously deduce itself as
maker. It can know the world, but it can never arrive at the notion
of its constitutive power as a conclusion in a strict chain of thought.
All of Kant's arguments, therefore —including his notion about
the possibility of experience, which springs from his assumption
that objects conform to the Understanding are no more nor less —
than exfoUations of the basic fiat that the mind makes its world,
and of the basic jact that experience has and must have a sensory
element.*
Kant's transcendental deductions are no more and, again, no
less, than the spelling out of the implications of the Copernican
Revolution. They are implications in the sense of deducing what
must be so if the mind is to be constitutive (e.g., the doctrine of
the unity of apperception), and implications as to the structure
of the act of knowing (e.g., the sections on the various syntheses of
the imagination). The "Transcendental Dialectic" thus appears as
not only an impHed conclusion of the Copernican Revolution but
as its strongest and, in a sense, its only possible philosophical sup-
port. For, while we cannot with certainty deduce jrom the inherent
failure of all metaphysical speculation as to the nature of the world,
God, and the self, to the constitutive power of the Understanding,
yet if we are to continue systematic philosophizing, we shall find
the notion of the constitutive function of the Understanding an
appealing one.t
• The reader will no doubt have noticed the frankly circular nature of Kant's
argument as I have presented it. For now let it simply be noted, subject to dis-
cussion in a later chapter, that systematic argument is necessarily circular and that
far from being a failing, circularity is entailed by the very project of system and
explanation. The criterion of adequacy hinges, as willbe shown, on the scope and
size of the circle.
t Its appeal lies in the fact that it points with much-desired necessity to the fail-
['5]
Introduction to Benswanger's Existential Psychoanalysis
I call the concept of the constitutive function of the Undef=

standing a fiat and not a theoretical construct or a hypothesis. A
theoretical construct or a hypothesis will relate or unify or inter-
pret given facts or other theoretical constructs and hypotheses. But
the notion of the constitutive function of the Understanding offers
a new concept and of those facts
of the nature of experience itself
that are to be explained by theory both

and philosophical. scientific
It is a fiat in the sense that the cutting of the Gordian knot was a fiat,
a refusal to accept the criteria for solution that traditionally were

bound up with certain problems of philosophy. It imposes new
standards and forces old problems into a different hierarchy, not
only because the old standards seemed futile or had not yielded
their aim after many years* (this in itself would not justify their
abandonment), but because these standards themselves, as Kant
believed he showed in the "Transcendental Dialectic," lead to con-
tradiction and are thus not possible as standards of reason, the prin-
ciple of noncontradiction being the prime canonical structure of
reason.
Heidegger: The Notion of Constitutive

^'Fu?ictio7i'' Corresponding Method and Its
Applied to the Science of the Being of Man

If we have spent some time on Kant's epistemological critique of
the older metaphysic —
accomplished chiefly through his "constitu-
tive function of —
Understanding" it is because Heidegger's argu-
ment in Sein und Xeit can be taken as an elaborate extension of this
same concept of constitutive "function."
What I wish to suggest is that, for Heidegger, Care and its
components function in a manner strictly analogous to the Kantian
ure of metaphysics and, as we shall see with Heidegger, allows us to overcome,

rather than utterly abandon, the previous futile attempts of and at metaphysics.
• Logical Positivism was similar in the sense that it, too, imposed new standards
and limits to philosophical speculation, but, it seems, primarily because the old at-
tempts had not yet yielded any fruit. It is such a lack of necessity in its aims and
structure that places on a lesser plane than the critical approach. It cannot, as has
it
often been observed, accommodate the unvcrifiability of its main assumption into
its theory. It defines truth in terms of verifiability, but this itself being unverifiable
is neither true nor false. The Copernican Revolution, on the other hand, is in
principle and of necessity unconfirmable. It says only that if the mind is consti-
tutive, then . . . etc.
[i6]
Understanding. Heidegger, to be sure, has not explicitly attempted

anything like a Transcendental Deduction of the existentials and
yet the entire argument of Sein mid Zeit can be read as a "justifica-
tion" (in the Kantian sense described in the "Transcendental

Deduction") of the essential Being-in-the- world of the Dasein.
That is, it offers no proofs in the traditional sense for this ground
of being; for, as I have tried to indicate, there can be no proofs: the
"self can neither find itself in its own world nor deduce itself as the
maker of that world. All the philosopher can do is to presuppose
the constitutive nature of the self by fiat.* And the term "Dasein,"
which Heidegger elects to use instead of "self," has buried within it
this very fiat. Part of the definition of Dasein or human being is

that it is already-in-the- world: Dasein does not emerge as Dasein
unless it has already constituted its world.
. .what then is there left to ask when one presupposes that

.
knowing is already [merged] with its world which it was not sup-
posed to get to except by transcending the subject? ^
Knowing is a mode of the Dasein founded on its being-in-the-

world. This being-in-theworld, as a fundamental structure, re-
quires antecedent interpretation.^
Being-in-the-world demands an antecedent interpretation, not

a deduction or explanation. The inherent structure of the Dasein
is such that Being-in-the-world is presupposed; it is antecedent to
all other experiences or modes of being of the Dasein.
But it must now be shown in what sense this being of Being-in-
the-world is constitutive of world. We may say that for Kant the
Understanding is inherently in-the-world insofar as it constitutes
the world in becoming aware of it in emerging in its function of —
understanding. And, truly, is there any other sense to be attached
to saying of the self or of a function of the self that it is inherently
in-the-world than that this self constitutes its world to some de-
•This characteristic of Heidegger's method of argument was also noted by

cuning Gordian knots rather than
Sartre: "In his abrupt, rather barbaric fashion of
trying to untie them, he gives in answer to the question posited a pure and simple
definition." J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans, by Hazel E. Barnes (New
York, 1956), p. 244.
* Manin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tiibingen, 1953), p. 61.
« Ibid., p. 61.
[17]
gree? A relation of self to a totally other cannot be conceived as

inherent in the structure of self, as definitive of its nature, while
still retaining its role as the totally other. Neither does it make
sense to accept the only other possible way of understanding the
notion that the self is —
inherendy in-the-world namely, that the
world constitutes the self either completely or partially. Not com-
pletely because then the self becomes just one being among other
beings in a world, and to say, therefore, that the world constitutes
the self makes as much sense as to say that the world constitutes a
tree or a planet; not partially (although the reciprocal constituting
of world and self is certainly not excluded, but only in the sense of
self reactingand not of world acting) because if the self did not go
out "of its own accord" to the world, that which the world "con-
stituted" would be only accidental and not essential to the self.
Thus to say that the self (or the Dasein, or the Understanding) is
inherently and essentially in-the-world some sense to endow it

is in
with constitutive "powers." Thus if Heidegger is seriously to claim
that Being-in-the-world is a "basic structure of the Dasein," he must
also claim for the Dasein a constitutive "function."
But what kind of constitutive "function"? Constitutive of
what? Constituted by what or whom? With Kant the answers are
relatively clear. It is not the individual self that makes its world,
but rather the Understanding that is at the same time less than the
individual (being one function among others and certainly not lo-
catable, for example, in the phenomenal self) and more than the
individual (not subject to the inclinations of the individual so far as
it is employed properly and also shared by all reasonable beings to
the same degree). As to the kind of constitutive function in Kant,
it is a function of synthesizing under the unity of apperception and,
through the categories, the manifold of intuition. And as to what

it is constitutive of, the answer is also relatively clear: of the
world, nature, the objects of knowledge and science; trees, tables,

planets, animals, the object-self, and all objective relations among
these things.
Here we find that Heidegger's terms are significantly different
from Kant's, although the relationship between them is strikingly
similar. Heidegger stresses, not Understanding, but human being,
Dasein. Moreover the world is not conceived ontically* as the to-

• Ontology is the study of Being as such, and as distinguished from any one
[i8]
.
tality of entities that can be present within the world or as the
region that at any time embraces these entities, but "world" is con-
ceived as that wherein the Dasein dwells. "World" for Heidegger is
that in terms of which the Dasein refers itself; on the strength of

which the mode of being of context or bearing (Beivandtnis) is
possible. The being of World is thus dependent on Beivandtnis-
zuscmtmenhang {jrcnne of reference or bearing)
It is, therefore, clear that in Heidegger we find no world that
apparently is separate from the self, only later to discover, as in

Kant, that it is constituted by the self. Rather we find "world" de-
fined in terms of Dasein, and once again we run up against the fiat
nature of Heidegger's argument. Yet it is also clear that the Dasein
constitutes this world as so defined by Heidegger for the very —
notion of Bcwandtniszusammenhang is derived from the activity of
the Dasein: in particular from its understanding. We can only con-
clude that such terms as "Dasein," "world," and so forth do not
(like Kant's conceptions of world, nature, self, and Understand-
ing) represent the end product of Dasein in functioning and activ-
ity.Rather they represent the way in which these terms must be
understood in order to account for the fact that the Dasein does so
function and is active in this way. For Kant, "world" is a concept
that is a result of the categorical, constitutive nature of Under-
standing as well as the result of the working of the Reason. But
Kant does not, like Heidegger, ask what must be the being-of-the-
world and of-the-self in order that this very functioning may be
possible.
This is the sense in which the work of Heidegger may be called
ontologically transcendental or ontologically critical. Heidegger is
seeking the ontologically necessary preconditions of all ontic or

regional activity and function in man.
The "transcendence problem" cannot be reduced to the question:

how does a subject go out toward an object, whereby the totality
of objects becomes identified with the idea of world. The ques-
being. The term "ontic" is a Hcidcggcrcan innovation and refers to the study of
particular elements that have being. This parallels the distinction between Being
{Sein) and beings {Seiende). The various sciences are, for example, ontic disci-
plines because they deal with beings (animals, light waves, mathematical functions,
etc.) . There is a sense, then, in which every discipline except ontology is ontic.
[19I
.
Introduction to Bdjswanger's Existential Psychoanalysis
tion is: what makes it ontologically possible that beings can be en-
*
countered in the world and as such objectified?
The transcendental "universality" of the phenomenon of Care and

aU fundamental existentials have a broadness on which every ontic
exposition of Dasein is based. . . ^
Ontically speaking, the world is not-self. Ontologically speak-

ing, the Dasein is in-the-world in various modes; it constitutes the
being-of-the-world network of meanings through which
by that
the world is disclosed, Xuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit are two
of the modes in which the Dasein constitutes the being-of-the-
world. Ontologically, then, for Heidegger, there can be no "self"
and no separate, distinct "world," for ontologically these terms
represent one mode of Being-in-the- world: Vorhimdenheit. It is
from very network of meanings that the "individual self" itself

this
emerges. Dasein is thus always already-in-the-world, and the ex-
pression Being-in-the-world is an empty formula that says nothing
about human beings, but only about human being, and about the
being-of-the-world ("world" having been already understood as
that which it is in the nature of human being to illuminate: in
Bewandtniszusammenhang)
The meaning-references which define the structure of the world

are therefore not anetwork of forms which a worldless subject
casts upon an [unformed] matter. The factistic Dasein moves,
rather, from these horizons back to the beings [already] en-
. . .
countered within them.'
The being-of-the-world as thus structured by meanings (bear-

ing, context) by the Dasein is the ontological ground (or in the
Kantian sense: transcendental-ontological) of the emergence, not
only of the world as it is commonly meant and known, but also of
the ego or self. Man is thus ontologically conceived not as a being
possessing properties, but rather:
The essential determination of man as the understanding of Being

implies at the same time that the [theoretically] separable charac-
* Ibid., p. 366.
B Ibid.,
pp. 199-200.
• Ibid., p. 366.
[20]
teristics of man can never be on-hand [vorhanden] "properties"

of on-hand beings which "appear to be" so and so. Rather, the es-
sential structure of man is to be defined as none other than his
possible modes of being. The essence of man is ever his possibili-

ties, which he "has" not merely in the way an on-hand being has
properties. The essential determination of man can therefore
never be realized by an account of the factual content of an
object [ein Was] because the essence of man lies in this: that it
has [yet] to be his being as his. Indeed, man's essence is illumi-
nated by himself as being-in-the-world —not through another be-

ing, but in such wise that his essence is the light. The Dasein
carries "within him" his sphere of illumination, his "there" [Da],
which both as a matter of fact and essentially cannot be abjured.
Only such a being could have access to what is on hand in the
light and [what is] hidden in the dark. Because man is in such a
manner himself the illumination of Being, Heidegger chooses the
term "Dasein" as the expression of the Being of this being.'
Here we find, fully described by Boss, the final essential element in

Heidegger's method and thought. This, as mentioned earlier, is to
assume as a fact that man is the being whose ontic nature it is to be
ontological. "That man's essential structure consists of the under-
standing of Being is not a theoretical postulate, but a fact." * This
concern of man as to the Heidegger just
nature of Being is fact for
as the necessary sensory element of experience and knowledge is
fact for Kant.
We may now roughly schematize the relation of fact and fiat in
both Heidegger and Kant:
HEIDEGGER:
The fact: Man is the being concerned with Being,
The fiat: Dasein is Being-in-the-world.
The tivo together: Dasein as "Already-being-in-the-world, in-
advance-of-itself, as the Being-concemed-with-beings encountered
"
in the-world."
''
Medard Boss, Psychoanalyse tend Daseinsanalytik (Bern, 1957), pp. 62-63.
8 Ibid., p. 6i.
• Werner Brock, Existence and Being (Chicago, 1949), pp. 64-65.
[21]
Introduction to Bins^vanger's Existential Psychoanalysis
The above formula is Heidegger's expression of what he conceives

to be the Ontological A Priori structure of man. To this formula he
gives the name "Care."
KANT:
The fact: All knowledge has an intuitional given element in it.
The fiat: The mind is constitutive.
The tivo together: The Understanding combines the manifold of
sense into unitary objects in order that experience or knowledge be
possible.
The above formula is Kant's expression of the source and basis of a
priori knowledge. This formula expresses the working of the cate-

gories.
Heidegger has thus extended to the sphere of Being what Kant
did in the sphere of objective knowledge — or, in Heidegger's
words, in the sphere of the Vorhanden.
Thus the positive result of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason hinges

also on his elaboration of that which belongs to a nature in gen-
eral, and not on any "theory" of knowledge. His transcendental
logic is an a priori factual logic of nature, as a field of Being.^"
What I am trying to emphasize here is that for Heidegger,

Dasein, ontologically understood, involves in its essential structure
(being) the constituting (through the endowing of meaning) of
the being of the world and self (also ontologically understood).
The parallel with Kant, however, goes farther and extends to the
method which Heidegger employs in "arriving at" this position.
The method is one of fiat, a method that I have tried to show is
peculiarly necessary for just such an argument to constitutive
powers (in any sense) of the "self." "Care" and its components, the
existentials, function for Heidegger in a manner analogous to the
Kantian categories in that they are the forms through which ontic
reality can manifest itself to the Dasein.
One important difference must be emphasized, however. These
existentials arc not forms that create objects to be encountered as
not-self in the world, as are the Kantian categories. They are not
so mucli empty formulas as they are matrices representing the pos-
sible modes in which the Dasein, considered solely qua Being re-
1" Heidegger, pp. 10-11.
[2Z]
a
lates itself to world, also considered qua Being. I choose the word
"matrix" here because it expresses the peculiar role of these
"forms" more accurately than "formula." A matrix may be under-
stood as a place in which an organism or thing is developed, a
womb. Or it may also mean a set of possible groups of variables
defined by an internal relation common to each set of possible
groups: a formula referring to formulas. In both senses, Being-in-
the-world, Care, and the existentials (Verstehen, Verfallenheit,
Befindlichkeit, Rede), as well as Vorhandensein and Zuhandensein,
are to be understood as matrices of varied scope and definition.
This notion of matrix, particularly as applied to meanings —
—
meaning-matrix emerges with considerable significance in the
works of Binswanger.
In all that has been said above, we may thus with justice speak
of Being-in-the- world and Care as the Ontological A Priori, bearing
in mind the Kantian overtones of "a priori" and the Heideggerian
overtones of "ontological." The existentials may be termed partial
or secondary a prioris since they represent Being-in-the-world in

particular modes. In the works of Binswanger we find these Onto-
logical A Prioris treated in the perspective of individual, existing
Dasein. The manner in which he applies these Ontological A Pri-
oris to Dasein in its concrete existence gives rise to what I will call
the concept of the Existential A Priori.
HusserPs A Priori
Both Heidegger and Binswanger are outspoken regarding the ex-

tent of their debt to Husserl. Here, however, I shall limit myself to
a brief discussion of Husserl's treatment of the a priori within the
context of the preceding issues. Two aspects of the question must
be kept separate: (i) Husserl's method of arriving at these a pri-
oris, and (2) the function in consciousness which he attributed to
them. Regarding the latter, I think it is safe to say that the question
of constitutive "function," which Husserl developed later in his
career, was not the aspect of his phenomenology that influenced
or challenged Heidegger and Binswanger. For Heidegger, the pure
HusserHan phenomenology can achieve insights into the essential
structures of consciousness as such. But no conclusions can be
drawn from these, either as to the relation of consciousness to the
objects of scientific knowledge in their status as empirical reality,

or as to the being of consciousness and world. Viewed in this light,
pure phenomenology cannot and ought not essay any position
about the constitutive function of the mind. The very notion of
constitutive function would simply be one of many possible qual-
ifications regarding intentionality. To ask whether the self in any
way constitutes its world or itself would thus be programatically
as irrelevant as to question the reality of the external world.
In this regard, then, Heidegger represents a considerable exten-
sion or even alteration of pure phenomenology. For him, phenom-
enology is a tool for more adequate understanding, not of con-
sciousness, but of human being, and eventually of Being itself.
When we come to discuss Binswanger, we shall find that he fol-

lows Heidegger in this respect. While also proclaiming allegiance
to Husserl, he extends the method as a tool for understanding
"psychic" phenomena in their relation to real existing human be-
ings. Thus the door is opened both in Heidegger and in Binswanger
for an effectual functioning of these a prioris that goes beyond
pure eidetic description of the phenomena of consciousness as such.
It is, however, phenomenological method of
in respect to the
arriving at these a prioris that Heidegger and Binswanger wish to
remain strictly Husserlian and will on no account admit to being
Kantians.
As is well known, Kant distinguishes "a priori forms" both in

the sensuous sphere and in the sphere of understanding which
"emerges beyond the sensuous." The former are the pure forms
of intuition, space and time; the latter are the pure categories of
thought or understanding. Here we find the categories of causal-
ity, reality, necessity, etc. Pure forms of intuition in the sphere of
understanding are not recognized by Kant. In this context we see

what is new in Husserl's doctrine. According to him objects of
understanding or thought can be intuited, objects which thus
"emerge beyond the sensuous"; therefore the expression categori-
cal intuition. The acts of categorical intuition thus direct them-
selves to objects of the understanding. They are not themselves
acts of understanding but intuition of a sort not found in Kant."
*' Binswanger, Auigcwdhhe Vortragi und Aufsatzt (Bern, 1947)1 Vol. I, p. i7n.
[Ml
The essential forms and structures of consciousness are arrived

at by intuition, an intuition that carries with it all the stringent de-
mands of the Husserlian phenomenological reduction but is none-
theless intuition. Here we find a clear expression of what I have
referred to as the frankly fiat nature of Heidegger's argument, as
compared to the more It was pointed out
implicit fiats of Kant.
above that if Kant deduce anything at all as to the
failed actually to
constitutive function of the Understanding, Heidegger does not
even attempt such a "transcendental deduction." Husserl's "first
philosophy" of phenomenology thus provides a transcendental phi-
—
losophy a philosophy of necessary fiat with an explicit and self- —
conscious standpoint.
For such a philosophy —which holds by necessary fiat to the
notion of the constitutive powers of the self — the ideal method
would be one which neither presuppositions nor conclusions
in
refer to "Reality" in any sense, and which is based on a well-
defined discipline of Intuition {Wesenschau). For since the self can
never deduce itself from nor find itself in the world it makes, it
ought not, in philosophy, explain or describe its world from any
preferred frame of reference. The reason for this is that the very
notion of a preferred frame of reference implies that the self is not
focusing its attention on the ground of experience, knowledge,
reality, or whatever it is that the self constitutes when it constitutes
its world. It is focusing rather on the end product of those very
functions that constitute its world. To put it more tersely: to con-
front the world from a preferred frame of reference is not to
understand the world as constituted by the self, but is, in fact, to
constitute the world! Therefore, phenomenology is the method
par excellence of apprehending that which is constituted by self in
itsimmediacy, and therefore the method par excellence of appre-
hending the nature or form of that process of constituting.
Over-all Characterization of the Concept

of the Existential A Priori
Binswanger's "Daseinsanalyse" can be seen most generally as an ap-

plication of the "Daseinsanalytik" of Heidegger to the problems of
psychiatric theorizing and therapy.
[Ml
In thus indicating the basic structvire of the Dasein as being-in-

the-world, Heidegger places in the psychiatrist's hands a key by
means of which he can, free of the prejudice of any scientific
theory, ascertain and describe the phenomena he investigates in
their full phenomenal content and intrinsic context."
There are thus two directions open to us to begin this preliminary

characterization of the Existential A
we can begin
Priori. Either
with Binswanger's revelations of what he takes as psychiatry's
necessarily limited and distorting presuppositions as to the nature
—
of man and human experience including his attempts, as Anthro-
polog, to balance these limitations that inhere in scientific method
itself. Or, we can examine his notion of the a priori or essential
potentialities of human existence as a philosophical extension and
modification of Heidegger's thought. Actually both directions
should be pursued simultaneously, and will be in future chapters;
but as a matter of attitude I should like here to throw emphasis on
the second or philosophical direction.
Just as Heidegger's notion of Being-in-the-world brought Hus-
"intentionality" of consciousness out of the "thin air" '^
serl's of the
Transcendental Ego and into an ontological frame, so Binswanger's
Existential A Priori takes the ontologically determined existentials
of Heidegger and brings them into the frame of concrete human
existence. It is not enough to say simply that Binswanger's Daseins-
analyse is an extension of Heidegger's ontology to the ontic level,
for Binswanger's Daseinsanalyse attempts to be ideally the most
complete, or, most ideally, the only possible extension to the ontic
level of Heidegger's ontology and phenomenology. There is thus
implied in Binswanger's work a peculiarly necessary relation to
Heidegger's ontology, and although Daseinsanalyse makes ontic
statements concerning "factual findings about actually appearing
forms and configurations of existence," ^* these statements are at
the same time propositions as to the possibility' and ground of the
experience of particular human beings. Thus, while not ontology,
Binswanger's Daseinsanalyse might be said still to be "meta-ontic"
in the sense that these same statements as to the possibility of experi-
'2 Binswangcr, p. 206 of this volume.
1* Loc. cit.
^* Binswangcr, "The Elxistential Analysis School of Thought," in Rollo May,
Elrnest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger (eds.), Existence (New York, 1958), p. 192.
[26]
ence are also and more accurately to be understood as referring to
the possibility of real, human existence itself: this is, in fact, one
general way of understanding the term "Existential A Priori." In
other words, any discipline that concerns itself with the transcen-
dentally a priori essential structures and possibilities of concrete
human existence is, strictly speaking, neither ontological nor ontic,
but lies, rather, somewhere in between.
We may thus provisionally define the Existential A Priori (s)
in thismanner: they are the universals or forms that stand to the
experience of each human being in the same manner that the Kant-
ian categories of the Understanding stand to the objects that we
know. The Daseinsanalytic concept of experience, it must immedi-
ately be added, is far wider than Kant's. In The Critique of Pure

Reason, experience was understood by Kant necessarily to refer
to knowledge. The famous opening lines ". . , all knowledge be-
gins with experience," can, with the weight of the entire critical
argument behind them be read as "all experience begins with
knowledge." This strict qualification of the concept of experience,
namely, that it is inseparable from knowledge, goes hand in hand
with the cridcal conception of knowledge itself as constiturive of
its own objects. For, in the Kantian view, whatever the objects of
—
experience be they the world itself, its particular objects, or the
—
laws of nature the objects are to a profound degree the result of
our ordering of the manifold of intuition. And again, this ordering
of the manifold by the Understanding is knowledge. For Kant, just
as surely as we cannot know what we cannot experience, so, in this
quahfied conception of experience, we cannot experience what we
cannot know.
Thus we may say that for Kant experience is a form of knowl-
edge.
In other words, they [the categories] serve only for the possibility
of empirical knowledge; and such knowledge is what we entitle
experience.^''
All synthesis, therefore, even that which renders perception possi-

ble, is subject to the categories; and since experienceis knowledge
by means of connected perceptions. . .

}^
"Kant, B 1
48.
"Kant, B 1 61.
[27]
. . . but it is the a priori laws that alone can instruct us in regard

to experience in general, and as to what it is that can be known as
an object of experience.^^
Experience is an empirical knowledge, that is, a knowledge which

determines an object through perceptions.^^
In Daseinsanalyse, on the other hand, knowledge is a form of

experience; knowledge represents one mode of man's Being-in-the-
world. To be sure, Binswanger does not imply that, for example, in
the experience of mourning the death of a loved one, the Kantian
categories are not "at work." Such an issue is, rather, of secondary
importance, for the question in Daseinsanalyse is not what am I
knowing, but what am I knowing-feeling- willing: how am I exist-

ing? The Kantian categories in toto represent the conditions of one
mode of Being-in-the-world among others —the mode of objective
knowledge, or, in Heidegger's language, the mode of Vorhanden-
sein. To know an object or event, its structure, its causes and ef-
fects, its relation to other objects is, again speaking wdth Heideg-
ger, to thematize the object, to take it in and for itself. To be sure,
this mode of existing is an essential one —but only one. Binswanger
can very well admit that the Understanding constitutes the objects
of experience even in a profound emotional experience, but for
him the question is, rather, how does the whole man stand at that
moment to the objects so constituted? In fact, the question is
equally relevant, for Binswanger, in the case of the most abstract

and "unemotional" states of being — the contemplation, say, of a
mathematical problem.
So is no real argument with Kant. Kant never meant
far there
to equate the working of the categories with conscious judgmental
consideration of, say, an academic problem. But he does mean to
imply objectivity as a standard for genuine experience and this is
understandable in his perspective for the following reason: no mat-
ter how broad our notion of what experience is may be, there is
always the element of the apparent other-than-sclf attached to it.
We experience something. "Subjective experience," then, for Kant
would be a useless term, for it would imply that something within
the self is experienced as other than self without coming under the
"Kant. B 65. 1
"Kant, B: 8. 1
[28]
aegis of the categories. This is impossible since, for one thing, the
very notion of "other" already implicates the categories. There
may be, for Kant, subjective knowledge, but not subjective experi-
ence. "I feel the book as heavy" is subjective knowledge of the
book, but objective experience of a feeling or impression.
In Daseinsanalyse, however, the term "subjective experience" is
not rejected. It is not, I repeat, that Daseinsanalyse claims that

there are times when the categories are not "at work." It is, rather,
that for Binswanger objective knowledge represents an attitude of
man, a mode of Being-in-the-world that has no claim to priority,
that exists within a meaning-context that opens a man to the world
of objects, of the Vorhanden. That there is an object "out there"
to be experienced (even if it be a feeling of the phenomenal self
and "out there" only in the sense of being over against the tran-
scendental I) is already an attitude, a frame of reference, a confer-
ring of a meaning-matrix within the Being-in-the-world of the
Dasein, which Being-in-the-world is anterior to the subject-object
distinction. In Binswanger subjective experience is not rejected, but
it is no longer called "subjective." The term "subjective" (whether
applied to experience or to knowledge) itself presupposes a frame

of reference. This sort of frame of reference constitutes its world by
investing meaning. Thus the attitude that experience must be tied
up with objective empirical knowledge constitutes its world just as
definitely as the categories constitute the objects, except that there
the unit is not object, but object-to-me.
For Binswanger, then, feeling is as genuine an experience as any
and not in the sense that loving someone is an objective and gen-
uine experience of love, but, rather, that loving someone is a gen-
uine experience of that person who is loved. The vision of God is a
genuine experience; so is the fear of imminent death; and so is the
paranoid fear of being pursued by a whole city of people.
Here is a crucial point in understanding the Daseinsanalytic
conception of experience. Surely, one asks, the psychotic's vision of
the Holy Virgin is not as genuine an experience as the normal
man's experience, say, of a partial eclipse of the sun. Binswanger's
answer is: yes it is — if we are surewe understand what the psy-
chotic is actually experiencing. And by this qualification he does
not mean simply that perhaps the psychotic is not really seeing the
Holy Virgin, but only thinks he is and that this in a sense is
[29]
as genuine an experience as any normal experience. Rather, for

Binswanger, the psychotic is seeing the Holy Virgin —the question
is, however, what does Holy Virgin mean for him? In "normal"
experience there is no fact, no pure, absolute perception isolated
from a general world-design and outlook. The experience of the
eclipse of the sun is at any time
not an absolute event that anyone,
in history, would experience way. An ancient Egyptian
in a similar
would not see a sun being covered by a shadow; he might see a
threatening gesture of a god. And today, when we see an eclipse of
the sun we from a world-outlook that places the
cannot separate it
sun in the center of the solar system and the moon as a satellite of
the earth, a world-outlook that isolates the sun and moon as ob-
jects in themselves. There is an enormous amount that is learned,
that is presupposed by the "simple" experience of seeing a partial
eclipse of the sun and nothing more. But, even more interesting,
there something that is chosen; there is a world-outlook that is
is
adhered to: namely, the world-outlook of natural science.

Similarly with the psychotic. To understand his world is not to
explain his seeing of the Holy Virgin by reference to a world-
outlook of natural science or a world-outlook of "normal" men.
To understand his world is "to exhibit the particular a priori exis-
which makes these phenomena possible
tential structure ," ^* . . .
which phenomena are clinically diagnosed as symptoms of psy-

chosis. By the method of phenomenology, which will admit no
previous frame of reference as favored in the task of understanding
the patient, the various phenomena of the patient'sworld as they
are reported by the patient are described in greatest detail. Nothing
is at the outset weighed more heavily in favor of anything else. For
the phenomenological psychiatrist it is just as significant that the
patient experiences time-sequence in the manner he does as it is sig-
nificant that he hated his father. Whereas in psychoanalysis, for
example, there is an antecedent weighing in favor of the early life-
history of the patient, for the phenomenological psychiatrist there is
no anteriorly favored kind of phenomenon that appears to the man.

It is after as much data as possible "are in" that the phenomeno-
logical psychiatrist, in Binswanger's case, passes over into the
"Dascinsanalytikcr." For now his task becomes to apprehend that
over-all transcendental structure that makes it possible for phe-
** Binswanger, Schizophrenie (Pfullingcn, 1957), p. 464.
[30]
—
nomena to be phenomena for the patient; that which makes it pos-

sible for facts to be facts in all regions of the patient's experience:
temporal, spatial, personal, social, and so forth. That transcenden-
tal structure cannot, therefore, be derived from one sphere of the
patient's experience and applied to the others. As will become
clearer later in the discussion of the Daseinsanalytical conception
of symbols, we cannot subsume all the patient's experience under,
Bay, the category of aggression or overly strong mother ties. Such
categories are understandable only as emergent in and from one or

two spheres of the patient's world .as a —
whole the social or the
personal (the Mitivelt and the Eigenivelt) . Here Binswanger turns
to Heidegger, who has attempted to set forth the ontologically
necessary preconditions of human being- in-the-world. That tran-
scendental structure that gives meaning and that thereby consti-
tutes the patient's world must be thought of as that patient's
manifestation of Care and its components, the existentials. This
transcendental structure Binswanger calls the Transendentale Ka-
tegorieP The Transcendental Category, representing as it does the
must be capable with equal force
patient's manifestation of Care,
and originahty of being expressed not only in personal and social
terms, but also in terms of temporality, spatiality, reason, choice,
and so forth. It must be such a category that it accounts for the
patient's complete world without requiring that one aspect of his
world, say the social or the temporal, be the basis of "explaining"
the others.
Although ontologically Being-in-the-world is the same and
must be the same for all human beings (we will remember that
Heidegger's [matrix-] formula is empty), meta-ontically they may
be quite varied. This Transcendental Category which is the key —
to understanding the psychotic in that it represents the meaning
matrix in which all phenomena appear as phenomena to the patient,
and in that it represents the manner in which the ontologically uni-
versal structure of Care actually manifests itself in a particular hu-
man being in reference to the affairs and things of his daily hfe
this Transcendental Category is what I term the Existential A

Priori. The world of the patient, insofar as this Existential A Pri-
ori constitutes it, is his world-design.
20 Binswanger, "The Existential Analysis School of Thought," Existence, op.
Cit., pp. 1
91 -2 1}.
[31]
11
Systematic Explanation and

the Science of Psychoanalysis
The Ideal of Explanation
It is claimed by Binswanger that apprehension of the a priori

structures of human existence, the Existential A Priori (s), provides
the therapist with a fuller understanding of the patient's world than
does, for example, psychoanalysis. Binswanger claims that natural
scientific method on principle is barred from the fullest understand-
ing of the patient, although its ability to explain psychological
phenomena is, in principle, not open to question.* The main pur-
pose of this chapter will be a general examination of natural science,
especially psychoanalysis, considered as an explanatory system in
contrast with the phenomenological approach upon which Daseins-
analyse claims to rest. The ultimate goal is to establish a frame of
reference in which philosophical considerations surrounding psy-
choanalytic and Daseinsanalytic viewpoints may with less gen-
erality be discussed in succeeding chapters.
The distinction between understanding {Verstehen) and ex-
planation {Erklarung) may, at the outset, be roughly equated with
the distinction between phenomenology and philosophical system.
One phenomenology claims differentiates it from
of the things that
philosophical system is its attempt to be presuppositinnless. Systems
there are that claim undoubtable presuppositions, but none that
claim to have no presuppositions at all. VVe shall see that phenome-
nology's certainty, as well as its powerlessness, stems from this re-
fusal to presuppose.
* Binswanger, ScW2o/>fcfe«/* (Pfullingen, 1957), p. 141.
Systematic Explanation and the Science of Psychoanalysis
In Chapter I the circularity of Kant's argument was noted,

and it was there hinted that this does not necessarily indicate a
flaw in his thinking. Indeed, the goal of a philosophical system is
just this circularity. As Weiss has put it,
A conclusion which repeats the premiss, conforms neatly to

the requirements of the most stringent logic. What is wrong with
the circular argument is that it is often uninformative, coming
back to its beginning too quickly. But if the circle is all inclusive,
if it encompasses all there is, it does all that a philosophic system

demands.*
In other words, a system that is not circular is as strong and as

week as the strength of iis premisses. Only when the conclusions
are in some
sense proof of the premisses can a system be complete.
The —
must be all-inclusive that is, it must encompass every-
circle
thing that is. But what is? If there were no dispute as to what in
fact existed or had being in the universe, the divergence of philo-
sophical systems, all of them circular in a grand sense, would be
far less pronounced and would perhaps involve only a matter of
emphasis or of a starting point. But, in point of fact, each philo-
sophical system comes ivith its own pre-established criterion by
which something is recognized as an entity, as somethiiig to be en-
compassed in the system or as something by reference to which all
other entities encompassed can be "explained."

The statement, then, that systematic philosophy is a circular
enterprise is not fully illuminating, for a philosophical system nmst
presume in advance the precise "qualitative circumference" of the
circle. At the risk of stretching the metaphor, we may say that
systematic philosophy begins with a small circle, which then moves
in a greater circle whose radius may be taken as the smaller circle's
diameter.
The smaller circle represents the unavoidable, primitive pre-
suppositions of any system; it traces out the circumference of the
greater circle. If the lesser circle is relatively small, we have a sys-
tem (greater circle) that is comparatively well-defined and sure of
* Paul Weiss, Modes

of Being (Carbondale, III., 1958), p. 193. I might add that
the difference between the beginning and the end of the circular system is, per-
haps, the difference between the premiss all by itself and the premiss as applied to
everything else in the universe.
I33J
itself (i.e., one whose criterion for admitting primitive fact is rela-
tively restricted) but that, in its compass, does not explain a great
deal (I would cite original logical positivism as an instance). If the
lesser circle is large, we have a system that, while it encompasses
much, rests on suppositions that themselves appear* to need further
justification.
The lesser circle represents the criteria that are definitive of
what constitutes a datum to be explained by systematic connection
in the greater circle. The lesser circle represents the standard of
quality of data to be accepted as such and explained by presupposi-
tion and rules of inference in the greater circle. It is a rule of tram-
formation in accordance with ^\•hich the philosopher, moving in

the greater circle, accepts certain data as irreducible and primary,
and others as derivative and transformable into irreducible, primary
data.
Hegel's system, as put forth in The rhenomeiwlogy of Mrnd
is an example of a system in which the lesser circle is relatively
large. The lesser circle in Hegel says: everything in science, his-
tory, art, religion, and philosophy that manifests itself has a truth
and a reality. The presuppositions of the greater circle (the pre-
• I stress the word "appear" here because as the lesser circle grows in size, what
is solely a rule of transformation of the phenomena may take on the appearance
of prcs-upp)sitions of the system proper (the greater circle). Strictly speaking,
however, openness to doubt is no differential criterion.
[34]
suppositions of the "system") are: the real is rational, and the

rational is real; reason proceeds by an inevitable dialectical proc-
ess. With these presuppositions, Hegel shows in an enormous and
ingenious circular argument how everything can be explained, i.e.,
ordered into a system. Here we see a clear case of how the large
size of the lesser circle necessitates a huge greater circle. In Hegel's
system, very little that is encountered is transformed, in itself, into
something more "basic," At least, each moment has its reality and
does not change, but necessitates a counter movement that also has
its reality. (Of course. Absolute Spirit is the most real, but this does
not affect the point that each moment has some degree of reality,
integrity, in itself.)
A major criticism of the Hegelian system must be leveled at
the lesser circle, in that it provides too lenient a criterion for
reahty. Nothing is admitted to be unreal, no view is taken as
wholly false —everything in the universe of man is taken and ac-
cepted on its own little or nothing is
terms, the result being that
explained. Here emerges major contention of this chapter:
the first
systematic philosophic explanation must lie at the mean between

two opposing forces of human thought (i) the reductive tend- —
ency, which attempts to reduce all phenomena to a minimum of
basic substantiahties, and (2) an acquiescent tendency, which ac-
cepts every thing or idea on its own terms. The former, carried to
improper extremes, results, to take the well-known example, in
claiming something like "a Beethoven quartet is nothing but a cat's
intestines scraped by a horse's tail." The latter, carried to its ex-
treme, results only in an encyclopedia, not a system of explanation,
and thus fails to fulfill the task of systematic philosophy, which is,
in a sense, to explain the contents of the encyclopedia.

Logical positivism of the Vienna circle was an example of a
systematic philosophical approach that, had it lived long enough
to expand into a philosophical system, would have represented an

excellent example of the poverty of the small lesser circle, con-
sidered in its role as generative of the explanatory greater circle.
Here the lesser circle demands empirical, sensory filling for any
concept and empirical verification for any proposition. Thus prop-
ositions concerning morality, aesthetic value, religious conscious-
ness,and the like, are dismissed as nonsense or transformed, re-
duced to a level of substantiality, which reduction is thoroughly
[35]
—
repugnant to men in ethical situations, creative acts, and religious

struggle. (An example would be that all three situations — ethical,
artistic, and religious — are simply the result of the interplay of
molecules in the brain cells.)
But equally repugnant to, say, a devout Catholic is the notion

that all religions, from that of the Fijian cannibal to Zen Buddhism,
are simply different ways of approaching the same God. The
reasonable CathoUc will be willing to see how some religions are
similar to his and even, in a certain sense, say the same thing but —
he will demand that a convincing explanation of the history of
religion show some rehgions to be heathenish, barbaric, presump-
tuous, blind, idolatrous, and so forth. He will not allow that goat-
worshipers are coming to Christ via too narrow a sense of the
All.
The counterpart of the above in philosophy is a system that
claims that all systems are true to some degree, that all ideas refer
to some reality, that nothing is wholly false or illusory. The
thirsty desert traveler does not receive a convincing explanation
of his miragewhen he is told that the water he saw was real for
him, although not "intersubjectively." A
convincing explanation
must begin and end by saying that the water was totally unreal,
was really sand and nothing but sand. A philosophical system must
have grist in it, must select and reject, as well as accept, both the
truth of some other systems and the entities that constitute the
"universe." The systematic philosopher cannot let the greater circle
be as large as he pleases. He must restrict the greater circle by
careful attention to the lesser circle.
The ideal of explanation must, then, combine two mutually
opposing goals: to keep that which is to be explained intact as it
appears and at the same time to reduce it as much as possible to that
with which we are already familiar, of which we have knowledge,
or more generally, that which is considered a basic reality. To
ignore the former demand is to fall into the danger illustrated by
the example of the Beethoven quartet, a danger that can be for-
malized as follows: if A is explained by reduction (either in the
sense of subsuming A
under "pre-established^^ laivs or breaking A
up into "acceptable" coynponents) as "really" abed, and if, from
abed alone it is not possible, without knowing in advance the manner
in ivhich A m toto appeared, to return to A, then what is explained
I36]
ivas not A, but only at best an aspect of A. In our extreme example

of the Beethoven quanet, itwould hardly be possible to conclude
from the notion of horse's tail and cat's intestines back to anything
musical (not to say, a quartet) unless it be antecedently known
that violin strings and bows are made of such things. The danger
here is thus a poverty of differential within the "basic reality" of
the world as seenby a system. To ignore the latter demand, on the
other hand, throw back the phenomena to be explained as they
is to
appeared in the first place. Such a mode of philosophizing is the
"good-for-nothing brother" of phenomenology, which, perhaps, we
might term "phenomenography," ' and which may become merely
explication or disclosure. In such a philosophy there exists a corres-
ponding inability to argue a point. For, to argue a point in a
philosophical system entails that the denial of the point to be made
contradicts presuppositions or propositions derived from presup-
positions in the system (the greater circle). But since the large lesser
circle traces a system in which, in contrast to that traced by the small
lesser circle, we have a surfeit of primitive reality, the tendency
exists for all "entities" and propositions about entities to be absorbed
intact as they appear, to be "swallowed whole." Argument tends to
give way to assimilation. The additional tendency in such a philos-
ophy to become mere disclosure or explication exacerbates this situa-
tion, for in suchwe are constantly at a loss as to what are
a case
presuppositions and what derived propositions.
Phenomenography comes into being when the lesser circle
grows uncontrollably, when the criterion for primitive fact be-
comes infinitely lax. In such a case, the possibility of the greater
circle even emerging at all disappears, and with it disappears the
possibility of system even while, at the same time, the attempt at
system is being made. The result is encyclopedic, not explanatory.
It would seem that phenomenology with its conscious disregard of
the attempt at reduction — not to be confused with Husserl's
Phenomenological Reduction, which is the name for the method of
eliminating the reductive, interpretive element from the examina-
tion of phenomena — might open itself to such an accusation. How-
ever, there is all the difference in the world between accepting the
entity or phenomenon as it appears and methodically seeking the
essence of phenomena as they truly appear to human conscious-
* Ulrich Sonnemann, Existence and Therapy (New York, 1954), p. 344.
[37]
ness. It is the difference between, say, accepting God as a being of

highest reality and of probing the essence of the phenomena of
belief-in-God; again, the difference between accepting the phe-
nomena of belief-in-God as a mundane object and probing the
essence of belief or faith as it is experienced by the believer. It is,
further, the between accepting an entity as a basic

difference
reality with all the authority of primitive fact and examining a
content of consciousness until the essential phenomenal structure of
the entity is revealed. In the former, case investigation is stopped
radically soon, the fact that something is real being the standard;
in the latter, investigation is pursued until "the pure experience
. . . with its own proper essence" ^ is discerned. "The decisive
factor lies before all in the absolutely faithful description of that
which really lies before one in phenomenological purity, and in
*
keeping at a distance all interpretations that transcend the given,"
We may now formulate the distinction implicit here between
"explanation" and "understanding." To understand an entity, phe-
nomenon, idea, or experience, is to approach the object to be under-
stood on its terms, to see in it structures that emerge from its side,
and not from ours. To understand an object is to participate in it
until it yields its own essence to us who are understanding. An
essential requirement of such a task is, again, "[to keep] at a dis-
tance all interpretations that transcend the given." Both reduction
and "phenomenography," systems with both a small and a large

lesser circle, cannot accomplish this. The former cannot because by
definition it seeks to reduce phenomena to what it believes to be
ultimate laws'* or ultimate reality. The latter cannot for a less
obvious leason: it records, along with the phenomenon all inter-
pretations of that phenomenon, so that what it gives us is not the
phenomenon that really lies before us, but the phenomenon as en-
crusted with phenomenon-transcending references and interpre-
tations, i.e., the phenomenon as already reduced.
In explanation, the phenomena as they appear are transformed
in the sense that they are either subsumed under laws that relate
them to other, different phenomena, or they are broken down into
parts that somehow are taken as more real than the configuration
' Husscrl, Ideas, trans, by W. R. Boycc Gibson (London, 1952), p. 344.

* Ibid., p. 262.
•^Sonncmann, p. 33.
[38]
.
of those parts that are taken to make up the phenomenon in

question. Both senses of explanation may be called reduction in
that the phenomena no longer retain intactness, independence, or
inviolable wholeness.
It may, perhaps, seem odd to imply that it is possible to explain
something fully without understanding it. The sense in which I
mean to say this, however, is the following: that which is ex-
plained is reduced to that which is previously understood. To be
sure, we understand the explained phenomenon, but only insofar
as it is related, reduced, transformed into that which ive have
previously understood, perhaps by the same route, perhaps by the
original sense of understanding as outlined above.
Natural Scieyice as an Explanatory System

Treated in the context of the above distinctions, natural science
can be looked upon as one explanatory system among many in the
history of thought, or, to be more accurate, a class of explanatory
systems, which class consists of physics, chemistry, biology, and
so forth. As an explanatory system, we might call it one in which
the lesser circle is small and well-defined. For example, in physics:
Galileo's first step consist [ed] in an abstraction. Only the corporeal

aspect of things and of the world at large is taken into considera-
tion. The only subject matter of study are spatial configurations
and spatio-temporal events.*
Here we see one aspect of phenomena, processes, things, given

the privileged position of primitive fact: their spatio-temporal as-
pect. In physics the lesser circle, the rule of transformation of the
phenomena, is such that all phenomena explained by systematic
connection in the greater circle (physics proper) are first reduced
to their spatio-temporal aspect. This general notion of objective
space-time is itself a result of another presupposition, not of physics
itself, but of natural science as a whole, considered as an explanatory
system; that more fundamental presupposition is one that defines
corporeality
In the science of biology this concept of corporeality has under-
•Aron Gurwitsch, "The Last Work of Edmund Husserl," Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research, Vol. 16 (1956-1957), p. 391.
[39]
gone a further modification. Instead of things, we find organisms,

which are a pecuUar kind of thing, but nevertheless still a thing,
i.e., still a phenomenon considered in objective space-time. An
organism, for nonholistic biology, is a complex thing with process
and smaller things within it (again in the sense only of objective
space-time). Where in physics we have forces, in biology we have
tropisms, instincts, drives; where in physics we have elementary
particles, in biology we have genes, and so forth. The lesser circle
of biology is a modification of that of physics in this sense: ir-
reducible reality for the purposes of biology is spatio-temporal

thinghood insofar as it functions in a living organism, itself a
highly complex spatio-temporal thing.
The sciences are members of one great explanatory system in
that each separate science represents a specification of a primal
lesser circle that defines the explanatory system of natural science
as a whole.
Turning to an examination of the lesser circle of this, in modem
times at least, hypothetical discipline of science in general, we find,
instead of a basic substance or stuff, what is almost a methodo-
logical dictate serving the role of primitive presupposition and
world-constituting rule of transformation of the phenomena. It is
not enough simply to classify it as empiricism, or as the command

to accept as datum that which is perceived with the senses or which
has ultimate reference to sense perception. For the term "sense
perception" itself is a highly sophisticated one in modem science,
one which by no means can be equated with "perception" as we
normally experience it in everyday hfe. The modern scientific con-
ception of sense perception can best be seen as the result of a
more namely the dictate to remove the percciver as
basic dictate,
much from that which is perceived in the attempt to
as possible
gain knowledge of that which is perceived. The roots of such a

dictate can be seen not only in Galileo's placing the spatio-temporal
processes as the underlying reality that he investigated,^ but also
and more strikingly in Descartes, whose isolation of the realm of
consciousness from that of the body and the perceived world
leads to a notion of a ptdre corporeality that, while devoid of con-
sciousness, is accessible to mathematical knowledge.
If, after all, we still seek a basic substance to which all phe-
' Ibid., p. 39J.
I40]
nomena coming under the sphere of scientific explanation are re-

duced, it would be this pure corporeality. But it is at least equally
important to keep in mind this concept of pure corporeality as the
product of a frame of mind, or attitude, or methodological dictate:
to keep the self out of its world as it investigates "the" world, I
will return to this point in discussing the world-design of science.

As for the "greater circle" of science, science proper, the con-
tents of scientific knowledge, that which science knows —the first
question we must ask is if, For it would

in fact, it is a circle.
certainly appear that science is, above, all, an open-ended descipline,
a ^^progressive historical process which passes from phase to phase
[approximating] an ideal goal, viz., 'nature as it really is in it-
"
self.' ' What seems, therefore, to argue against calling science
circular is that science is not yet complete, perhaps essentially not
complete since verification, the backbone of scientific theorizing,
refers to a future time. And yet what Sonnemann says in char-
acterizing the astronomer can be applied to all natural sciences:
The movements and magnitudes of celestial bndies are given the

observer in such a way that a context of quantitative laws govern-
ing the four-dimensional domain wherein the observations are
made can be abstracted from, as well as reapplied to them, making
verifiable predictions possible.' (Emphasis added.)
In other words, only that is abstracted from the phenomena

which in principle can be reapplied, verified. It is a circular enter-
prise, this —although not would be vicious only if
a vicious one. It
the laws abstracted from the data themselves became constitutive
of further data and failure to verify became virtually impossible,
such as happened, for example, in the development of Ptolemaic
astronomy, where only perfect circular* movements were seen
and looked for in the movements of the planets. might, rather, We
roughly characterize the circular enterprise of modern science as
reasoning from A (the observations) to B (the laws abstracted)
to A' (other observations including A). The demand is that A' be
conducted in the same spirit as A without allowing B to influence
the selection or recording of A\ It thus becomes a nice problem
• Ihid., p. jQi.
• Sonnemann, p. 42.
• Literal, of course, not metaphorical.
[41]
as to what, in verification, is verified: the laws or the observations.

If it is "open-ended circle" (a spiral?),
possible to speak of an
or a "circle in objective time," we have it here. Facts, of them-
selves, do not exist except within theory, and are, to a degree,
constituted by theory; theory is valid only insofar as it conforms
with facts. "In this process there is a constant give-and-take be-
tween what we regard as ascertained fact and possible hypotheses.
We not only eliminate hypotheses found inconsistent with the
facts, but we also employ theoretical arguments to correct the
^°
readings of observation or experimental results."
In sum, then, the lesser circle of science demands the reduction
of phenomena to fact, fact being understood as phenomena de-
void of consciousness and human selfhood. The greater circle
ascertains what the facts are in detail by the application and re-
application of theories that themselves in part constitute and il-
luminate the facts.
The Possibility of Psychology as a Natural Science

Psychology, the science of human consciousness and behavior, thus
finds itself in a strained position. On the one hand it would be
"objective," would take its place as one of the natural sciences,
would find corroboration in and would corroborate other sciences
such as biology and chemistry. Onthe other hand, it would study
that which science since Descartes and Galileo demands be ruled
out of the field of investigation: the soul, psyche, consciousness.
In psychology the phenomena reduced by the lesser circle of
science are also of the same class as the investigation itself.
Unlike the physicist, the psychologist . . . investigates processes

that belong to the same general order — perception, learning, think-
ing — as those by which he conducts his investigation."
The danger is that scientific method be taken as constitutive of the

nature of thinking or perception and thus any thinking or per-
ception that a man claims to give him the truth and that is at
variance with scientific thinking, once labeled "merely sub-
is at
jective" or "projective," and so forth. For the psychologist cannot
1° Morris R. Cohen, Reason and Nature (Glencoc, 81.

111., 1953), p.
1* Sonncmann, p. 15.
[4H
admit that his mode of obtaining the truth is supplantable by an-

other mode of thought or perception. If he does so in an attempt
to be true to the phenomena he is investigating, he is implicitly
admitting that method may be contradicted and his results
his
—
negated by another method say, the artistic, or intuitive.
The psychologist attempts to bring into the field of investiga-
tionwhat Descartes excluded. The objective world, the world of
res extensa is the world with consciousness and selfhood removed
from it. Scientific method cannot reduce that which is doing the
reducing, consciousness, thought, perception — self. Psychology can-
not explain those processes that are of the same order as that by
which it conducts its investigation without dictating at the outset
what those processes are like; without dictating to the data in
advance. In such a case the circle would be vicious, as in Ptolemaic
astronomy.
It would seem, then, that the only possibility for psychology
to exist as a natural science is in the form of behaviorism where,
in fact, consciousness has been excluded from the field of inquiry.
In behaviorism the dictate of natural science is fully adhered to;
what the behaviorist explores are entities that are corporeal, in
which the perceiver is eliminated. In short the subject matter of
behaviorism is one in which self is excluded from the world it
investigates. This is perhaps scientific method. But is it psychology.?
If the self is excluded, if consciousness is labeled meaningless, if
all that we experience as "subjective" is not only not explained

but rendered out of the field of inquiry, we have no longer a
science of the self, no longer a psychology, but a set of theories
about human behavior that in principle can be verified only by
avoiding the very source of verification, the conscious subject
himself.
It does not help to say that science dictates only that the in-
dividual subject be eliminated as much as possible from investiga-
tion, that consciousness, thinking, per se, can be investigated by a
particular individual as long as that particular investigator, qua
scientist, keeps his own subjectivity out of the investigation. For,
to repeat, the psychologist is after the truth about thinking, per-
ception, and so on. To "reduce himself" to a scientist —and only a
scientist —who orients himself to his subject matter as the physicist
orients himself to his, is automatically to exclude from view certain
[43]
Introduction to Binswanger's ExiofENTiAL Psychoanalysis
possible data, among which data are conceptual forms that con-
tradict those toward which he feels his investigation to be lead-
ing.^2
The difficulty may be formulated thus: it is inherently illegiti-
mate to reduce (i.e., transform) phenomena that are of the same

general order as those that are the source of the systematic structure
used to explain the phenomena so reduced. The only way to think
about thinking is to observe thinking. But to what can thinking be
conceptually reduced other than to itself? To explain thinking by
transforming it is to lose the phenomena of
But to pre- thinking.
serve it intact is to surrender the natural-scientific method that
would keep its world free from consciousness, final causes, and
so on; to preserve it intact is to violate the lesser circle of natural
science and to admit as real that which in science is transformed
into something else.
Thus psychology as a natural science fails to explain because of
the extreme smallness of its lesser circle in comparison with the
contents of its universe. In such psychology we find the same
difficulty as encountered in explaining the Beethoven quartet as
horse's hair and cat's intestines. We can never return from the
explanation to the thing explained without previous knowledge of
what it was to be explained.
The dilemma of psychology is similar to that of any discipline
whose subject matter is human consciousness and whose wish is to
emulate natural science. The radical difference between the subject
matter of physics, biology, etc., and psychology, history, literary
criticism, etc., is indicated in the following manner: whereas in
physics each datum is meaningless until it is brought into con-
nection with other data through a conceptual scheme and hypothe-
sis, in psychology each datum, a human perception, thought, emo-
tion, etc., itself has its own meaning to the perceiver, thinker,
feeler —to the human being.
We might put this point in the language of phenomenological
psychology: the variation of a light pattern does not of itself
point to, refer to, intend of itself something beyond itself — whereas
an act of consciousness is essentially intentional, essentially refers
beyond itself (Brentano, Husscrl). Science, when dcaHng, as in
physics, with the objects of intentional acts, with things, does
^ Ibid., p. IS-
I44]
SysteTttatic Explanation and the Science of Psychoanalysis
right in eliminating intention as inhering in the intended object

(strips the worid of consciousness). The astronomer does not re-
duce the act of perceiving the star; he does not reduce the star's
beauty, its romance. These qualities he ignores because they rep-
resent qualifications of consciousness-of-a-worid, of being-in-the-
world, of intentional acts.* Object processes in physical space-
time thus having no reference beyond themselves are given refer-
ence by and the world conceived solely as a
scientific theory,
thing is psychologist, on the other hand, when
then explained. The
he emulates science, can only strip consciousness of the very
quality that constitutes its essence, its intentionality. To be truly
empirical, the psychologist must preserve the "transcendence," the
reference beyond itself —
of conscious processes in a word, their
meanings to the self in whom they are taking place.
If psychology can exist as a natural science, it can only do so
by preserving the meanings of those perceptions and thoughts that

it wishes to explain. It may then attempt to link those meanings
into a conceptual scheme, but its lesser circle, its rule of trans-
formation of phenomena encountered must not fall below the
level of meaning-to-a-self. It must, in a word, understand more

before it seeks to explain. It must not dictate to the subject, as is
often done in psychological experiment, a mode or attitude of

perceiving an object, unless all it wants to investigate is perception
under experimental conditions.
Gestalt psychology was a move in the direction of studying
perception, thinking, learning, in the context of meaning. It too,
however, continued to isolate the "perceptual" from the "emo-

tional." And thus the Gestalten still represent a subliminal lesser
• Thepsychologist, on the other hand, when he attempts to emulate the natural
scientist, does not ignore but transforms the act of perception itself until, as in
radical behaviorism, for example, the perception of the star's beauty, its romance,
becomes a pattern of movements of a physical object with two legs and arms. The
power of physics springs partly from its renunciation of consciousness in its world:
the star is not beautiful, not romantic; it is a fourth magnitude nebula surrounded
by gases XYZ. The weakness of scientific psychology springs from the very source
that lends power
to physics: the star is perceived as beautiful, romantic; the per-
ception not a process of synthesizing retinal impressions with learned ocular
is
orientation to persfjective and distance, much less a probable pattern of movements

or behavior of a featherless biped. Any explanation that utterly loses the percep-
tion of the star's beauty cannot be said to have explained the perception. Psy-
chology, if it seeks to deal with retinas, light waves, and the like, is neurology,
physiology, or biochemistry —anything but a science of consciousness.
[45]
circle where the basic reality, although a meaning-context, is still
not the kind of meaning-context in which perception and thinking

take place in "ordinary" life and consciousness. It was Freud who,
as a natural scientist, accepted phenomena as basal that corresponded
to phenomena Uved and experienced in conscious life by human
as
beings. Here, however, we find ourselves no longer in the realm of

natural science per se —
of science simply as an attempt to explain.
We are also with at least equal force in the realm of psychotherapy
— a branch of medicine, a brief characterization of which now
follows.
The Science of Medicine
We may characterize medicine as that branch of biology of the

human organism deaUng with biological purpose, norms, values.
It must, according to Binswanger, be distinguished from purely
natural scientific biology: "Health and illness are value concepts,
objects of judgments based on biological purpose . .
." " When
applied to organisms other than the human or the humanized
(pets), the distinction between medicine and biology is not as
fruitful, i.e., the explanation of biological phenomena frequently
exhausts their consideration as to purpose or value. The appearance,
say, of certain microorganisms in the intestines of a shark can be
explained by the fact that in the intestines of a shark certain con-
ditions are fulfilled that are most congenial to those microor-
ganisms. The additional fact that the presence of those microor-
ganisms results in a malfunctioning of the shark's digestive system
and ultimately in his death, is irrelevant. The value to the micro-
organism (value understood as referring to that which keeps it
alive) of these conditions in the shark's intestines helps to explain
its presence there. If we are not interested in keeping sharks alive
as long as possible, the fact of the shark's ultimate death is of no
importance in this context. Biology, then, is the science of organ-
isms with no emphasis or center being placed on any one species of
organism. Medicine is biology with the center of reference on one
particular group of organisms. Thus plant medicine, dog medi-
" Binswanger, "The Case of Use," in Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F.
Ellcnbcrgcr (cds.), Existence (New York, 1958), p. 219.
[46]
cine, and the like. Of course medicine as we most often think of it
is biology with special reference to man and keeping him alive.

Medicine is thus biology with a specific attitude, center of
reference —man. To keep man alive, free from (physical) suffering,
medicine reduces man to a natural object, seeks causes in natural
objects for his suffering or for the threat to his life and attempts
to remove or prevent these causes. "This natural object is the
organism in the sense of the total context of living and functioning
^*
of a human individual."
If we may lesser circle in what, in comparision
speak of a
with physics, is so unsystematic a science as medicine, we might
be tempted to view it as a specification of that of biology: ir-
reducible reality for the purposes of medicine is spatio-temporal
thinghood insofar as it functions in or has reference to the human
organism, itself a highly complex organism among organisms.
Such a description of the manner in which medicine originally
confronts the phenomena with which it deals would, however,
fail to distinguish it from, say, physiology. What is lacking in
such a description is the v^r/tt^-context in which medicine, con-
ceived as the science of healing, functions. In medicine, as dis-
tinguished from other sciences, phenomena as they appear are not
transformed into but into symptoms, determinants of health,
facts,
disease, malfunction. Symptoms and such determinants may be

defined as value-laden biological facts with reference to the func-
tioning of a specific organism, usually man. That is, in medicine,
biological facts receive a teleological reference —the health of the
organism.
The Science of Psychoanalysis

In the light of the foregoing, I wish now to bring psychoanalysis
into focus, indicating the limitations and power that Binswanger
sees inherent in it and pointing the way in which Binswanger pro-
poses Daseinsanalyse as its necessary complement.
The dilemma of a natural-scientific psychology (which Bins-
wanger calls a contradictio in adjecto^^) was formulated above in
1* Ibid., p. 229.
^' Binswanger, "Freud's Conception of Man in the Light of Anthropology,"
in this volume.
[47]
Introduction to Bdjswanger's Existential Psychoanalysis
this manner: while attempting to be an objective science the es-

sence of which we saw was fully to transform phenomena into
facts devoid of consciousness or self-generating significance in or-
der to bring those phenomena under the aegis of mathematics,
phychology finds at the same time that the subject matter that it
investigates is of the same order as that which forms and shapes
the investigation itself. To avoid dictating to the data, it would
therefore have to abandon its pre-established method —give up its
claim as an heir of the natural sciences. Proceeding with scientific

method so understood, psychology can only strip the phenomena
of consciousness, thinking, perceiving, willing, of their essential
nature —
intentionality, pointing-beyond the phenomena to an ob-
ject.That is, it can only destroy the meaning- to-a-self of the phe-
nomena of consciousness that it seeks to explain, in the very act
of explaining. At best, it can only reduce those phenomena in
advance to such as correspond with those phenomena of con-
sciousness by which it conducts its investigation.
Psychology as a natural science is thus faced with the ap-
parently absurd and self-contradictory task of investigating con-
sciousness as part of the realm of res eoctensa, absurd and self-
contradictory because it is of the essence of the Cartesian res
extensa that it is what appears to consciousness or what exists
independently of consciousness; in a word, psychology must strip
consciousness of consciousness in order scientifically to investigate

consciousness.
It is this seemingly self-contradictory task that Freud accom-
plished. What is his doctrine of the Unconscious but such an at-
tempt to view the essence of consciousness as that which is essen-
*
tially in the realm of res extensa?
Psycho-analytical speculation starts from the impression gained

on investigating unconscious processes that consciousness cannot
be the most general characteristic of psychic processes, but merely
a special function of theni.^^
• It is a question only of terminology to raise the distinction here hcrwccn

conscious and mental. The point at hand is that Freud jilaccd what Cartesian
science specifically eliminated from scientific investigation back into tiie sphere of
possil)le scientific investigation. VVc
the mental, consciousness, the .soul, etc.
call it
Sec Freud, "The Unconscious," trans, by Cecil M. Baincs, in Collected I'apcrs

(New York, 1959), Vol. IV, pp. 98-100.
18 Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans, by C. J. M. Hubback, in The
[48I
Thus, in contrast to such natural scientific psychology as described

above, scientific method does not, in Freud, at the outset, run the
risk of encroaching on its own data, or of dictating to the data.
We will see later that it, too, dictates to the data, but to data of a
different sort in its role as medicine and that this dictation to the
data is not necessarily to be condemned. But for now, be it only

noted that as soon as the major part of psychic processes are
placed,by definition, out of direct experience of consciousness,
they become susceptible to treatment and observation by scien-
tific method — in fact, they appear to become amenable even to
mathematics. We need only cite such a passage in Freud to see how
inchned he was toward the ideal of mathematics:
It is as though the resistance to consciousness against them [the
derivatives of repression] was in inverse proportion to their re-

moteness from what was originally repressed."
Thus the first half of the dilemma of psychology as posed

above is avoided. The other half is also avoided in Freud. Mental
acts, feehngs, thinking, perception — in short, all the phenomena of
consciousness —are not disembowelled of their meaning-to-a-self.
Whereas in such psychologies as behaviorism or Pavlovian psy-
chology the phenomena of consciousness are broken down to "ob-
jective" constituents in such a way that their meaning-to-a-self
becomes irrelevant to that psychology, in Freud it is just those
meanings that are part of the main subject matter of psychoanaly-
sis. This point will become clearer if we examine psychoanalysis
as an explanatory system.
Our first task is to apprehend what was described above as the
lesser circle of this system, the rule of transformation according to
which the phenomena are encountered either as reducible or ir-
reducible. This aspect, incidentally, of explanation in science was
noted by Freud himself in the beginning of "Instincts and Their
Vicissitudes":
The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in de-

scribing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and
Major Works of Sigitmnd Freud (Vol. 54 of Great Books of the Western World
[Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1955)), p. 646.
1^ Freud, "Repression," trans, by Cecil M. Baines, in Collected Papers, Vol. IV,
p. 88.
[49]
correlate them. [The greater circle.] Even at the stage of descrip-

tion, it is not possible to avoid applying certain abstract ideas
derived from various sources and certainly not the fruit of neiv
experiences only. [The lesser circle.] ^* (Emphasis added.)
We have already noted that any particular science will have as

a lesser circle a modification and specification of the lesser circle
of science per se, namely, the removal of self or consciousness
from the world. We have also noted that in Freud this demand is
carried out with great faithfulness as represented in his doctrine

of unconscious psychic processes. However, the notion of the un-
conscious is a postulate that exists in the systematic structure of
psychoanalysis proper, the greater circle; it is a hypothesis that
helps to connect certain facts about dreams, hypnosis, and the Uke."
What we are after here is something even more fundamental,
something that circumscribes the manner in which the facts them-
selves are ascertaijied. The doctrine of the unconscious, being a
hypothesis of the greater circle, must itself spring from a more
basic assumption, one which even more blatantly takes conscious-
ness and self out of the field of investigation and which therefore
even more radically hews to the fundamental demand of Cartesian
science, "objectivity."
We need go no further than Freud himself to find a clear and
explicit statement of this most fundamental assumption which we
term the lesser circle: "In our method, observed phenomena must
take second place to forces that are merely hypothesized." '^ These
Strebungen are the drives, the instincts ". whose elemental na- . .
ture is the same in men and which directs him to the satisfaction
all
of certain primal needs." "^ Thus psychoanalysis is a science that

explains psychic phenomena by reduction of these phenomena ini-
tially to their instinctual component. The lesser circle of psycho-

analysis transforms phenomena as it encounters (describes)* them
into their function in relation to drives and needs.
18 Freud, "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes," trans, by Cecil M. Baincs, in
Collected Papers, Vol. IV, p. 60.
10 Freud, "The Unconscious," p. 99.
20 Freud, quoted by Binswanger in "Freud's Conception of Man," this volume,
p. 156.
21 Loc. cit.
• An example of how in psychoanalytic theory the lesser circle transforms

phenomena as it encounters (describes) them may be found on page 113 of /»-
[50]
Here it is essential to note that this basic reality of psychoanaly-

sis, the drives or instincts, although a concept arising strictly from
the science of biology, is a purposive, intentional reality. An in-
stinct intends an object; it is not, like the objective processes, say,

of physics, something in itself possessing no meaning or reference
beyond itself and needing the theorizing of the physics to relate it

conclusively with other data. An instinct points beyond itself to
its satisfaction. The phenomena that are explained in psychoanaly-

sis are therefore never reduced below the level of intenrionality,
something that previous natural-scientific psychologies cannot
claim.*
Thus in Freud, phenomena of consciousness, themselves in-
tentional, are reduced to instincts, also intentional. It would not be
possible to reduce these phenomena to another set or species of
conscious phenomena — to say, that is, that all psychic acts are
based on transformations of a psychic tendency whose essence
involves consciousness and the possibility of self-consciousness.
For then simply self-observation by any human being would, in
principle, be enough to prove or disprove the hypothesis. The
instincts must have their source in the nonconscious in order to
fulfill their explanatory role of reducing the phenomena and thereby
allowing them to be ". . . absorbed by the hypothesized forces,

^^
drives, and the laws that govern them."
And yet, in order to keep the lesser circle from growing too
small, the "basic reality," the instincts, must be of the same genus
as the reducible phenomena of consciousness. To complete, there-
fore, an adequate explanatory system in which justice is done to
stinct in Man by
Ronald Fletcher (New York, 1957): "In concluding this account
of the 'mental mechanisms,' it must be emphasized that, as presented above, these
mechanisms are not intended as explanations of the process whereby the individual
accommodates himself to the demands of the environment, but are simply descrip-
tive concepts indicating the particular ways in which this process of accommoda-
tion takes place."
• An interesting point here is that the concept of instinct is itself derived from
the greater circle of another science, biology. The concept
of instinct in biology is
a hypothesis that connects and brings into unity certain phenomena of the highly
complex It would be rewarding, I think, through outside the
thing, the organism.
scope of book, to draw parallels of such a nature in the development and inter-
this
dependence of other sciences, where elements pertaining to the greater circle, the
theoretical structure, of one science, become definitive of the lesser circle of an-
other.
22 Loc. cit.
[51]
both tendencies of explanation, Freud posits mental acts that are

unconscious. The problem that now arises is to ascertain the dis-
tinction between a conscious and an unconscious intentional act,
mental process. The temptation to assume that since all acts of this
sort must have an "agent behind" them and then draw the dis-
tinction by claiming that the agent of the unconscious mental act
is different from that of the conscious act must be avoided for it
can only involve us in the difficulties of formulating the concept
of an agent that is not a self and that yet performs fimctions that
a self performs. The between conscious and uncon-
distinction
scious mental acts must, rather, be drawn more broadly in this
same direction: an intentional act with no asrent is unconscious;
one "emanating" or having essential reference to an agent would
be conscious.
Thus we may define instincts (Triebe) in this context as in-
tentional acts having no original essential reference to an agent-
self. This is the more precise specification of the lesser circle, the
rule of transformation of the data as they are encountered.
I have
spoken above of the necessity of preserving meaning-to-a-self as

an irreducible datum in explaining the phenomena of conscious
life. If we understand meaning, very broadly in the phenomeno-
logical context, as intention or reference of the act beyond itself
(i.e., thinking is of something, perception is perception of some-

thing), we see that what Freud's lesser circle does is to preserve
meaning, but not meaning to an individual self. The psychoanalytic
theory of man, stressing as it does the similarities of men and
mental phenomena, can speak of the meaning of mother-love, of a
knife as a symbol of phallus, of fatherhood. There thus arises a
set of meanings that are explained and unified in the greater circle
and that are used as a standard by which individually appearing
meanings, meanings to the patient, are reduced. That is to say:
the essential reference of intcntionality to an agcnt-scif is erased by
postulating in its stead a form of intcntionality (instinctuality) for
which the reference to an agent-self is not constitutive. Intcntion-
ality, meaning, is preserved; the individual self is "robbed" of its
uniqueness.
To sum up this section, psychoanalysis is an explanatory
system that remains true to the primitive demand of science since
Galileo and Descartes in that it removes the self and conscious-
[5O
ness from the field of investigation. Its subject matter being the
"self and consciousness (intentional phenomena), the phenomena
that it encounters and explains must to a degree be preserved in
their intactness. The lesser circle, or most primitive presupposition
of psychoanalysis, thus becomes a rule for reducing the phenomena
to a kind of intentionality inwhich no essential reference is made
to an agent-self.Both reduction and preservation of the phenomena
are accomplished in this "lesser circle of medium size." This kind
of intentionality comes out of a concept of biological theory, the
concept of instinct.
Binsivanger' s View of Freud

The foregoing helps to explain why Binswanger looks upon Freud
as the first thinker ever thoroughly to propound the idea of man
as homo natura. (This is the dominant theme of Binswanger's
essay "Freud's Conception of Man in the Light of Anthropol-
ogy," included in this volume.) "Thoroughly" because far from
an extensive set of apergus relating man to organic nature, Freud's
phenomena of psychic hfe by a systematic
theories link the reduced
connection corresponding to what I have described above as the
greater circle of science. Freud's theories as to the structure of the
psychic apparatus, pleasure principle, wish fulfillment, repression,
constitute this greater circle. Speaking, for example, of the relation
of the dream- work to wish, Binswanger says:
That the dream-iyor^ . . . can be set in motion only by means

of a wish stimulus is as much a necessary postulate of the psychic
apparatus as it is a fact of experience. Whoever sees a vicious
circle here has not understood scientific method in general. Just
as the notion of the psychic apparatus is a theoretical epitomiza-

tion of the actuality of experience, so "experience" is a theoretical
verification of that epitomization. All of natural science exem-
plifies this circle. ^^
A comparatively more detailed examination of the contents of

this greater circle, psychoanalysis proper, and its relation to the
notion of the Existential A Priori, will concern us in subsequent
chapters. What I wish here to indicate is the radical extent to
^ Ibid., p. 164.
[53]
which Freud, as Binswanger understands him, reduces man and

explains him as homo natura, a creature of organic nature.
Binswanger first presents an interesting parallel between Frued
and Locke.^* Where Locke asks how far man's capacity for knowl-
edge extends, Freud asks how far man's capacity for civilization,
culture, extends. Where Locke seeks the method of correct knowl-
edge, Freud seeks the method of living correctly with respect to
civilization. Where Locke proceeds from the doubt as to whether
the goal of all-embracing knowledge is attainable, Freud proceeds
from the doubt as to whether the goal of a complete capability
for culture is attainable in man. For both, the psychic life is a
"movement" according to laws of its simpler elements, in Locke
images and in Freud instincts. Both are strictly psychological em-
piricists and are rooted as far back as Descartes. Both reject meta-
physical hypotheses as prejudicial. Both are oriented predom-

inantly, sensualistically, and nominalistically, and so on.
The parallel between Locke and Freud is summed up by Bins-
wanger by applying to Freud a rephrasing of the Lockean "nihil
est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu." For Freud, "nihil est in
homine cultura, quod non fuerit in homine natura."
Binswanger draws the parallel most decisively when he speaks
of the Freudian tabula rasa. The important qualification that Freud
gives to the notion of tabula rasa, however, lies in the fact that
for Freud "in the newly born infant there is already a certain
biological etching on this tablet, a blueprint according to which
subsequent cultural developuejit takes placc.'^ This Zeiclmung
(blueprint) is, of course, sketched by the instincts, the notion of
which, as has already been noted, forms the most basic substructural
presupposition of psychoanalysis. The reduction of all aspects of
man's psychic life to the biological, to instincts, is not in itself con-
demned by Binswanger. "This is the geniune natural-scientific
spirit," he writes. "Natural science never begins with just the
phenomena, indeed, its main task is to divest the phenomena of
their phcnonicnality as quickly and as thoroughly as possible." *®
Also viewed as genuine scientific method is
2< IhiJ., p. I ^^n.
2^' IhiJ., p. 154.
2« //;»(i., p. 156.
[54]
. . . the tendency of Freudian theory to level or equate the sev-

eral aspects of man's essential being by bringing them to the level
of "general" exigencies or needs and the psychic significance of
these needs.2''
The extent of this leveling or reductive-explanatory process is
nowhere more clearly visible than in Freud's notion of the Id, the
deepest, most primitive psychic reality. The basal structure of the
"individual" is no more than a swarm of agentless processes or in-
tentional acts.
Deep down, the individual life, too, is chaotic, dark, inaccessible,

and only negatively describable in negative comparison with and
in contrast to the "organized" ego. It is like a "cauldron of seeth-
ing excitement." ^^
Thus the leveling of man to homo natura structures him as most

essentially amoral, unfree, irrational, and unhistorical —morality,
freedom, rationality, historicity, be it noted, being those qualities
that the lesser circle of science since Descartes and Galileo removes
from the universe when it removes consciousness and attends
merely to res extensa.
It has been discussed how the intentional acts, meanings, that
are the phenomena of psychic life as they appear are reduced to
another brand of intentional act, instinct. Although emanating es-
sentially from no organized self-agent, the goal intended by an
instinct is explicitly formulated by Freud as Lust, pleasure. Thus,
meanings as they are experienced and lived by man are reduced in
Freud's scientific theory to one kind of meaning, the wish.^*
Medical Psychology: Fsychopathology

Binswanger sees Freud's main service to science as Freud himself
saw it: ^"
He did not attribute major significance to the "practical task" of
interpreting symbols, but rather to the "theoretical" task of ex-
27 Ibid.,
p. 1 59.
28 Ibid., p. 161.
^ Ibid., p. 164.
^^ Loc. cit.
[55]
plaining the supposed "operations" of the particular modes of

functioning of the psychic apparatus.^^ (Emphasis added.)
Furthermore,
. . . what singles Freud's doctrine out is just the goal of showing

ivhat folloivs ivith mechanical necessity
from the given conditions
of the natural organisation of man and the encounter of these
conditions with factors of the environment P'
With this "disclosure of a mechanism" we are, according to

Binswanger, in the realm of medical psychology and psychother-
apy.
Here necessity everywhere usurps the place of freedom, mechani-

calness the place of reflection and decision. And with this we find
ourselves in the territory of medicine. "For," says Lotze in his fa-
mous treatise on instincts, "how poorly our health would in fact
were ^^
fare reflection, rather than mechanicalness, its protector."
Referring to the discussion above, we need only introduce the

value-concept of mental health into the lesser circle of psycho-
analysis as already described to see how shift from a theoretical
structure to a practical discipline is effected. Instinct intends pleas-
ure. Failure in this goal results in pain, anxiety, and the like. Health
thus becomes the ability to satisfy the goals of the instincts as much
as possible within a civilization whose essence involves the thwart-
ing of primal satisfaction of the instincts."*^ Psychological facts be-
come symptoms, just as in somatic medicine physiological facts
become symptoms.
It is as medicine where the distorting of the data, so condemned
in itself above in reference to nonpsychoanalytic psychology, be-
comes definitory of the very task of medicine. The world as it
appears to the patient must be altered, for it is by reference to this
very world, meanings as they are lived by the patient, that sickness
manifests itself.
In somatic medicine the value terms health, symptom, illness
3' Ibid., p. 165.

32 Loc. cit.
33 l,oc. cit.
3* Frcud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans, by Joan Riviere, in Major
Works (Vol. 54 of Great Books of the Western World), pp. 767-806.
[56]
are fully expressible in a nonvaluational context of physiology,

anatomy, neurology, with reference to life, pain, death, malfunc-
tioning of the organism. That is, every medical fact is completely
transformable into a fact of the biology of man, what is lost being
the attitude of the scientist, the doctor, toward the facts. In so-
matic medicine, therefore, the value terms of health and illness, for
example, are guides to procedure, as it were, regulative ideas that —
do not, ideally, constitute the data, but only influence emphasis in
ascertainment of the data, in attention, and control.
But in medical psychology the notions of (mental) health, nor-
mality, and so on, are not referrable to such "objectively" unam-
biguous states of the physical organism such as life, death, organic
malfunction. To allow this would be to fall into the error of allow-
ing the lesser circle to admit unintentional acts as the primitive
reality, the error of nonpsychoanalytic psychology. On the other
hand, the objects intended by instincts or drives are objects of
value, desired, wanted, needed; in other words, biological purpose
becomes the criterion of judging the "normality" of purposes,
desires, and values as they are experienced in their phenomenality.
In a word, if I may so express it, values themselves are evaluated,
whereas in biological medicine processes thems'elves unintentional
are evaluated.
As a theory of explanation, psychoanalysis may be justified in
reducing phenomena of psychic life to drives and needs and
thereby structuring these phenomena into a system of facts. As
medicine, however, where it attempts to influence the course of
psychic hfe, its own valuational structure is seen to be of the same
genus as that which it influences. That
in nonpsycho-
is, whereas
analytical psychology, as just problem stemmed
discussed, the
from the fact that the method of inquiry was of the same genus as
the object of inquiry, in medical psychology or psychotherapy the
basis of the method of influence and control is of the same genus
as that which is to be influenced. It is in such a frame of reference
that such questions can be directed at psychoanalysis: Is suffêring
necessarily a sign of abnormality —and if not, when not? Is guilt
always pathological? Is maladjustment to social demands a symp-
tom of emotional disorder?
If there is forthcoming a justification of the biological standard
of evaluating values themselves, it will be practical, rather than
[57]
scientific-theoretical. Science cannot justify a value as it justifies

a theory. And although it may turn out that the "distorting" of the
patient'sworld (something condemned by "pure" phenomenologi-
such as Van den Berg)^^ is the essence of psycho-
cal psychiatrists
therapy, and that certain kinds of psychotherapy (such as psycho-
analysis) ivork as judged by standards of mental health derived
from their own explanatory systems, psychological medicine can-
not, indeed does not attempt to, justify its valuational assumptions
purely biologically. It must without privileged status enter into the
general arena of value systems.
30
J. H. Van den Berg, The Phenomenological Approach to Psychiatry (Spring-
field, m., 1955),
[58I
Ill
The Symbol in Psychoanalysis
and Daseinsanalyse
In the following three chapters I propose to bring the notion of the

Existential A Priori more clearly into focus by juxtaposing Daseins-
analyse and psychoanalysis in the following contexts: ( i ) the
nature and interpretation of symbols, (2) the status of the "uncon-
scious," (3) psychopathology. This is perhaps the place to em-
phasize that Daseinsanalyse does not stand as a counter depth-
psychology in relation to Freudian psychoanalysis in the manner of
the work of, say, Jung or Adler. It should be kept in mind that in
Binswanger's perspective Daseinsanalyse, without such techniques
and theorizing as is found in psychoanalysis, is clinically almost im-
potent, but also that psychoanalysis without Daseinsanalyse is in
danger of biased distortion of the patient's world —even where it is
clinically most "successful." In this connection, the following note

of Binswanger's must also be kept in mind:
We are speaking here of the role of psychopathology within the

total frame of psychiatric medical research. We do not neglect
the fact that in the psychoanalytical investigation, as well as in
every purely "understanding" psychopathology, germs of exis-
tential-analytical views can always be found. But they indicate

neither a methodical scientific procedure nor a knowledge of
why and in what way existential analysis differs from the investi-
gation of life-historical connections and from an "empathic" or

"intuitive" entering into the patient's psychic life.^
1 Binswanger, "The Existential Analysis School of Thought, in Rollo May,

Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger (eds.), Existence (New York, 1958), p.
21211.
[59]
Introduction to Binswanger's Extstextlu, Psychoanalysis
The Symbol
The Freudian concept of symbolizarion is summarized by Robert
Fliess as
the exchange of an element of a sexual nature, including those of

an infantile sexual one and in a few cases of an incest object, for
an element or object of a nonsexual nature.^
Sandor Ferenczi's formulation serves, however, as an important

quahfication:
Only such things [or ideas] are symbols in the sense of psycho-
analysis as are invested in consciousness with a logically inexpli-
cable and unfounded affect, and of which it may be analytically
estabUshed that they owe this affective over-emphasis to itncon-
scious indentification with another thing [or idea], to which the
surplus of affect really belongs. Not all similes [or allegories,
metaphors, allusions, etc.], therefore, are symbols, but only those
in which one member of the equation is repressed into the un-
conscious.'
Taken together these two quotes can be said to constitute the

nucleus of the Freudian notion of symbolization. The first point to
be noticed is that only the horizontal dimension of symbolism, as it
is normally understood, seems to receive attention. By the horizon-

tal dimension I mean the reference involving two members of the
same genus, a leading from the concrete to the concrete, from the
image to the image. Such a symbolic equation from concrete to
concrete cannot, however, be made without at least implying a
universal exhibited by both the symbol and the symbolized. When,
for example, a writer likens the eyes of his beloved to two precious
gems, gems symbolize eyes because, among other things, they both
have brilliance, luster, and inner light.*
2 Robert Fliess, "On the Nature of Human Thought," in Reading! in Psycho-

analytic Psychology, edited by Monon (New York, 1959), p. 216.
Levitt
8 Sandor Fcrcnczi, Selected Papers (New York, 1950), Vol. pp. 277-278.
I,
• Of course, psychoanalytic literature is not lacking in instances where the

vertical dimension of symbolism seems to be treated. Herbert Silbcrer's famous
—
hypnagogic experiments contain many examples of this where, for instance, after
reflecting upon the idea of transsubjcctivity, he begins to grow dred and in a
[60]
The Symbol in Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalyse
The second point concerns the irreversibility of the symbolic

equation. Ernest Jones writes:
As energy flows from them [the primary interests] and never to

them, and as they constitute the most repressed part of the mind,
it is comprehensible that symbolism should take place in one di-
rection only. Only what is repressed is symbolized; only what is
repressed needs to be symbolized.*
There is thus no room made for what may be called recipro-

cal modification between symbol and symbolized. A narion that
chooses the eagle as its symbol lends dignity to the bird as well as
receives it. Does the king choose trumpets to announce him be-
cause they are regal, or are they regal because they announce the
king?
Third, and closely related to the above, the reductive, explan-
atory nature of the science of psychoanalysis demands that the con-
ditioned in a symbolic equation is always the symbol of the con-
dition. The following, also cited by Roland Dalbiez, illustrates this
perfecdy:
The river which waters and irrigates India springs from the hair
of Shiva. That is clearly a fabulous notion, a myth. On the other

hand, there is a well-known fountain in Brussels, the "Manneken-
Pis," in which the stream of water flows from the natural passage
of a little boy, who appears to be urinating. These two cases con-
tain a single fundamental notion from which the artist drew his
inspiration:the flow of liquid from the human body. But in

which of the two is this notion expressed with least distortion?
When have Hindu painters or poets seen a jet of water coming
from a head of hair? Never, surely. The nearest realization of
their myth which they may, consciously or unconsciously, have
experienced (and which they later distorted in their own fashion,
state of scmisomnolence sees before him the image of a large balloon with many
human heads in it. However, in such cases where psychoanalytic literature treats
the representation of an idea by an image, it is the case either that ( i ) the sym-
bolized need not have been suppressed but is so only because rational operations, ac-
cording to Freud, are not realizable in dreams, or (2) the idea is only an elabo-
ration or sublimation of that of which the image is more adequately symbolic.
* Ernest Jones, quoted by Roland Dalbiez in Psychoanalytical Method and the
Doctrine of Freidd, trans, by T. F. Lindsay (London, 1941), Vol. I, p. 109.
[61]
in creating their work of art), could not be so very different from

that which inspired the designer of the fountain at Brussels.
... it seems to us legitimate as honest scientists, to connect
symbolic expressions with their most natural and simple signifi-
cance.^
Or, in Binswanger's paraphrasing: ni^ est in homine culnira, quod

non fuerit in hoviine mmira. The issue that this raises concerns the
legitimacy of the term "symbol," as opposed to "sign." In the
above quotation, Theodore Flournov is seeking the source of S)Tn-
bols in their psychic causes, as does Freud in The Interpretation of
Dreams. As Dalbiez points out, "the ordinary symbol implies no
direct causal relation with what it s)TTibolizes." ^ Carl Jung's well-
known criticism of Freud's use of the term "symbol" makes the
same point:
Those conscious contents which give us a clue, as it were, to the

unconscious backgrounds are by Freud incorrectly termed sym-
bols. They are not true symbols, however, since according to his
teaching, they have merely the role of signs or symptoms of the
background processes.''
The Common Univtersal / The above three issues, which arise

from the Freudian conception of intrapsychic symbols, are three
aspects of one problem, namely, the problem as to the meaning to
the patient of the symbol to be interpreted or explained.
Turning to the first point, we see that in psychoanalysis the
common universal, which connects the rvvo items in the symbolic
equation, is frequently allowed to remain impHcit. Otto Fcnichel,
however, is one psychoanalytic writer who, at least in the typical
example of money as the symbol of feces, makes every effort to be

explicit. According to Fenichel, this symbol arises from the child's
experience of not being allowed to put into his mouth a very pre-
cious part of his own body, his feces. This leads to the concept of
possession, which comes, therefore, to mean "things that do not
^ Theodore Flournoy, quoted by Dalbiez, Vol. I, p. 1 1 1.
Dalbiez. Vol. II, p. 102.

^ Carl Jung, Coniributiom to Analytic Psychology, trans, by H. G. and C. M.
Baincs (London, 1928), pp. 231-232.
[62]
actually belong to the ego, but ought to; things that are actually
outside, but symbolically inside."
What money and feces have in common is the fact that they are
deindividualized possessions; and deindividualized means neces-
sarily losable. Thus money, in the same way as feces previously,
is estimated and watched over as a possession which is in constant

danger of losing its ego quality.*
Thus the basis of this symbolic equation centers about childhood

sensations that are taken as irreducible. The common universal,
"deindividualized possession," is taken to emerge from the basic ex-
perience of the child's relation to feces.
Now the universal that both Daseinsanalyse and psychoanalysis
seek is not the universal in the sense in which it is normally under-
stood. Neither seeks the common properties of objects considered
"apart from our experience of them." Considered "detachedly" as
is, in reference merely to, say, Lockean primary and
objects, that
secondary properties, money and feces have no more in common
than any two objects in the world chosen at random. Both Daseins-
analyse and psychoanalysis seek the properties of objects insofar as
they are related to the self
— "subjective"
properties. The Freud-
ianview maintains that these properties, or universals, arise from
childhood sensations and urges, in this case the sensations of pleas-
ureableness associated with putting things inside the mouth, or with
the pleasurable sensations that arise during defecation. Daseins-
analyse, on the other hand, maintains that those sensations are not
received in a vacuum but are experienced within some kind of
meaning-matrix. In order, for example, for the child to experience
the hoarding and retaining of feces as pleasurable in the first place,
the child must be in some sense "empty" and must experience this
"emptiness" as unpleasurable. In Binswanger's words:
"Filling" is the a priori or transcendental tie that allows us to

combine feces and money through a common denominator. It is
only this that provides psychoanalysis with the empirical possi-

bility of considering money-addiction as "originating" from the
8 Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, (New York, 1945),

p. 281.
[63I
retention of feces. But by no means is the retaining of feces the

"cause" of stinginess.^
The psychoanalyst who objects that pure physiological pleasure

sensations in erogenous zones do not require any kind of anterior
"preparation" to be experienced as pleasurable must then account
for the fact that these various pleasure and unpleasure sensations
somehow together form a personality, or a world-outlook — in our
example, that of the anal-erotic. In "The Case of Ellen West"
Binswanger observes:
Existential analysis cannot admit that pleasure sensations during

defecation, that is, the fixation of the anal zone as erosenous zone,
can build up the picture of a hole-, grave-, or swamp-world, just
as in general no world can be constructed from sensations and

urges. That view belongs entirely to a former time, the time of
Positivism. Rather, existential analysis is of the opinion that, con-
versely, only when a design of the world as hole-world is present,
at a certain stage of childhood or with certain forms of "spiritual
(geistig) decomposition," the being-a-hole, the being-filled and
being-emptied, or the retaining is experienced as "pleasurable."
This "Copernican switch" is basic to all existential analysis.

Hence, anality in the psychoanalytical sense is only a segment of
the total hole-world, the segment which is restricted to the bodily
share in the Eigenioelt}^
The universals "filling-emptiness" are thus categories in a sense

analagous to Kantian categories. They are transcendental cate-
gories in the sense that without them the experience in question
could not emerge. In Binswanger's works, to speak of a transcen-
dental category or of its products, the world-design, is to refer to a
patient's matrix of possible experience that, in the sense of giving
them meaning, creates the objects of experience as it encounters
them. The similarity to Kant's Copernican Revolution is clear. The
source of meaning and hence the source of pleasure and unpleas-
ure, anxiety and reahzation are, in Binswanger's view, placed in the
Dasein that, in a sense to be discussed later, "selects" what is pleas-
urable, meaningful, traumatic, and so forth in that the Dasein (and
• Binswanger, "The F.xistcntial Analysis School of Thouglu," op. cit., p. 210.
If*
Binswanger, "The Case of Ellen West," in R. May ct al. (cds.), op. cit., p. 317.
[64]
not the body, physical sensations, reflexes, or such) is the context

in which and over against which pleasure, anxiety, fear, emerge.
It is not that we are "philosophers before we are babies," but:
This world-design did not manifest itself before the traumatic
event occurred; on the occasion of that event. Just as
it did only
the a priori or transcendental forms of the human mind make ex-
perience only into what experience is, so the form of that world-
design had first to produce the condition of the possibility for the
ice-skating incident in order for it to be experienced as trau-

matic."
Psychoanalytic theorists resolutely maintain that it is the pri-

mary sensations that are, ultirrntely, the symbolized. The common
universal shared by the symbol and the symbolized thus can be
looked upon, in psychoanalytic terms, as itself a symbol.
. . . whereas ordinary symbolism links the objects represented,
psycho-analytical symbolism links the representations themselves

. . . the psycho-analyst only studies dereistic, objectless psychic
products. He therefore regards representations as derived from
one another according to a strict causal relationship. He will sys-
tematically call the derived representation the symbol, and the

primary representation the symbolized. ^^
Thus, in Fenichel's example, "deindividualized possession,"

which we might think was the source of the symbolic equation of
feces-money, itself is merely the psychoanalytic symbol of pleasure
and unpleasure sensations in childhood. The Existential A Priori
(transcendental category), on the other hand, is the source of both
sides of the equation and not a derivate or subliination of one side.
The common universal, as psychoanalysis implies it, is no more
than a theoretical expression of the sensational, instinctual basis of
all symbolism. And, indeed, insofar as psychoanalysis seeks to as-
certain the causal relationbetween the instinctual demands and
sensations connected with defecation and the image of money as it
appears in dreams or in neurotic symptomology, we cannot de-
mand a common universal in the same way that we can demand it
of a symbolic equation between two objects or representations in
1^ Binswanger, "The Existential Analysis School of Thought," op. cit., p. 205.
12 Dalbicz, Vol. II, p. 104.
[6S\
the same genus. And yet when psychoanalysts attempt to explain

why the appearance of image in a dream is caused by, say,
a certain
childhood trauma, they are not content to remain with purely in-
ductive generalizations.They rather, as Fenichel does, seek a com-
mon That is, according to psychoanalysis there exists a
universal.
distinct symboUc method whereby certain images in, for example,
the manifest content of dreams, are of invariably the same sym-
bolic signiJficance. We then find psychoanalytic Hterature referring
to "objective" properties —such as the long shape that such things
as sticks, snakes, or knives have in common with the phallus; the
plasticity that softish materials such as clay or mud have in com-
mon with feces. In order, therefore, to justify its interpretation
of symbols, psychoanalysis either ( i
) adopts the purely inductive
method, which we saw yields no genuine common universals as the
connecting Hnk between the members of the symbolic equation
and opens itself to the charge of dealing not with symbols but with
effect-signs, or (2) claims certain objective properties, properties
with primary reference to communal (objective), rather than in-
dividual "reahty," as the connecting link or common universal in
the symbolic equation. We will treat the first alternative presently;
what now demands attention is the specific manner in which the
A Priori serves as this common universal.
Existential
We have already spoken of the Existential A Priori (transcen-
dental category) as the meaning-matrix within which events are
experienced and which, in that sense, is the condition of the possi-
biUty of experience, traumatic and otherwise. In "The Case of El-
len West," Binswanger writes:
Existential analysis shows that in this case no one-sided meaning

or symbolic relationship of one side of the equation to the other is
before us, but that both sides, on the basis of belonging to the
same significance in respect to the world, have a common mean-
ing."
What psychoanalysis takes as conditioning factors — instinct, child-

hood —
and so forth arc, for Dascinsanalysc, already rep-
sensations,
resentations of a basic world design. It is not that Daseinsanalyse
wants to push back the causal chain, but rather that the causal chain
itself, as described in scientific depth-analysis, must be viewed as a
1' Binswanger, "The Case of EUlen West," op. cit., p. 316.
[66]
whole, which whole has no privileged reference point in terms of

which all else is to be explained. Such explanation in terms of a
privileged reference point assumes a theory, and a theory assumes
a world-outlook — in this case the world outlook of natural science.
Daseinsanalyse cannot, therefore, use the past to account for the
present; indeed the past of a patient exists in the present in that the
world-design, within which a particular event in the past "condi-
tioned" a present neurosis, is the patient. The present, therefore, or
the "conscious," or the manifest content of dreams and the mani-
fest verbal expressions all point to a unity or category (ies) that is
basic to the patient's world. In other words, since a self cannot ex-
perience a "pure" event outside of a meaning-context," even if
that self be that of a child, it is that source of meaning-context that

Daseinsanalyse seeks to ascertain. It does not look for the particular
meanings that, say, the child gives to certain events and of which
he may or may not be aware at the moment; Daseinsanalyse seeks,
rather, the mode of bcing-in-the-world that can be said to govern
those meanings. The Existential A Priori is not a Kantian category
in the sense that it is the direct condition for the perception of ob-
jects, but only in the sense that it is the condition for the experi-
encing of meanings.
If Martin Heidegger's existentials represent the being of man,
then the Existential A Priori, which represents the being of this
particular man as he exists in his particular world, cannot be viewed
as the cause of this meaning or that of this traumatic event or that

pleasure-laden experience. Rather the Existential A Priori is the
translation of the "empty" ontological formulas of Heidegger into
a formula capable of receiving content. The content of such a
formula are meanings
— "mother loves me," "I hate brother," "I
fear father," and so forth. Thus we term the Existential A Priori
a ineaning-inatrix. Whether there be an unconscious mind or not,
that which was repressed into that "unconscious" was first experi-
enced; and if it was at all experienced, it formed and forms part of
the world of the patient as he experiences his world.
I hasten to add that Binswanger never speaks of a self, but of a
Dasein. The term Dasein refers to a being whose essence is to be-
in-the-world. .Meanings and experiences that are the subject matter
of psychoanalysis are conceived by psychoanalysis as, for example,
1* Binswanger, Vortrage, Vol. II, p. 292.
[67]
an ego confronted by the world or by demands or commands, or

instinctual urges being thwarted by external conditions. But the
Dasein of which Binswanger writes is the Dasein as already-in-the-
world. This Dasein is thus the background upon which the "self"
in fact emerges and is always emerging. It may be termed the
Gestalt within which the self differentiates its world
itself from
while same time being in its world. Just as the Kantian cate-
at the
gories are those within which articulated and differentiated knowl-
edge of the world and the phenomenal self arise, so the Existential
A Priori of a patient is the ground of those experiences and mean-
ings that psychoanalysis links causally.
True to the Husserlian spirit, Daseinsanalyse limits itself to
"the analysis of what is actually present, i.e., immanent, in con-
sciousness." ^^ Like Edmund Husserl too, Binswanger is careful to
distinguish the phenomenological method of Daseinsanalyse from
psychological description. According to Husserl, the psycholog-
ically oriented phenomenologist, however much he limits himself
to immanent conscious acts always views these acts as actual proc-
esses that he cannot conceive of apart from a real human being
(einem realen Naturgeschopf) The pure phenomenologist, on the
.
other hand, brackets out any judgments, however impHcit, as to

the reahty of the self or acts of that self. On this point Binswanger
stands somewhere between the pure phenomenologist and the de-
scriptive psychologist. The a priori structures that Daseinsanalyse
seeks serve in the world of the patient as the transcendental (in the
Kantian sense) condition of total experience, of concrete being-in-
the-world.
How does Binswanger bridge the gap between the Husserlian
pure eidetic structures of consciousness and "categories" that con-
dition the possibility of experience, the Existential A Priori that
seems, in a word, to be a universal ivith pcywerF As we have seen,
Binswanger is not content to call the transcendental category of a
patient nothing other than a generalization, however pure, as to the
theme of the patient's history and experience. Binswanger writes:
Everything that makes the world significant is submitted to the
rule of that one category which alone supports her "world" and
being.'" (Emphasis added.)
"^ Binswanger, Vortriifie, Vol. I, p. 25.

1° Binswanger, "The Lxistcntial Analysis School of Thought," op. cit., p. 203.
[68]
... so the form of that world-design had first to produce the

condition of the possibility (of the incident) ... in order for it
to be experienced as traumatic.^'' (Emphasis added.)
What is involved here are not chance combinations, but unshak-

able a priori existential structures.^*
In "The Case of Lola Voss":
But why do just garments — clothes, underwear, shoes, hats, play

so prominent a role in Lola's case? To answer this question we
would have to conduct a biographical investigation. . . . But the
question of how it is possible that garments can play so prominent
a part is, indeed, a problem for existential analysis.^®
Existential analysis is not interested simply in facts pertaining to

linguistic science, that in metaphor "the meaning of a word is
transferred from one particular region to another," but rather in

the existential grounds of the possibility of such a transferring?^
The above passages clearly indicate that the a priori existential

structures (which I have called the Existential A Prioris) represent
not only essences or universals that are apprehended phenomeno-
logically, but also effective, conditioning, determining categories.
To understand more specifically in what sense the Existential
A Priori is a universal with power is also to understand the manner
in which Daseinsanalyse approaches the "vertical dimension" of

symbolic equations.
Special care must be exercised to prevent the notion of causal
efEcacy from determining our thinking in seeking the relationship
between the A
and the world as it is experienced
Existential Priori
by the patient. The A
Priori without a corresponding
Existential
world-design and hence without a corresponding world is, for
Binswanger, unthinkable, contradicting, as it would, the very no-
tion of transcendental category. Just as it makes no sense to speak
of the Kantian categories of the Understanding as "existing" previ-
ous to knowledge of the world, so it makes no sense to speak of
1'^
Ibid., p. 205.
*8 Binswanger, Vortrage, Vol. II, p. 289.
1® Binsw anger, "The Case of Lola Voss," p. 300 of this volume.
20 Binswanger, Vortrage, Vol. 11, p. 290.
(69]
Binswanger's Existential A Priori as "being there" previous to ex-

perience. Like the Kantian categories, the definition of the Existen-
tial A Priori is exhausted in an account of its functioning and its
functioning is only theoretically separable from its intended ob-

jects. For example, Binswanger describes a case in which a young
girl at the age of five suffered an attack of anxiety and fainting
when her heel separated from her shoe after being stuck in her ice
skate. His analysis of the case revealed that "W^hat serves as a clue
to the world-design of our little patient is the categor)^ of continu-
ity. . . . Everything that makes the world significant is submitted
to the rule of that one category." ^^ Binswanger does not mean
to
say that the category of continuity "working through her" some-
how caused the anxiety and fainting, an expression that would be
almost senseless in any context. He does mean, I think, that the
being -in-the-world of this patient is so constricted that all her per-
ceptions and experiences in order to be assimilated, that is, in order
to be perceptions and experiences, must satisfy a certain criterion.
The criterion in this case is best expressed, for Binswanger, by the
term "continuity."
To say that the being-in-the-world of this Dasein is restricted
to the category of continuit)^-discontinuity is to say that all per-
ception and experience of the individual is selective in a certain
way. It is also, and more fundamentally, to say that the world of
the individual isgrounded in this category. Thus the category of
continuity-discontinuity is that which expresses the individual's self-
determination within time, space, the Mitwelt and the Eigenwelt.
Binswanger as phenomenologist holds, with Hegel, that
Individuality is what its world, in the sense of its own world, is.
Individuality itself is the cycle of its own action, in which it has

presented and established itself as reality, and is simpiv and solely
a unity of what is given and what is constructed — a unity whose
aspects do not fall apart, as in the idea of psychological law, into
a world given per se and an individuality existing for itself."
As Daseinsanalytiker, he holds with Heidegger that "world" means

a "whole of significance." -''
And as a "Kantian":
'• Binswanger "The Existential Analysis School of Thought," op. cit., p. 203.
22 Georg Hcgcl, The Phenontenology of Mind, trans, by J. B. Baillic (London,
'949). P- 336-
23 Martin Heidegger, Scin und Zeit (Tubingen, 1953), p. 151.
[70]
The Symbol in Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysc
Its task is to single out the uniqueness of the a priori existential

structure which makes possible all the unique phenomena which
we clinically diagnose as schizophrenic symptoms and as schizo-
phrenic psychosis in general.^
The "power" of the Existential A Priori lies in the Dasein itself

as an actually existing being. The existentially a priori structure
that Binswanger seeks in the Daseinsanalysc of a particular case is:
the possiblemodes of being of the Dasein, the existentials of

Heidegger, become actual. This sum total of an actual manifesta-
tion of the ontologically a priori characteristics of the Dasein is the
Existential A Priori of a particular individual. The Dasein is not the
individual; it is the background upon which the individual emerges.
When Binswanger, therefore, maintains that, for example, continu-
ity is the transcendental category of a particular individual, al-
though he may have arrived at his insight phenomenologically, he
is giving us transcendental knowledge about this particular individ-
ual. Each case, therefore, is, in a sense, a "transcendental deduc-
tion" whereby the possibility of experience of a particular indi-
vidual is accounted for. It is equally correct to say not only that
the world of the individual is grounded in his Existential A Priori,
but also that the individual himself is so grounded. We are here
thrown back on more "strictly" "existentialist" doctrine, a point
that will be treated later. For now, let us simply note that we are
faced with an act of the Dasein standing behind the very possibility
of individual and world, something that may possibly be regarded
as aKierkegaardian choosing of oneself or failure to choose oneself
and something that also must be carefully compared with the
Sartrean original project. These are points that must be reserved
for a later chapter.
In seeking to understand the Existential A Priori as a "uni-
versal with power" we have found that this power is located not
in a universal, nor in the self, but in the Dasein. Expressible as a
particular kind of universal, a transcendental category, the Exis-
tential A Priori points not to an idea, or rule, but to an existence,
an existence that is transcendentally prior to the self/not-self dis-
tinction in experience. Representing, as it does, the concrete mani-
festation of Care, it must be equally articulable in each possible
24 Binswanger, Schizophrenie, p. 464.
:
aspect of the world of the Dasein. Continuity, for example, is
equally understandable and applicable in reference to time (con-

tinuity of event vs. the sudden and unexpected), space (contigu-
ity), the Mitivelt (ties, e.g., oedipal ties, continuity of relation-
ships), the Eigenivelt ("inner" continuity, continuity of feeUngs,
affections). For an "anal-erotic" whose
Existential Priori may be A
that of filling-emptiness, we
have time being filled up or spent:
spatial fining in the containment of hands or money-bags, or the
filling of the body in eating, as with Ellen A\'est; in the Mitivelt the
openness or lack of it to other people; in the Eigeyiivelt, the prob-

lem again of eating or taking in to oneself.
This Existential A Priori is thus truly the "common universal"
— ît is the meaning-matrix within which both members of the sym-
bolic equation take on relevance for the individual. How, then,

does Daseinsanalyse interpret symbols and dreams? In fact, it does
not "interpret" the symbols, but, rather, stakes out the circle for
chnical, scientific interpretation (reduction)
That the existential-analytic interpretation, however, can stake

out the circle for what may be interpreted psychoanalvtically in
the dream becomes apparent when we see how psychoanalysis
would regard this dream. The psychoanalytic interpretations then
reveal themselves to be special [Freudian] symbol-interpretations
on the ground of fundamental existential-analytical understand-
ing.25
It is well known that in dreams flying and falling often are mani-
fested as hovering and sinking of our own bodily form. These
dreams of flying and falling are sometimes thought to be con-
nected with the bodily condition, especially breathing, in which
case we are dealing with the so-called body-stimuli dreams; some-
times with erotic moods or purely sexual wishes. Both are possible
and we do not wish to dispute either assumption, since in our case
it is a matter of uncovering an a priori structure of which the
body-stimuli [and body schema in general] as well as the erotic-
sexual themes are special secondary fillings.-'
The common universal that psychoanalysis uncovers is of a

quite different order. In the first place it is usually a universal that
25 Binswangcr, "The Case of Ellen West," op. cit., p. 323.

2* Binswangcr, p. 228 of this volume.
[72]
has primary reference to only one area of human existence. When,

for example, a knife is said to be the symbol for phallus, the psy-
choanalyst is too often content to justify this interpretation theo-
retically simply by calling attention to similarity of shape. In such
a case, of course, he must seek evidence as to why this particular
patient used the knife and not, say, a building or a snake, as the
phallic symbol. As the case progresses further and his knowledge
of the patient grows deeper, he may come to the conclusion that
the knife is a symbol of phallus because it is a tool of aggression.
Aggression, however, as it is usually understood (in "communal
reality"), means disposition to injure another and therefore refers
primarily to only one mode
of being of the Dasein, being-with-
others, and, hence, to only one aspect of the total world of the
individual, the Mitivelt. One would be hard put to understand
aggression as the constitutive determination of, say, a man's rela-
tion to his future or his relation to himself as exemplified in his
attitude toward death. And certainly there seems no obvious way
of expressing aggression in temporal or spatial terms without some-
how bringing in notions derived from the concept of being-with-
others. The full "meaning" of a symbol is thus attenuated, a priori,
by limiting its context to only one aspect of the patient's world.
A second and at least equally important question concerns the
meaning of these psychoanalytically ascertained common univer-
sals: the question, namely, as to their meaning in the world of the
patient. The phenomenologist will ask, for example, what does

"aggression" mean in the world of this individual? His answer will
not consist in relating what is ordinarily taken as aggressive be-
havior to a postulated striving that is checked, sublimated, or
diverted by an equally postulated subconscious dynamism. For
the phenomenologist "to injure another" is not ultimately reduci-
ble to a transindividualistic instinct, such as a "death-instinct."
Rather, "injury to another" will reveal its sense only in connection
with the Existential A Priori of the individual. In the case above,
for example, where the Existential A Priori was the universal
continuity-discontinuity, injury to another might be a way of ward-
ing off a threatening break in the continuity, rather than a subli-
mated sexual or death wish. Furthermore, what constitutes "in-
jury to another" for an individual may vary. The "psychotic"
who is wrecking the authority of hospital officials by tying his
[73]
shoelaces a certain way is being aggressive just as much as the

maniac who hurls objects at nurses.
Universals such as "aggression," "possession," and "submission"
are either reduced in psychoanalytic theory to the natural scientific
frame and absorbed into the system of explanation, in which case
they are no longer the common universals that we seek; or they
dissolve into variables that themselves need reference to another
universal in order to understand their sense. The Elxistential A
Priori may be viewed as the third thing relating the common uni-
versal, say aggression, with the two objects subsumed under ag-
gression (e.g., phallus and knife). Phallus and knife are symbols of
aggression insofar as they are tools for aggression. But the reality
of which they are a part is the world-design of the patient and the
clue to this world-design lies in the uncovering of the Existential
A Priori. Aggression itself must be understood in the context of a
world-design governed by the Existential A Priori.
Once this Existential A Priori is uncovered, the "circle is staked
out" for reductive, systematic interpretation and diagnosis. That is,
once the meaning-matrix of the individual, that which is the

ground of his experiencing the world, is laid forth, the particular
manner in which this matrix has been "filled" can be explained.
Overly strong mother ties in childhood, for example, may be
said to be the cause of certain anxiety attacks in later life only after
that which makes possible the overly strong ties is revealed.
first
The accent here,it must be stressed, is not in the past. The Exis-
tential A Priori is that which makes possible these overly strong

mother ties, not that which 7}iade it possible. Psychoanalysis will
speak of a sequence of experiences: incest wishes, castration-
anxiety, leading to strong oedipal ties, leading later to anxiety, and
so forth. Daseinsanalyse, on the other hand, speaks of an experience
of sequence: the entire causal chain of psychoanalysis is possible
only by virtue of this Existential A Priori.
Reversibility / Turning now to the second aspect of psycho-
analytical symbolism, namely the irreversibility of symbolic equa-
tions, one need not look further than the nature of scientific
method itself as applied in psychoanalysis for its raison d'etre. The

notions of reducible and irreducible as discussed in the previous
chapter would lead us to expect such an irreversibility. The re-
I74]
pressed, the instincts, the primal urges, constitute the most "real,"
the irreducible; while the conscious representation, the symbol, is
that which is to be reduced, explained, interpreted. We find in all
cases of psychoanalytic interpretation and explanation that what

we have delineated as the lesser circle of psychoanalysis serves as
the point beyond which explanation does not go. Daseinsanalyse,
on the other hand, cannot accept such a unidirectional reference.
What psychoanalysis calls the symbol is for Daseinsanalyse, just as
primary a reality as the "repressed" or symbolized. The full mean-
ing of the symbol (the manifest dream and verbal structures) in
the world of the individual determines the meaning of the symbol-
ized, not merely to the analyst in his attempts to interpret the
symbol, but for the individual himself.
If knife is said to be symbol of phallus, understanding of the
patient falls short if it is not further asked: what does the phallus
mean The full phenomenal meaning of the knife
to the individual?
in the world of the patient must be laid forth before the analyst
can understand what phallus means to the patient. In psychoanaly-
sis, however, the question is: what does the knife mean? And the
answer, the phallus, presupposes that all meaning-direction ema-

nates from a biological need. This ignores the possibility that these
biological needs are themselves enmeshed in a larger meaning-
matrix and, therefore, themselves point to something beyond them-
selves. It also, if the analyst is not careful, presupposes a fixed
notion of what phallus means to any individual.
For Daseinsanalyse, symbol and symbolized modify each other.
The following long selection from Boss's work on dream analysis
exemplifies an important aspect of the attitude of Daseinsanalyse
toward symbols:
Freud thought he had found an unequivocal proof for this concep-

tion [of dream symbolism] in Schroetter's experiment. Schroetter
[191 2] had ordered his hypnotized subjects to dream of coarse
sexual processes during their subsequent hypnotic sleep. In the
dreams all those things which Freud designates as sexual symbols
appeared in the relevant places. Once, for instance, a woman was
ordered during hypnosis to dream of homosexual relations with a
girl-friend. In the dream she met this girl-friend carrying a suit-
case with the label "For Ladies Only." From this Schroetter and
[75]
Freud concluded that the suitcase could only be a symbolic repre-

sentation of the girl-friend's genitals.
However, such a conclusion is very flimsy since it neither ex-
plains the fullmeaning of sexual intercourse nor all the connota-
tions of a suit-case in the actual life of the dreamer. What if sexual
intercourse meant more to her than the mere contact of sexual
organs — if, for instance, we agree with Herbert Silberer and
Jung, who under certain conditions see in sexual intercourse a
symbol of interconnecting and bridging the most different things,
even such that do not belong to the sexual sphere at all? Who
would indeed, deny that healthy sexual activity is not a solitary
affair, but implies the coming together of two people bound by
love; that this, in fact, is of its very essence? Thus the hypnotist
by his suggestion of homosexual intercourse had prepared his ex-
perimental subject for a loving human relationship, even though
he had limited it to a female. Possibly for this reason in the dream
not only the "symboUc genitals" but an entire person appeared
who was nothing else but this very girl-friend and a suit-case.
Had the luggage only symbolized her genitals, why then was it a
suit-case and not, for instance, an evening bag, which would
surely have belonged more clearly to an erotic sphere? What
inherent connection is there between travelling, which is unmis-
takably indicated in this dream, and female genitals? Not the
slightest. Travelling, however, can bring people closer together
and can also separate them. Surely this large suit-case was much
more hkely to indicate the fact that it contained many other
things besides those merely relating to the genital organs: objects
of everyday life, perhaps even books, valuable jewellery, and
some family keepsakes. These things would not be so closely re-
lated to the girl-friend's genitals as to her entire personal history,
thoughts and feelings.^^
That is, that which determines the attitude of the patient to-
ward the suitcase is the same as that which dctcmiines the attitude
toward sexual intercourse. It is not simply that the meaning of sex-
ual intercourse is expressed in selecting the suitcase as the symbol,
but also that sexual intercourse symbolizes a meaning-context that
^'^
Mcdard Boss, The Analysis of Dreams, trans, by Arnold J. Pomcrans (New
York, 1958), pp. 91-91.
[76]
—
can only be understood by a full phcnomenological examination of

the significance of suitcase to the patient.
Jones, like Flournoy, writes that lightning was first conceived
as divine semen,-" that the sun is first conceived as a mighty eye^'
all in accordance with the psychoanalytic presupposition that "All
symbols represent ideas of the self and the immediate blood rela-
tives or of the phenomena of birth, love, and death." ^° What he
and other psychoanalytic theorists fail to consider with due care
is the possibility that the notion of what, say, semen, is, is as much
derived from the relation of the primitive to lightning. The
primitive mind does not separate the object "semen" and uncon-
sciously relate his feelings to this object with a new separate object
"lightning." Rather, what, for us who are examining the process,
is a reciprocal modification takes place wherein the primitive's rela-
tion to lightning conditions his relation to semen as well as vice
versa. The psychoanalyst may then raise the question as to why
the primitive chose lightning from among all the natural phe-
nomena as relaring to semen. But we may justly return the question
as to why he chose semen from among all "bodily" phenomena
to relate to lightning.
And so, we may well admit that allsymbols refer to the self,
immediate blood relatives, love, death, —
and birtH but we must add
that the conception of these is the symbols
determined as much by
as the symbols are determined by the primitive mind's conception
of them.
Being an explanatory system, psychoanalysis cannot "go this
far," or, cannot "rest content" with such a nodon of reciprocal
modification. It seeks an irreducible, a basic reality in terms of
which other phenomena are to be explained. This basic reality, or
lesser circle, we have seen to be the biological conception of in-
srinct. In order to explain or interpret symbols, psychoanalysis
seeks to reduce the symbols to instinctual components and claims
that these symbols are symbolic of these instinctual bases of psy-
chic hfe. We have already observed that the sense in which, for
psychoanalysis, these symbols are symbohc of the instinctual bases
is a dubious one. The question as to the common universal, or
28 Ernest Jones, Papers on Psychoanalysis (New York, 1913), pp. 134-135.

'^ Ibid., p. 134.
30 Ibid., p. 102.
[77I
ground of similarity between the symbol and the symbolized, as I

have tried to show, is not adequately handled by psychoanalytic
theory.We must therefore ask if there is not another sense in
which the term "symbol" is being used by psychoanalysis, a sense
that does not have necessary or primary reference to the kind and
degree of similarity between the symbol and the symbolized. This
brings us to our third point, the question as to whether psycho-
analysis deals with symbols or with eif ect-signs.
Sign and Symbol / Jones tells us that there is a "strict sense" in

which psychoanalysis employs the term "symbol." ^^ According to
him, the characteristics of true symbols are (i) representation of
unconscious material, (2) constant meaning, (3) independence of
individual conditioning factors, (4) evolutionary basis, (5) linguis-
tic connections, and (6) phylogenetic parallels. Of these sLx char-
acteristics, Jones lists the first as "perhaps the characteristic that
most sharply distinguishes true symbolism from other processes
to which the name is often apphed." ^^ And the key point that
Jones makes in delineating representation of unconscious material
is that "the affect investing the concept [the symbol] is in a
state of repression." ^^ To be noted here is the fact that Jones's
main stress falls not on considerations as to the similarity between
symbol and symbolized, or on the power of the symbol to express
the symbolized, but rather on the cause-effect relation between
symbolized and symbol. The principle standard, in short, that, for
Jones, defines the true symbol allows that the relationship between
the symbolized and the symbol be external and even adventitious
to the essential, siii generis structure of the symbolized. Jones's
standard is one of efficient causality in which the symbol refers to
the symbolized, but does not necessarily lead to a conception of it.
It appears, then, that the "strict sense" in which Jones uses the
term "symbol" is the sense usually attached to the term "sign," or,
to be more precise, "effect-sign." Ferenczi writes:
... it is more prudent not to assume that the conditions under

which symbols arise arc identical with those for analogy-forma-
81 Ibid.,
pp. 87-142.
82 Ibid.,
p. 97.
88 Ibid., p. 97.
[78]
tion in general, but to presuppose for this specific kind of analogy-

formation specific conditions or origin, and to search for these.'*
It may be remarked that in any endeavor to seek out the essential

structures of intrapsychic symbolism, the search for some type
of causality must be naturally of primary importance. But clearly
this is so only where meaning to an individual is conceived of as
subsequent to motivation. If we limited ourselves only to con-
sciousness, such a proposition would be close to nonsense moti- —
vation and meaning being in consciousness inextricably inter-
woven. However, as soon as we posit such a thing as unconscious
motivation, it is possible to speak of motives that occur before
meaning is given to certain representations. In fact it is only when
we posit some kind of unconscious psychic process that we can
meaningfully ask about an individual's motives for perceiving or
relating himself to an image or event in a certain way. If we limit
ourselves to consciousness, then the way in which an individual
manifestly perceives or understands an object, image, or event
exhausts all doubt as to his motives. Even the obsessive-neurotic
has a phenomenal field of meaning for his "irrational" acts or
fears. For consciousness, the perceived object itself lends us the
"motivation" for perceiving it in the way we do. Snakes are fear-
ful because they are poisonous; I love this woman because she is
beautiful, and so forth.'^ A full phenomenological exfoliation (uti-
lizing, among other things, the method of free-association) of my
feeling and understanding of snakes may reveal tie-ins with such
things as sex, tie-ins of which I was not thetically aware. But this
does not necessarily imply that my fear of snakes is motivated or
caused by that which is so revealed. It may be that my particular
fear of snakes is representative of a larger fear that profoundly
defines my character (or existence). And both the fear of snakes
and the associated fears and desires may be said to be symbolic of
the larger fear. We might say then that snake is for me a symbol,
or more accurately, that my fear of snakes is a symbol.
Insofar, however, as we seek to explain certain perceptions,
emotions, images, rather than "merely" lay forth their complete
3* Ferenczi, Vol. I, p. 278.

35 Compare D. Snygg and A. W. Combs, "The Phenomenological Approach
and the Problem of 'Unconscious' Behavior," journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, Vol. 45 (1950), pp. 532-538.
[79]
meaning within consciousness, the laws that govern the relation of

symbol to symbolized cannot lie within the conscious structure of
the meaning of an image as it presents itself to the individual that —
is, he cannot "really" explain his fear of snakes, he can offer only
"rationalizations." The explanatory laws cannot even be of the
same kind as is aware of as governing the
those that the individual
association of images and objects. For the explanation hes not in
the full elaboration of the meaning-phenomena as they are experi-
enced, but in the reduction to elements and laws that are their
necessary condition. Explanation cannot be satisfied with a quanti-
tative extension of those components that make up the lived and
conscious structure of meaning-phenomena, for such an elabora-
tion would, theoretically, place the source of explanation in the
source of the meaning-phenomena, the individual. Since it is just
this that psychoanalysis, a priori, cannot allow without its own
intervention, the totality of meaning-phenomena themselves are
delimited, and a qualitatively different ground of their being is es-
tablished. The cause-effect relation adequately satisfies this crite-

rion of explanation. The image and its meaning to an individual
are seen as caused by a force or "affect" of which the individual
is unaware. Nothing in the phenomenological content of the
meaning-phenomena or their structural laws (in the case of sym-
bols, those laws being either similarity between symbol and sym-
bolized, power of expression) points to this cause; it is "uncon-
scious."
. . . one was formerly inclined to believe that things are con-

founded because they are similar; nowadays we know that a thing
is confounded with another only because certain motives for this
arc present; similarity merely provides the opportunity for these
motives to function.^^
Before proceeding further in this vein, it is advisable briefly to

sketch in the context of this discussion a distinction between the
terms "sign" and "symbol." It is important to bearin mind that we
arc moving here intrapsychically — both symbol and symbolized,

sign and signified being "located within" the psyche, or, in Daseins-
analytic terms, within the Eigcvivelt. In science, literature, art,
religion, mathematics, both symbol and symbolized are, at least OS-
S' Ferenczi, Vol. I, p. 281.
[80]
tensibly, external to the individual to whom they are present. Per-

haps in art or religion a symbol may at times be subjective and
personal, but the symbolized at beyond the bor-
all times extends
ders of what the individual considers himself. In psychology, how-
ever, the symbolized must of necessity be viewed as part of the
self or "within" the psyche.
Now, between sign and symbol, we recog-
as to the distinction
nize in literature the distinction between "mere" allegory and sym-
bolism. Allegory is frequently distinguished from symbolism by
the arbitrariness of its representations; symbols, on the other hand,
are known by their epitomization of and participation in the reality
of which they are a symbol. Allegory demands of the reader that
he know beforehand what meaning is being represented; symbol-
ism, ideally, carries its meaning in itself. Allegory is substitution,
symbolism expression. The structure of the symbol, taken in itself,
is, essentially, the structure of the symbolized. In religion, we
recognize the difference between the seer's reading of the entrails
of a bird and a natural phenomenon such as thunder and lightning
as a symbol of the Deity. In such a case the seer reads signs that
do not carry on their face the meaning that he attributes to them,
whereas thunder and lightning are a symbol of, say, power, be-
cause of their immediate phenomenal effects might we not even —
say that the notion of power springs from just such things as thun-
der and lightning? In mathematics we may say "let P stand for
pressure, V for volume, T for temperature of an ideal gas." P, V,
and T are signs or arbitrary designations. But the equation ex-
pressing the fact that V is directly proportional to T and inversely
proportional to P, simply because it expresses an observable factual
truth, is a symbol.
Although it might be argued that the sign-symbol distinction
as implied above is relative to the degree of knowledge of the con-
fronted individual and that what for one is a sign for another is a
symbol, the point at hand is that such a distinction in fact is to be
made no matter where, in particular cases, one chooses to draw the
line. All of the above considerations as to literature, religion, and
science have in common that the reference of both signs and sym-
bols is to something extrapersonal, something other than the con-
fronted individual. The difference between sign and symbol, ex-
pressed phenomenologically, is that whereas the symbol expresses
[81]
—,
and partakes of that of which it is a symbol, the sign refers to that

which is qualitatively different from it—and, this being the case, it
therefore does not and cannot express the signified.

We therefore reach the conclusion that, phenomenologically
experientially , an intrapsychic sign is an impossibility That . is, one
cannot experience something as a sign of an inner state or emotion.
There is no sense to be made of inward referring of one state or
emotion to another without that state in some respect resembling

and expressing the other. If the "signified" is unknown (or "un-
conscious"), it also makes no sense phenomenologically to speak
of an "inner sign," since, as pointed out above, the signified must
be known or suspected for a sign to be at all possible. My fear of

harmless kittens, which I cannot justify as I would a fear of poison-
ous snakes, insofar as I see it as referring to a larger fear, is, by
virtue of similarity, a symboUc expression of that larger fear. The
psychoanalyst may tell me that it is a "symbol" of a need for affec-
tion, but I cannot experience it as such without altering the very
nature of my emotion of fear.
The point here is that the essence of a sign, as distinguished
from a symbol, does not involve the meaning structure of the
signified, but only refers to the signified. Tîe sign serves either as
a substitute or pointer in relation to the signified. In all cases the
function of the sign is replaced or overridden by the presence of
the signified. In this sense, the sign is a "stepping stone" to the sig-
nified. Speaking phenomenologically, we posit the presence of the
emotion, meaning, or object that is intrapsychically represented
this presence as experienced by the individual. There can be no
experience of an intrapsychic sign because that wliich is to be signi-
fied is always already present.
The following example might be adduced as an objection: I
am climbing the stairs of a strange house and before I enter one of

the rooms I note that my palms are perspiring, my heart is beat-
ing faster, my throat is dry. Are these not signs of an intrapsychic
—
phenomenon fear? We need not enter the complexities of the
James-Langc theory of emotions to dispose of this objection. The
condition of my palms, heartbeat, and throat arc not intrapsychic
—
phenomena for the way the objection is phrased implies a state
where the body is being observed as other than the "mind." In the
experiencing of fear, we do not experience signs of fear, signs that
[82j
are of qualitatively a different order than what they signify. Let

me, however, entering this same house, hear a rustling at the top
of the stairs, and I fear a ghost, a bandit, and so forth. The fear of a
ghost in this case represents a larger, more general fear of this
strange house —but it expresses it, it partakes of the reality that it
represents; it symbolizes it.
Returning now to the main stream of the discussion, we recall

that "the Freudian symbol is essentially and by definition an effect
of what it symbolizes." ^^ We also recall that the cause-effect rela-
tionship adequately fulfills the criteria of an explanatory system
where the phenomenal, experienced meaning contents must be re-
duced to something qualitatively different, in the case of psycho-
analysis this something being a repressed instinctual affect. From
the distinction drawn above of the difference between a sign and a
symbol, namely that the sign is qualitatively different from the
signified, we see the necessity of psychoanalysis' dealing mainly
with effect-signs, rather than symbols insofar as it explains the
patient's world. What is phenomenologically a symbol is scientifi-
cally a sign.
I have tried to indicate the phenomenological impossibility of
intrapsychic signs, but this does not imply their scientific impossi-
bility. From the point of view of an explanatory system, an intra-
psychic sign is perfectly feasible — as long as it is not claimed that
the sign is experienced as such. We understand the term "intra-
psychic sign" as referring to the instance where both sign and sig-
nified lie "within" the self. There must, therefore, be an aspect or
part of the self that is in principle unexperienceable —the un-
conscious —wherein the signified is to be found.
8T Dalbiez, Vol. II, p. 102.
(83]
IV
The Unconscious
In the preceding chapter I have shown how the natural-scientiiic,

explanatory nature of psychoanalysis precludes it from ascertain-
ing the meaning to the individual of symbols, but, rather converts
the experienced symbols into effect signs. This meaning or "com-
mon universal" we have seen was to be found in the Existential A
Priori or fundamental meaning-structure that is the transcendental
condition of the emergence of self and its "opposed" world to-
gether A\ath that world's particular, specific meanings. I have fur-
ther shown that the psychoanalytic notion of intrapsychic sign is
possible only on the supposition that a part of the psyche is in

principle unexperiencable —unconscious. In Chapter II it was
pointed out how psychoanalysis, in order to be an adequate explan-
atory, scientific system whose object was the self or psyche that
Cartesian science ruled out of the field of investigation, was led to
posit unconsciousness as the essence of consciousness. In this chap-
ter I shall indicate how the notion of the unconscious, although
necessary scientificallyunacceptable from Binswanger's point of
is
view and how the Existential A Priori is the phenomenological

ground of that which, from the point of view of natural science,
refers to an unconscious mind.
We have already noted that the concept of the unconscious is
one of the main presuppositions of what has been called the greater
circle of the science of psychoanalysis. That is, the notion of the
unconscious is a theoretical construct that serves to unify and
therefore explain certain psychic phenomena.
All these conscious acts [parapraxes, dreams, etcl remain discon-

nected and unintelligible if we are determined to hold fast to the
claim that every single mental act performed within us must be
[84]
The Unconscious
consciously experienced; on the other hand, they fall into a de-

monstrable connection if we interpolate the unconscious acts that
we infer. A gain in meaning and connection, however, is a per-
fectly justifiable motive, one which may well carry us beyond the
limitations of direct experience.^
Most clinical descriptions found in Freud employ the inferential
construct of the unconscious. Freud considers the assumption of

unconsciousness as necessary because the data of consciousness are
*
"exceedingly defective."
As a scientific system of explanation, psychoanalysis represents

a specification of the lesser circle of science in general, the dictate
to remove consciousness from the field of investigation and its
corresponding "substantialization," the notion of pure corporeal-

ity. I have indicated how this leads to an approach to psychic phe-
nomena exemplified in Freud's notion of psychic apparatus. The

concept of instinct, borrowed from biology, specifies the main
force of this psychic apparatus and thereby serves as the lesser
circle or data-constituting concept of the system as a whole. Be-
havior, emotions, thoughts are all approached and initially seen as
"the transformation of certain instinctual desires," ^The notion of
the unconscious serves the function of explaining how instincts act
where they are not perceived as acting. The unconscious provides
a way of ascertaining efficient causality among phenomena that, at
face value, do not exhibit this causality. Not only are the gaps in
the sequence of conscious acts* thus patched according to a pre-
conceived notion of how the psyche ought to work,* but also the
1 Sigmund Freud, "The Unconscious," trans, by Cecil M. Baines, in Collected

Papers (New
York, 1959), Vol. IV, p. 99.
2 Else Frenkei-Brunswik, "Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories," in Monon
Levitt (ed.), Readings in Psychoanalytic Psychology (New York, 1959), p. 31.

3 A. C. Maclntyre, The Unconscious (London, 1958), p. 27.
* Mcdard Boss, Psychoanalyse und Daseijisanalyse (Bern, 1957), p. 21-

• "William James dealt faithfully in The Principles
of Psychology with those
who wish to postulate an unconscious mind on account of such occurrences as
temporary forgctfulncss or the fact that the solution to a problem may spring to
mind effortlessly some time after our preliminary brooding on the problem had
been abandoned for want of success. For it may be that this is just how things
happen in consciousness: happenings such as these only seem to stand in need of
explanation if we are able to assume that we ought to have expected them to hap-
pen otherwise. And we have no inherent right to make this assumption." Mac-
lntyre, p. 7.
[85]
.
I>nrRODucTioN TO Binswanger's Existential Psychoanalysis
"correlation of earlier . . . experiences with such symptoms [as

well as parapraxes, dreams, etc.] ° is explained.
It appears, then, as if the concept of the unconscious functions
in a manner similar to the way the concept of the electron func-
tions in physics. Freud, however, claims more for the unconscious
than the physicist claims for the electron. The physicist does not
assert the existence of the electron; he merely uses the hypothesis
of the electron to explain. But Freud also wants to maintain that
the unconscious exists, and it is therefore incumbent upon him to
produce evidence that it is a real existent.^ Since, however, the
unconscious is ex hypothesi unobservable, what possible scientific
evidence of its existence could be forthcoming?" The difficulties
inherent in treating the unconscious as though itwere a real ex-

istent lead most psychoanalytic writers to stress that what are be-
ing talked about are processes, not a discrete thing —processes that
are not wholly separable from conscious processes (secondary proc-
esses).
Freud does not conceive of an "unconscious mind" as a separate,

unchangeable entity somehow inhabiting our mortal flesh . . .
intricate patterns may be formed at the unconscious level which

function to some extent as a dynamic unit and which combine in
a variety of ways with the secondary processes as they take shape
during the course of life . . . the unconscious is a process —or
better, processes. . . . "The unconscious" must not be consid-
ered to imply a direcdy separable entity.®
And yet, even if the unconscious be viewed as process, the diffi-
culty remains as to its status: are the processes "merely" theoretical

constructs, or are they as real as the processes for which they serve
as an explanatory basis? There no doubt that the unconscious
is
(be it a process or a thing) is often viewed by psychoanalysis as a

real existent —but then only when it has supposedly become ob-
servable.
Of course, such "unconscious dispositions toward affects" are not

theoretical constructions but may be observed clinically in the
" Maclntyre, p. 24.
• Ibid., p. 7 1
f Loc. cii.
8 Ruth L. Munroc, Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought (New York, 1955), pp.

35-37-
[861
The Unconscious
same way that unconscious ideas may be observed: they, too, de-
velop derivatives, betray themselves in dreams, in symptoms, and
in other substitute formations.*
Clearly, however, what is observed in such a case is not the

unconscious as such but only those things for which the uncon-
scious was supposed to serve as an explanatory basis. Indeed the
same author, Fenichel, admits earlier that
. . . the existence of the unconscious is an assumption that forced

itself upon psychoanalytic research when it sought a scientific ex-
planation and a comprehension of conscious phenomena.^**
This ambiguity as to the "real existence" of the unconscious

must, I think, be resolved by saying that what is most basic (most
"real") for psychoanalysis is the biological nature of man, his in-
stincts, and that the assumption of an unconscious is necessary to
explain the relation between conscious acts that are not apparently
instinctual and the instincts themselves. In a word, the notion of
instinct constitutes psychoanalysis' particular lesser circle, and the
notion of the unconscious is a presupposition of the greater circle.
Nevertheless it may be objected that the distinction drawn
above ber»êen the psychoanalyst and the physicist is not legitimate,
that the physicist does not claim that the electron does not exist,
and is only and no more than a theoretical construct. That is, it
may be objected that the hypothesis of the electron is the correct

hypothesis and that therefore the electron exists — that, namely,
existence can be inferred. I reply that the physicist, if he concludes
to the existence of the electron, does so because of what the hy-
pothesis of the electron explains, whereas the psychoanalyst seems
often to conclude to the existence and reality of phenomena be-
cause of the assumed existence of the unconscious. However, it
may well be that this is an instance of the above-mentioned "good"
circularity of a science, and similar instances may be cited from
physics in support of the psychoanalyst; and itmay also be that
each science, as it grows, passes through phases, one being the
alteration of its field of investigation under the aegis of its the-
oretical constructs.
•Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York, 1945),

p. 17.
10 /WJ., p. 7.
[87]
Binswanger's criricism of the notion of the unconscious is only

rarely expUcit, and even then it is comprised only of hints and
fragments. He is content, for the most part, to assume that his
criticism of the reductive, explanatory nature of psychoanalysis as
a whole implies more specific aspects of psycho-
his criticism of the
analytic theory.* And
whole position is, in a sense, a criti-
yet, his
cism of such a notion as the unconscious since what he is after is —
the structure of the world of the individual as it appears to the indi-
vidual, and since the unconscious has no world. ^^
In contrasting the Existential A Priori with the Freudian un-
conscious, we approach the issue from the following points of
view: (i) The Existential A Priori is to be understood as the
horizon of consciousness, a concept that we may use phenome-
nologically "in most instances where psychoanalysis will speak of
the unconsciousness of a certain experiential content."^- (2) The
Existential A Priori refers to a Dasein, whereas the unconscious
refers to a being. ^^ (3) The Existential A Priori is a manifestation
of the Heideggerean Ontological A Priori (as described in Chap-
ter I), whereas the unconscious represents the Dasein in only one
of its "existentials," that of "thrownness" (Geivorfenheit).
The Existential A Priori as

the Horizon of Experience
The term "horizon," from the Greek horos, meaning boundar)' or
Hmit, contemporary usage, differentiated from the notion of
is, in
boundary in general by its primary reference to a particular pur-
view. That is, a horizon is a horizon for someone. To speak of the
horizon of an experience is to speak of the limit of meaningfulness
that arises from the experience itself considered apart from any
larger, more inclusive experience. I do not refer here to the horizon
of the object of my experience, which, in the case, say, of per-
ception is a dimly apprehended depth or fringe of indeterminate
• It must be remembered that Binswanger views Daseinsanalysc as comple-
mentary to a scientific explanatory system, and so his criticism of such things

as the notion of the unconscious involves their claim to finality, not their re-
stricted application and practical effectiveness.
! Binswanger, S</j»cop/irt'wiV (Pfullingen, 1957), p. 149.
12 Sonncmann, Existence and Therapy (New York, 1954), p. 195.
*8 Binswanger, Schhophrenie, p. 149.
[88]
The Unconscious
perception." The horizon of an object of experience is an inde-

terminate object. The horizon of an experience is an undetermined
meaning. If I run to a tree for shelter from a sudden rain, the tree
that I experience is "partly pervaded, partly girt about" ^'^
by the
dim perceptual experience of other objects —the hills in the dis-
tance, the automobile parked along the road, even, perhaps, the
rain itself. The tree is the focus of the experience, and its horizon
is which the experience is an experience, however in-
also that of
completely outlined that horizon must necessarily be. If we speak,
however, of the horizon of the experience itself and not of its ob-
jects, the point must be phrased differently. The tree means shelter
to me, and the experience of being sheltered by the tree has its own
particular kind of horizon that must be distinguished from the
horizon of the object that is the tree. This experience is also "partly
pervaded, partly girt about" by the experience of, perhaps, being
sheltered by an umbrella, a roof; being sheltered from the sun or
the wind; being protected, being covered, and so forth. We may,
therefore, speak of an objective horizon and an experiential ho-
rizon.
Sonnemann presents another aspect of the notion of horizon:
Horizonlike, however, is not only the contour of the field of

vision as our focus encounters it [phenomenal horizon], but its
lateral contours in their remoteness from the focal axis, towards

which the field of vision gradually dims out, as well. The horn
rims of our glass, which our focus by-passes, are, in this sense,
horizonlike precisely in their nearness; even more horizonlike [as

.^^
well as nearer] to our vision is the contour of the eye itself
What Sonnemann tells us here is that if we understand horizon

as the limit of a particular purview, then the essential unalterable
limit, thatwhich cannot possibly be focused upon, is the structure
of that which makes the purview possible. Our phenomenal focus
may shift; what was once horizon may become the focus and, fre-
quently, what was focus may become horizon. But that which
makes vision itself possible cannot become the focus of vision. In
The Critique of Pure Reason, time is the horizon, in this sense, of
1* Husserl, Ideas, trans, by W. R. Boyce Gibson (London, 1951), p. 102.

16 Loc. cit.
1' Sonnemann, p. 1 95.
[89]
intuition, and the transcendental schemata are the horizon of ex-

perience. Not the Kantian categories, for they are forms of
thought and correspond, in the metaphor of the eye, to the eye
itself. It is the transcendental schemata that correspond to the
"contour of the eye," since they are necessary determinations of

the categories with respect to time. may speak of an indi- We
vidual's horizon, thus understood, as transcendental in that it repre-
sents the limit of experience in the sense of determining the pos-
sibilities of experience for the individual.
These two aspects of the notion of horizon are combined in the
Existential A Priori, which may be termed the "transcendental
experiential horizon." This somewhat forbidding expression simply
means that the ultimate hmit of the experience of an individual is
that grand meaning-context that makes his experience possible.
This grand meaning-context is the Existential A Priori. A spe-
cific comparison with the Freudian application of the notion of the
unconscious is now in order.

As an example of psychoanalytic procedure in this context, we
may cite, in a highly schematized and simplified manner, that group
of neurotic reactions in which a present disturbance is Unked caus-
ally to a past traumatic experience. We limjt ourselves here to
those cases where the event is experienced as traumatic because
certain impulses hitherto repressed threaten to break into con-
sciousness, this being a special case of those experiences where un-
mastered and unmasterable quantities of inner excitation force a
breakdown of equilibrium. Already we see how Daseinsanalyse
complements such psychoanalytic description. For Daseinsanalyse,
a traumatic experience is one in which the meaning to the individ-
ual of an event contradicts or, "goes beyond" the transcendental
experiential horizon; that is, the overarching meaning-context that
is the Existential A Priori makes possible an experience that leads
to its own negation. Binswanger's example of the skating incident
illustrates this." In this case the Existential A Priori is the category
of continuity; "Everything that makes the world significant is sub-
mitted to the rule of that one category." '^
The loss of the heel in
the skating rink is experienced as a break in continuity, and thus
1''
Binswangcr, "The Existential Analysis School of Thought," in Rollo May,
Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger (eds.). Existence, p. 203.
18 Loc. cit.
I90]
The Unconscious
the Existential A Priori (which is this particular Dasein) leads to

its own contradiction, and therefore to the negation and contra-
diction of its world, and, therefore, to the closing off of that
world, to fainting.
According to psychoanalysis this traumatic experience causes a
phobia in which the patient suffers an uncontrollable spell of anx-
ietywhenever the heel of her shoe appears loosened or whenever
anyone touches her heel or even speaks of heels.^® (Her own heels
have to be nailed firmly to her soles.) At such times, if she cannot
run away in time, she faints. The causal link for psychoanalysis,
between the early skating incident and the present phobia, lies in
the unconscious. A, the skating incident, is the cause of B, the pres-
ent phobia. The phobia connected with heels arises from an un-
conscious identification, early and late, of the skating incident with
the fear of separation from the mother. Memory of the traumatic
event is thus, perhaps, repressed; and the present anxiety attacks
and fainting spells are explainable only by recourse to the notion of
the persistence of this memory in the unconscious.
Daseinsanalyse would, however, put it thus: the narrowness of
the transcendental experiential horizon cannot admit the meaning
that this very horizon lends to the skating incident. What is "re-
pressed," therefore, is not the memory of that event, but its mean-
ing. The horizon in which the patient now lives still cannot admit
such a meaning, break in continuity; and thus the shutting off the
world by fainting continues to be the only way of preserving that
horizon without giving up whatever freedom remains within that
horizon. It is thus not that A is the cause of B, but rather, that the
present horizon is no less restricted than the past, and so the
meaning of A still cannot be accepted. The skating incident is
traumatic because of what is now the horizon; and it is therefore

which is the cause of A.
B, the patient's present state,
The between the past incident and the present phobia is,
link
indeed, unconscious, but only in the same sense that the "person
who raids the icebox at night . . . is . . . unconscious of what an
observer may term his voraciousness. . .
." ^° The Existential A
Priori of continuity in the patient is lived and is therefore, like
the horizonlike contour of the eye, not in the focus of attention.
i» Loc. cit.
20 Sonnemann, p. 194.
[9']
What the category of continuity "brackets-in" is at the focus of

attention, while the category itself is so near to her as knower that
precisely as long as her being-in-the-world is defined by this cate-
gory as her conceptual focus, her focus of attention, always requir-
ing a certain sense of otherness in order to be the object of focal
attention, must bypass —shoot beyond— this category as the possi-
ble beholding of her thought.^^ Only by the establishing of a new,
larger horizon can this meaning become conscious, a therapeutic
goal that departs from the classic psychoanalytic emphasis on bring-
ing the unconscious to consciousness as itself the effective "cure."
What does this "philosophical" notion of horizon add to under-
standing the neurotic? Its immediate effect is to underline the dubi-
ousness of strict past-to-present causal relationships that psycho-
analysis originally stressed. For the horizon is in time, and what
from an observer's point of view was in the past is present within
the transcendental experiential horizon. The Existential A Priori
makes possible the effect of the past on the present; the relation of
the present individual to his past is not itself determined by that
past, but by the horizon ivithin which he experiences both present
and past.
The difficulty, now, is precisely the one met with in the case of
the psychoanalytic usurpation of the principle of strict causalism:

in order to claim to know that B is the effect of A, one must be
able to deduce from an objectively given A that its effect w// be
[rather than has been] B, a requirement psychoanalysis never
meets since its whole interpretation, even its "knowledge," of A
is, vice versa, determined by its knowledge of B as a datum. As
partaking in the patient's present state [B], his own mnemonic
knowledge of A objectively belongs to that datum; but this means
that just objectively the knower and the known can never be dis-
entangled. What causally is never reducible to any states of its
past, the referent of his own inner life history, the loho of an
existence, registers, pre-rcflectively, what amounts to a reversal of
"causality" —a reversal of the objective functional order of ge-
netic evolutions qua processes: in phenomenal time, not a child-
hood trauma A is the cause of an adult symptom picture B, a

connection which only mnemonic reflection can establish here as
** Paraphrased from Sonncmann, p. 195.
[9H
—
The Unconscious
phenomenal causality with all its misleading implications that we

reviewed before. On the contrary, what A is is wholly deter-
mined by the present state of the existence [B]; for being presup-
poses presence, and what is present here of A but a memory that,
^^
as such, belongs totally to B?
More positively, this notion of horizon enables us to speak

about the original "cause" of traumatic experience itself while still
remaining true to the phenomenological dictate that we allow no
presupposed theories to shape the data. The psychoanalyst must
account for the original trauma by recourse to a theory of instinc-
tual needs and frustrations in early childhood. Daseinsanalyse, on
the other hand, approaches such a problem in this manner:
We should, therefore, not explain the emergence of t-he phobia

by an overly strong "pre-oedipal" tie to the mother, but rather
realize that such overly strong filial tie is only possible on the
premiss of a world-design exclusively based on connectedness,
cohesiveness, continuity. Such a way of experiencing "world"
which always implies such a "key" [attunement, Gestimmtheit] —
does not have to be "conscious"; but neither must we call it "un-
conscious" in the psychoanalytical sense, since it is outside the
contrast of these opposites. Indeed, it does not refer to anything
psychological but to something which only makes possible the
psychic f act.^^
Neither the loss of the heel nor the womb and birth fantasies are
"explanations" of the emergence of the phobia. Rather, they be-
came so significant because holding on to mother meant to this
child's existence — as is natural for the small child — having a hold

on the world. By the same token, the skating incident assumed its
it, the world suddenly changed
traumatic significance because, in
its face, disclosed itself from the angle of suddenness, of some-
thing totally different, new, and unexpected. For that there was
no place in this child's world; it could not enter into her world-
design; it stayed, as it were, always outside; it could not be mas-
tered. In other words, instead of being accepted by the inner life
so that its meaning and content could be absorbed, it appeared
22 Sonnemann, p. 233.
23 Binswanger, "The Elxistencial Analysis School of Thought," op. cit., p. 204.
[93]
IXTRODUCTIOX TO BiXSWANGEr's Ex1STEXTL\L PSYCHOANALYSIS
and reappeared over and over again without having any meaning
for the existence, in an ever-recurring invasion by the Sudden
into the motionlessness of the world-clock.'*
The notion of horizon gives us the possibility of speaking phe-

nomenologically about that which Husserl termed a phenomeno-
logical Nothing. It gives us this possibility by indicating, from the
point of view of consciousness, the relationship of experience to
that which makes experience possible, the relationship of a particu-
lar meaning to that which is the ground of that meaning.
The notion of horizon by no means can replace the notion of
the unconscious. If it should masquerade as an explanatory prin-
ciple, it would rightly be condemned as an ineffectual paraphrasing
of a powerful theoretical insight. But if we seek to understand the

world of the individual as he himself experiences it; and if we find,
as we do, that an essential element of this world must of necessity
escape the focus of experience in the way that a transcendental
ground must a priori escape the focus of experience, the metaphor
of a horizon admirably depicts the manner in which this tran-
scendental ground is experienced.
Denotation of ^Ûnconscious*^
and ^Êxistential A Priori"
It is clear that the concept of horizon as delineated above does not

preclude a usage of the term "unconscious" as adjectival, as de-
scriptive of an aspect of experience. We may say with Maclntyre
that this descriptive aspect represents
. . . Freud's additions to the catalogue of mental events whereby

unconscious wishes, anxieties and the like appear as well as con-
scious ones. Here Freud extends ordinary language, but ordinary
language provides a foundation for his work. And his work at this
point is a work of description.-^
Our concern here, however, is with what is called the "specific

psychoanalytic meaning" of the concept of unconsciousness.^*' In
2< Ibid., pp. 204-205.

25 Maclntyre. p. 48.
2" James C. MUler, Uncomcioumess (New York, 1942), p. 41.
l94J
The Unconscious
cases where Freud describes his work as "the scientific method by

which the unconscious can be studied," ^' he is implying a concept
of the unconscious that goes beyond the merely adjectival; when
he speaks of the unconscious as discriminating and censoring, he is
implying a concept that goes beyond the function of a theoretical,
explanatory concept. It is this strict psychoanalytic meaning of the

concept of the unconscious that Binswanger opposes to his own
views:
Hence Freud did not at first speak of an "ego" in regard to the

unconscious, but of an "id"; later, however, he lent support to
the popular conception of the unconscious as a second ego or a
second person by the assertion that "parts of the ego and super-
ego," too must be recognized as unconscious.
In the light of all this, existential analysis must state that the un-
conscious in the strict psychoanalytic sense [i.e., not in the sense
of nonattention or forgetting] may point to a being but by no
means to an existence.^®
Insofar, then, as Freud is introducing a concept of the uncon-

scious that radically differs in which that term
from the manner
had been used up to his day (both by psychologists and "imagina-
tive writers," ^®) the unconscious refers either to real being, or to a
"second person." Binswanger allows that the unconscious may
refer to a being, but not an existence (Dasein), and by this he
means the unconscious can have no world and no relation to itself
through a world. Yet, it may represent part of the being of the
Dasein, a manifestation of one existential (thrownness). However,
insofar as it represents a part of the Dasein, it is the Dasein that
relates to and determines it at
it least as much as it finds itself {sich
befindet) determined by it. In a word, when we termed the Ex-
istential A Priori a "universal with power" and referred this power
back to the Dasein itself, we implied that the locus of self-
determination of an individual lies in the mode inwhich the Dasein

manifests the fundamental ontological a priori of Care. Binswanger
cannot, therefore, allow what he would consider the Freudian no-
27 Maclntyre, p. 44.
28 Binswanger, "The Case of EUlen West," in R. May et al. (eds.), Existence,
p. 326.
29 Maclntyre, p. 44.
[95]
Introduction to Binsvânger's Existential Psychoanalysis
Such a notion
tion that one aspect of Care determines the Dasein.
would be incompatible with the (Kantlike) transcendental free-
dom in the Heideggerean view of man. There can, in sum, be no
causal efficacy (in the natural-scientific sense) determining the Ex-
istential A Priori.
We must turn to Jean-Paul Sartre for the spelling-out of that
criticism only implied in Binswanger's writings — the criticism,
namely, of a position that allows the determination of the whole
self by a part of the self, or, in Binswanger's terms, a position that
allows beings, Seiende, to determine Dasein. Sartre's attack on this

position takes the general form that self-determination by a part of
the self must implicitly reintroduce a whole self as the part, leading
thus either to an infinite regress or to the subversion of the initial
part-whole distinction. The well-known chapter on "Bad Faith"

in Being and Nothingness presents the argument that the uncon-
scious censor must be conscious of that which it represses in order
to be unconscious of it.
But it is not sufficient that it [the censor] discern the condemned

drives; it must also apprehend them as to be repressed, which im-
plies in it at the very least an awareness of its activity. In a word,
how could the censor discern the impulses needing to be re-
pressed without being conscious of them? How can we conceive
of a knowledge which is ignorant of itself? To know is to know
that one knows, said Alain. Let us say rather: All knowing is con-
sciousness of knowing. Thus the resistance of the patient implies
on the level of the censor an awareness of the thing repressed as
such, a comprehension of the end toward which the questions of

the psychoanalyst are leading, and an act of synthetic cormection
by which it compares the truth of the repressed complex to the
psychoanalytic hypothesis which aims at it. These various opera-
tions in their turn imply that the censor is conscious [of] itself.
But what type of self-consciousness can the censor have? It must

be consciousness [of] being conscious of the drive to be repressed,
but precisely in order not to be conscious of «.'"
We need not elaborate on the Sartrean context of Bad Faith in

order to see the relevance of this argument in our own perspective.
30Jcan-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans, by Hazel E. Barnes (New

York, 1956), pp. 52-53.
[96]
.
The Unconscious
Consciousness, which was to be "accounted for" is reintroduced

on the level of the so-called unconscious. Translated into Heideg-
gerean terms, the Dasein must be viewed as ontologically and
transcendentally prior to its determination or "parts."
Another part of Sartre's argument highlights this point equrlly
decisively. Sartre starts with the observation that, by the distinction
between the "id" and the "ego," Freud has cut the psychic whole
into two:
I am the ego, but I a?n not the id. I hold no privileged position in
relation to my unconscious psyche. I am my ow n psychic phe-
nomena in so far as I establish them in their conscious reality.
. Thus psychoanalysis substitutes for

. . the notion of bad faith,
the idea of a lie without a liar; it allows me to understand how it
is possible for me to be lied to without lying to myself since it
places me in the same relation to myself that the Other is in re-

spect to me; it replaces the duality of the deceiver and the de-
ceived, the essential condition of the lie, by that of the "id" and
the "ego." It introduces into my subjectivity the deepest intersub-
jective structure of the Mit-sein.^^ (Emphasis added.)
Hence we are faced with an infinite regress as long as we posit a

part of the self that, while being inaccessible to consciousness, still
causally determines consciousness.

The above serves to indicate more explicitly Binswanger's
views on the unconscious. He sees its power as an explanatory
hypothesis, but from the perspective of Daseinsanalyse, the experi-
ential data that it accounts for represent one aspect of the Dasein,
that which Heidegger terms thrownness.
The Unconscious and ^^Thrownness"

Before pursuing this last point further, I want to make clear that
where Sartre speaks of consciousness, Heidegger and Binswanger
speak of Dasein; neither look upon the basic existential reality of
consciousness as over against, say, emotion or will. Consciousness,
in this latter sense, is itself open to a Deseinsanalytic placing or
interpretation within the Dasein. Thus Binswanger:
'1 Ibid., pp. 50-5 1
[97]
While psychoanalysis, as we know, interprets the unconscious

from the perspective of consciousness, it is clear that a doctrine,
which rather than taking its departure from the intentionality of
consciousness shows how this [consciousness] is grounded in the
temporality' of the human Dasein, must also interpret the distinc-
tion between consciousness and unconsciousness temporally and
existentially.^-
The temporal-existential "placing" of "unconsciousness" is the

(Heideggerean) existential of thrownness:
The point of departure for this interpretation cannot, therefore,

be consciousness. It can, instead, only be the "unconscious," the
thrownness and determinateness of the Dasein.^^
The thrownness of the Dasein, its facticity, is the transcendental

horizon of all that scientific systematic psychiatry' delimits as real-
ity under the name of organism, body (and heredity, climate,
milieu, etc.), and also for all that which is delimited, investigated
and researched as psychic determinateness: namely, as mood and
ill humor, as craziness, compulsive or insane "possessedness," as
addiction, instinctuality, as confusion, phantasy determination, as,
in general, unconsciousness.^*
For Heidegger the existential of Befindlichkeit expresses that

constitutive aspect of the Dasein that emphasizes the Dn, the fact
of being there, placed in a world in which countless articulations of
the non-Dasein influence and give shape to the futurity and pro-
jectedness of the Dasein. That the non-Dasein of necessity' so reveals
itself to the Dasein is expressed by Heidegger's term, Angeiviesen-
heit (disclosing persistent reference).* Dasein's attitude toward
itself within the context of Befindlichkeit is termed thrownness. The
Dasein finds itself determined, limited, placed in time and space;
it finds in itself what on reflection would appear to be elements
of the non-Dasein; in a word, it encounters itself as facticity, as
that which already has been determined and fixed without, so to
speak, its own consent. This sense of passivity, of having-been-
32 Binswangcr, p. 219 of this volume.

83 Loc. cit.
•* Ibid.,
pp. 2 1 2-1 1 3.
• Brock's translation.
[98]
—
The Unconscious
determined is what is primarily expressed by the term Geivorfen-

heit, being-thrown.
Binswanger terms this thrownness the transcendental horizon
of all that psychiatry investigates under the name of body, organ-
ism, mood, depression, insanity, compulsion, instinctuality, etc.
in sum, unconsciousness. From the above discussion of the notion
of horizon, we can conclude that for Binswanger that which makes
possible the experience of being determined by that which lies
within the self is that ontologically a priori structure of the Dasein

to which Heidegger gives the name Geworfenheit (thrownness).
We may therefore also conclude that for each individual the Ex-
istential A Priori manifests itself partially under the aspect of
facticity, being-determined by "drives," "moods," the past, all
of which are found there ("within" the self). That this aspect of
facticity is ultimately to be viewed as caught up in a larger free-
dom, in the Existential A Priori as a whole with its other aspects
of pro-ject (EyitiDurf), understanding (Verstehen) and openness
{Erschlossenheit) need not blind us to seeing the relevance of
Heideggerean Befindlichkeit as thrownness to the experiential
data and theoretical orientation of the science of psychoanalysis.
Thus Binswanger does not deny psychic determinism, or the
facticity of the body and its chemistry, or the needs that drive the
compulsive. He is ready to agree with Lindner that the instincts
are "just there," ^° or with Madame Sechehaye, who notes that the
body, as definition and determination, is a priori necessary for the
existence of what we call and define as ego or self.
The consciousness of "being a body" seems indispensable to the

differentiation of the ego and the non-ego. . . . Since it consti-
tutes at once part of both subject and object, the body serves the
function of linking the ego to the outer world.*"
. . . The ego is nothing without its own body and without an

awareness of the universe which would be impossible except for
the body. Not that the body produces it [the ego] by a mysteri-
ous epiphenomenon, but in order for consciousness to exist, we
35 Robert Lindner, Prescription for Rebellion (New York, 1952), pp. 30-31.
38 M. Sechehaye, Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl (New York, 1956),
pp. 144-145.
[99]
must differentiate ourselves from the world and consequently re-

alize our body's limitations.^'
What Binswanger, it seems to me, wants to emphasize is that

thrownness is an a priori constitutive element of (in) the Dasein
and hence, constitutive of the self to a degree. He wants, therefore,
to stress the prior unity of the Dasein as Care while at the same
time acknowledging one of its manifestations as facticity, symbol-
ized by the body, the unconscious.
It is Heidegger's great merit to have summed up the being of the

Dasein under the all too easily misunderstood title of Care
[=caring for], and to have phenomenologically explored its
basic structures and make-up. Thrownness, in the sense of the

facticity of the Dasein's answerability to its that-it-is, is only one
component ["existential"] of this structure. . . . Thus what in
psychiatry is irreversibly separated into discrete realities of fields
of study, namely, the finite human Dasein, is here presented in its
basic structural unity .^*
The Rxistential A Priori must therefore be viewed as accom-

modating the causal necessity that psychoanalysis describes as lying
in the unconscious and as sourced in the instincts. The emergence
of the self on the background of the Dasein (the Jemeinigkeit of
Heidegger) transcendentally presupposes the encounter of Dasein
with its own facticity. As the concrete manifestation in the indi-
vidual of the ontologically a priori structure of Care, the Existen-
tial A Priori as thrownness expresses the individual's sense of his
own finitude, character, needs, and history, these latter elements
and their interrelation being what psychoanalysis explains by the
postulation of the unconscious.* Further investigation of this con-
87 Louis Lavelle, in Sechchaye, pp. 145-146.
38 Binswanger, p. 213of this volume.
• The natural-scientific reduction process that introduces causal necessity under
the rubric of unconsciousness, organism, psyche, therefore finds its support, for
Binswanger, in the "nature of the case."
Wc can say of the psyche as well as of the organism that they belong to
the hidden, but as hidden "disclosed" ontological character of the facticity
of ihrovmncss of the being we call man in his thereness (Da). (Binswanger,
Vortrage, Vol. II, p. 299.)
VVe must be careful, however, to distinguish this facticity, which is a Seinscharak-

ter dcs Dascins, from the factuality that natuiral science investigates. The Heideg-
[ 100]
The Unconscious
cept of thrownness is best placed within the context of the psycho-

analytic and Daseinsanalytic treatment of psychopathology, to
which we now turn.
gerean notion of facticity expresses that the Dascin finds it has seinen Grund
gelegt''' (Vortrage, Vol. II, p. 299), but is nevenheless "surrendered
nicht selbst
over to it" (ibm uberantwortet) . It is simply the that-it-is which is revealed
ierschlossen) to the Dasein; why the hidden (verborgen)
Dasein is as it is, is
in this original encounter. therefore, does not encounter its own fac-
The Dasein,
ticity as it encounters an object in the world {eine V orhandene) \ its facticity is a
determination of its own essential being.
That it factually is may, as far as why (it is), be hidden; the "that" itself,
however, is revealed to the Dasein. (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 276.)
Binswanger treats this why of the Dasein before its own facticity as the source
of science.
The existential concept of science is carried by the question "why?" When

this question is directed by the Dasein solely to the hidden ground of its
that-it-is, then we find ourselves in the science of life, of biology, genetics,
biological psychology and psychopathology. {Vortrage, Vol. II, pp. 299-
300.)
The Dasein, seeking to know the why of its facticity uncovers laws, explanations,
causal necessity: in a word, jactttality.
The "why" in the sense of facticity of answerableness of the Dasein to its
ground is changed, as science, into the "why" of the fact of its "being-alive"
as an innerworldly being. ( Vortrage, Vol. II, p. 300.)
The Existential A Priori is the unitary manifestation of Care and its existentials,
among which is that one that Heidegger calls Befindlichkeit, Geworfenheit, and
Faktizitdt. Factual is the content of the mode of existence called Facticity. The
particular causes, needs, drives, and meanings that psychoanalysis deals with and
explains do not constitute facticity, but it is the facticity of the Dasein that makes
possible and that necessitates the asking-why of science.
[10.]
V
Psychopathology
In Chapter II the biological concept of instinct was singled out as

that which constitutes the lesser circle of psychoanalysis considered
as an explanatory system. Within the context of that chapter in-
stincts were defined as intentional acts having no original essential
reference to an agent-self. By maintaining this minimal intentional-
ity as its lesser circle, psychoanalysis, it was observed, is able to
draw the mean between the overreductive tendencies of non-
Freudian psychology and a nonreductive, nonexplanatory
scientific
descriptive psychology. Meanings are preserved as the most primi-
tive reaUty in the system, meanings that have no essential reference
to an individual self, the latter being that which is reduced by
explanation.
Prior to this, medicine was characterized as that branch of bi-
ology of the human organism dealing with biological purpose,
—
norms, and values as biology with a specific attitude and center
of reference: man. We
therefore spoke of medicine as the intro-
duction of a valuational attitude into the lesser circle of biology.
After a discussion of Freud's conception of man as hoino natiira,
we thereby arrived at the point where we could speak of medical
psychology or psychopathology in the Freudian sense as the intro-
duction into the lesser circle of psychoanalysis of the value-concept
of mental health. The problem then arose that —whereas in bio-
logical medicine the value terms of health, symptom, illness, etc.,
arc fully expressible in a nonvaluation context of physiology', neu-

rology, etc. — in medical psychology the notions of (mental)
health, normality, etc., arc not referrablc to such "objectively"
unambiguous states of the physical organism such as life, death,
organic malfunction.
[102]
Psychopathology
This problem arises only because the notion of instinct forms

the lesser circle of psychoanalysis. That is, for psychoanalysis the
primitive reality is an intention; the instincts intend objects and
these objects are correspondingly valued, desired, needed, wished
for. In biology the concept of instinct lies in the greater circle and
serves as a theoretical construct that, among others, unites data
that are the result of a prior transformation of the phenomena in
accordance with the Cartesian demand that intentionality (con-
sciousness) be removed from the field of inquiry, the res externa.
Viewed out of the historical context of its development (which,
to be sure, is the context of practical medicine), the science of
psychoanalysis, while exhibiting the desirable mean between the
acquiescent and reductive tendencies of reason, pays a price for its
explanatory adequacy when it becomes medical, a price exacted by

the nature of its subject matter.
When biology is viewed as medicine, processes themselves un-
intentional are evaluated, referred, placed in a framework of rela-
tively unambiguous value, organic health. When psychoanalytic
psychology is viewed as medicine, however, processes themselves
intentional such as values, meanings to a self, are evaluated eval- —
uated according to the criterion of biological purpose. The point I
am making here is that such evaluating of values themselves is in-
evitable as long as the intentionality of instinct remains the lesser

circle of psychoanalysis — as it must remain if psychoanalysis is to
avoid the pitfalls of overreduction exhibited by such schools as
behaviorism. All these considerations led us further also to con-
clude in Chapter where psychoanalysis avoids the dilem-
II that
mas that arise when
method of inquiry is of the same genus
the
as the object of inquiry, it encounters them again as medicine,
where the basis of influence and control is of the same genus as
that which is to be influenced. The price of evaluating values or of
attempting to endow meanings with meaning is an overriding am-
biguity as to the nature of the therapeutic goal: normality. For
science cannot justify a value as it justifies a theory —unless it can
potentially reduce this value to "fact" as can biological medicine
simply by transforming every medical fact into a biological fact
with the loss only of an evaluating attitude. Again, it is just this
that psychoanalysis cannot do, for its theoretical heart (the lesser
circle) is the concept of instinct —and an instinct intends and values
[103]
an object. Psychoanalysis can perhaps justify the notion of instinct

by indicating its explanatory power, but it cannot in the same
way which instinct intends or that, there-
justify the value of that
fore, which the psyche, viewed as a biological structure, "needs."
Because the notion of instinct forms the lesser circle of psycho-
analysis, values (of individuals) in their phenomenahty are trans-
formed so that by the time they are data they are already seen as
vicissitudes of instincts — as more or less indirect modes of realizing
the goal of instinct, in Ernest Schachtel's words, "detours on the
^
path to gratification of basic biological needs."
When we focus our attention on just nvhat it is that instinct
intends, we come upon a significant difference between the psycho-
analytic formulation and the formulations of biology. As a rule an
instinct in biology involves an adaptation, a purposive action in the
sense of a theoretically posited intentionality buried in a unit force
that works upon the organism as a whole with efficient causality.
The instinct action is characterized by the fact that an organism

carries out some complicated movements which appear very pur-
its own life or for the life of its offspring. This
poseful, either for
is done without previous experience, independently of training,
and often without any possibility of knowing in advance some-
thing of the success which is to be achieved.^
The emphasis in this quotation is mine, for the point I wish to make
here is that the biological notion of instinct directly involves the
biological-medical concept of health in the sense of continuance
of existence {successful adaptation to environment, efficient total
function, etc.).
In Freud, however, we find the following:
The power of the id expresses the true purpose of the individual
organism's life. This consists in the satisfaction of its innate needs.
No such purpose as that of keeping itself alive or of protecting it-
from dangers by means of anxiety can be attributed to the id.

self
That is the business of the ego, which is also concerned with dis-
covering the most favorable and least perilous method of obtain-
ing satisfaction, taking the external world into account. . . . The
* Ernest G. Schachtcl, Metamorphons (New York, 1959), p. 274.
3 Kurt Goldstein, The Organism (New York, 1939), p. i8j.
[104]
—
Psychopathology
forces which we assume to exist behind the tensions caused by

needs of the id are called instincts.*
In a word, the Freudian notion of instinct is such that instinct does

not by any means necessarily intend what biological medicine un-
derstands as health. The instincts intend, rather, pleasure that, ap-
parently at least, may or may not contribute to biological health.
That such a divorce between psychological and biological values
is inevitable once instinct is treated psychologically is a point made
by Lloyd Morgan* and implicitly accounted for by Mortimer Os-

tow° as due to the transition from viewing behavior from without
(biology) to viewing psychic function from within (psychology).
Morgan, however, points out that
The two sets of values —survival values and satisfaction values
are, however, so often and of necessity so predominantly conso-

nant —their interrelations are so many and so close—that we are
apt to forget that they are logically distinct.'
This remark of Morgan's would tend to trivialize my observa-

tion that the Freudian instinct is not necessarily involved with
health by implying that no instinct, viewed psychologically (from
"within") essentially relates to health. But Morgan's point refers
only to one and the same processes (instincts) viewed from differ-
ent perspectives. Viewed
biologically (from without) an instinct
program of the individual and the species," ^
serves the "vital
while viewed from within the same instinct intends its own grati-
fication (pleasure). This cannot be said of the Freudian instincts,
spHt off as they are from the ego, which alone serves the purposes
of self-preservation. Since, further, for Freud, the "power of the
id (instinct) expresses the true purpose of the individual organ-
ism's life," biological health must be seen as merely an ancillary
adjunct to the realization of pleasure. The ego, therefore, must
serve the Id's "value scheme." Failure to do so results in neurosis:
'
Freud, "Outline of Psychoanalysis," International Journal of Psychoanalysis,
Vol. 20 (1940), p. 31.
Ronald Fletcher, Instinct in Man (New York, 1957), p. 38.
*
Mortimer Ostow, "The Biological Basis of Human Behavior," in Silvano

Arieti (ed.), American Handbook of Psychiatry (New York, 1959), Vol. I, p. 63.
•Fletcher, p. 38.
^ Aiax
Nachmanson, "Versuch einer Abgrenzung und Bestimmung des In-
sdnktbegriflFes," Schweiz. Arch. f. Neur. u. Psych., Vol. 40 (1934), p. 179.
I105]
Psycho-analytic work has furnished us with the rule that people

fall ill of a neurosis as a result of frustration. The frristration
meant is that of satisfaction for their libidinal desires. . . . That

is to say, for a neurosis to break out there must be a conflict be-
tween the libidinal desires of a person and that part of his being
which we call the ego .^ . .
All our analyses go to show that the transference neuroses origi-

nate from the ego's refusing to accept a powerful instinctual im-
pulse existing in and denying it motor discharge, or disputing
its id
the object towards which it is aimed. The ego then defends itself
against the impulse by the mechanism of repression; the repressed
impulse struggles against this fate, and finds ways which the ego
cannot control to create for itself substitutive gratification (a
symptom), which is forced upon the ego in the form of a com-
promise; the ego finds its unity menaced and injured by this inter-
loper, pursues against the symptom the struggle it had formerly

maintained against the original impulse, and all this together pro-
duces the clinical picture of a neurosis.®
All classical psychoanalytic definitions of mental health, explicitly

and implicitly, in the end involve instinctual satisfaction as the
health-goal of the psyche and view "neurosis as essentially a con-
^° *
sequence of pathologic operation of instinctual forces."
What the above discussion serves to point out is the manner in
which value is written into the heart of psychoanalytic theory.
Further evaluation of the data from the perspective of medical
biology becomes almost superfluous, for the lesser circle of psy-
choanalysis in "constituting" its facts, its data, has already struc-
tured them on a value scale. Instinctual gratification is the domi-
8 Sigmund Freud, "Some Character-Types Met With in Psycho-Analjtic

Work," trans, by E. Colburn Mayne, in Collected Papers, Vol. IV, pp. 318-344.
8 Freud "Neurosis and Psychosis," trans, by Joan Riviere, in Collected Papers,
Vol. H, p. 251.
10 Mortimer Ostow, "Virtue and Neccssit)'," American Imago, Vol. 14 (1957),
p. 254.
• "Neurosis is an illness, and thus a form of suffering which disturbs the func-
tioning of the pleasure principle. It prevents the direct satisfaction of libidinal
drives and affords the ego a secondary benefit. Treatment, therefore, is an at-
tempt to restore the primacy of the pleasure principle." (De Saussurc, "The Meta-
psychology of Pleasure," Imernational Jottmal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. XL (1959),
pp. 88-89.
[106]
Psy chopathology
nant value in human life; all others are essentially a transformation

of it.
I have pointed out in Chapter II that medicine represents a val-

uational attitude toward biological facts. The obvious analogy
nvithin the science of psychoanalysis of a body of psychological
facts on the one hand, and an evaluative medical attitude on the
other, cannot be drawn. That is, psychoanalysis does not evaluate
the values intended by the instincts. To do so, I repeat, would be
either to slip below the minimal level of intentionality represented
by the lesser circle of psychoanalysis — or, paradoxically, to con-
fute its own lesser circle by taking that which, by its own view-
point, is derivative from the instincts (a "noninstinctual" value)
and reapplying it to the instinctual values themselves.
Neurosis, then, is an internal state where nonsatisfaction of in-
stinctual demands is perpetuated. Psychoanalysis cannot allow it-
self toadduce further independent reasons for calling such a state

neurotic. It cannot say, for example, that because such a state is
unproductive or socially deleterious, unpleasant (to the ego!), etc.,
it is neurotic or pathological. Only if these reasons refer ultimately
to the perpetuated nonsatisfaction of the instinctual drives, are they
psychoanalytically valid; but then, of course they are no longer
"independent" reasons. The instincts do not intend productive-
ness of the individual, nor social or moral value, nor such ego
pleasures as prestige — all these involve mainly the ego as it relates
to the world in the service of the instincts. In other words, that
demands is healthy
the satisfaction of instinctual is, within the
framework of psychoanalysis, an analytic statement.
It also is an unrealistic statement and next to useless except
from the most abstract, theoretical point of view. The psycho-
analytic notion of health must be reformulated if it is to accommo-
date the fact of the existence of the ego and super-ego and the
renunciation of instincts upon which human civilization, according
to Freud, is built. It is here that the overriding ambiguity as to the
nature of normality shows itself. The definition of health becomes
a negative formulation in which it represents the negation of a
rather precise definition of neurosis. The reason for this is that if
psychoanalysis cannot limit its definition of health to the bare satis-

faction of instinctual demands, a value-context superseding that of
the instinctual aims must be introduced. Again I point out that it
[107]
is because the lesser circle of psychoanalysis is constituted by a

notion involving the intention of an object, and hence a value, that
any further introduction of value in a medical sense is excluded.
Witness, therefore, the difficulties that psychoanalytic theorists
encounter when they attempt to cite, for example, the freedom of
an act as indicative of its health and the candor and consistency of

the founder, Freud, who maintained that all that psychoanalysis
can do in therapy is to provide the patient with the illusion of
freedom.
We can, I think, from the above discussion conclude the follow-
ing: Psychopathology, within the Freudian framework, presents
us with a view of man as a Cartesian mechanism of intentions,
values, meanings. This mechanism is called into play by the fact
that the basic value (instinctual satisfaction) is unrealizable. In
other words, if the satisfaction of the instincts could have been
perpetuated, the psychic mechanism peculiar to man would never
have emerged. Since the initial, basic value is unrealizable, the goal
of a realistic medical psychology can refer only to the mechanism,
to the mechanicalness of man. It is not, therefore, that psycho-
analysis looks to the ultimate gratification within civilization of
instinctual demands, but, rather, that it seeks to eliminate the me-
chanical, deterministic manner in which the psyche seeks gratifi-
cation within a culture that prevents this gratification. It is not
surprising, therefore, to find one of the more sophisticated con-
temporary theorists on this matter renouncing all health-criteria
that refer to the content of psychic acts.
Thus the essence of normality is flexibility, in contrast to the

freezing of behavior into patterns of unalterabilit^' that charac-
terizes every manifestation of the neurotic process, whether in
impulses, purposes, acts, thoughts, or feelings. Whether or not a
behavioral event is free to change depends . upon the nature
. .
of the constellation of forces that has produced it. No moment of

behavior can be looked upon as neurotic unless the processes that
have set it in motion predetermine its automatic repetition irre-
spective of the situation, the utility, or the consequences of the
act."
11 Lawrence S. Kubie, "The Fundamental Nature of the Distinction between
Noniulity and Neurosis," Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vol. 23 (1954), p. 182.
I108]
Psychopathology
... on pragmatic grounds we are justified in calling "normal"

any act which the alliance of conscious
in the determination of
and preconscious forces plays the dominant role, whereas . . .
on the same grounds we are justified in calling abnormal or

unhealthy or neurotic any act in the determination of which un-
conscious processes are dominant . . . because such forces will
predetermine its automatic repetition irrespective of its suitability
to the immediate situation or its immediate or remote conse-

quence.^2
We have now, I think, the appropriate context in which to

view the Daseinsanalytic stand on psychopathology. The theoretical
structure of the science of psychoanalysis is such that its fulcrum
is constituted by a concept involving intentionality, the valuation
of that which is intended. Its data, therefore, represent struc-

tures of valuation and meaning, and hence further "independent"
evaluation of the data, from the point of view of somatic medical
biology, becomes inadmissible. Since, for psychoanalysis, a neces-
sary condition of the emerging of the psychic mechanism peculiar
to man is the thwarting of the same basic instinctual value, it can-
not realistically emphasize the fulfillment of instinctual goals as the
standard of mental health. Since it also cannot, within its own pre-
suppositions, introduce values that are to be conceived as inde-
pendent of the instinctual values, it can speak only of the manner
in which the psyche in toto seeks gratification, rather than of the
content of the psyche's strivings, as the standard of normality.
For Lawrence Kubie, the word repetition most adequately char-
acterizes the psychopathological constellation of neurotic acts, and,
more precisely, automatic or mechanical repetition. We have seen,
further, that for Kubie the predisposition for such automatic repe-
tition is occasioned when the act is determined predominantly by
unconscious forces. The reason that the latter leads to the former
is given by Kubie as inhering in the nature of the symbolic process
leading from the unconscious to the conscious mind.
. . . whenever the unconscious system (or perhaps an alliance
between the preconscious and the unconscious systems) predomi-

nates, the resultant action must be repeated endlessly. This occurs
^2 Ibid., pp. 184-185.
[109]
Ii^TRODUcnoN TO Binswanger's Existential Psychoanalysis
because its goals are predominantly unconscious symbols and un-

conscious symbolic goals are never attainable.^^
Although this is an unfortunate phrasing, Kubie's point is, I think,

clear enough. What is, for Kubie, attainable by action determined
predominantly by the unconscious, is just and only the symbolic

goal. That of which it is a symbol, however, is not attainable, and
it is this that provides the motive force for the repetition.
Our discussion of symbols in Chapter III leads us to expect

just such a formulation. Because, as was there argued, psycho-
analysis means most essentially "sign" where it says "symbol," it is
possible for it to speak of the symbol not only as not expressing or
epitomizing or partaking in the symbolized, but actually of the
symbol masking the symbolized.
as disguising or expect, there- We
fore, that Binswanger would reject (or supplement) such an ac-
count, and not only on the general principle that it lies within a
reductive, explanatory system —
but on the specific ground that
just such an account epitomizes the failure of the psychoanalytic
system to do justice to experiential phenomena that, as genuine
symbols, express the meaning of the symbolized by virtue of the
Existential A Priori. What role, then, does psychopathology play
in Daseinsanalyse?
At first glance, apparently none:
Daseinsanalyse distinguishes itself from psychopathology not only

in that it does not proceed with objective-discursive and induc-
tive methods to examine an ensouled organism, but rather seeks a
phenomenological interpretation of existential forms and struc-

tures. It also differs in that it assiduously ignores the biologically
oriented distinction between sick and healthy. The task of psy-
chopathology is therefore to assimilate the material offered to it
by Daseinsanalyse, to categorize it, to test it and to articulate it.^*
That is, Daseinsanalyse views itself as examining the individual and
his world prior to any evaluative distinction between illness and

health. The fact is, however, that Binswanger's major studies con-
cern that which the science of psychiatry would classify as patho-
logical. What Binswanger attempts, therefore, is that which we
^3 I bid., p. 183.
^* Binsw2nget, Schizophreme (PfulJingcn, 1957), p. 269.
[iiol
Psy chopathology
have just observed is not possible within the science of psycho-

analysis: he is attempting to present human phenomena (meanings
to a self) prior to transformation by a systematic lesser circle into
data, and which therefore may independently be explained and
valued by a scientic psychopathology. For Binswanger, the Hei-
deggerean "categories," the existentials, do not, as does the notion of
instinct considered as the lesser circle of psychoanalysis, transform
the phenomena of human existence as they encounter them, but,
rather, indicate the essential modes in ivhich the Dasein itself re-
ceives, transfonns, constitutes world.
Thus the central concept here is that of the Dasein as world-

design, "world" in the sense of the mode and manner in which
beings are accessible to the Dasein. In this light mental illness ap-
pears as a modification of the fundamental or essential structure,
as a metamorphosis of this being-in-the-world.^^
The modification of the essential structure of the Dasein must,

therefore, be understood as a modification of the manner in which
world is accessible to the Dasein. Psychopathology, in Binswang-
er's terms, is thus the study of those modifications of the essential
structure of the Dasein that result in a "narrowing," "constricting,"
or "flattening" of world.
Transcendence thus means something much more basic than

knowledge and, indeed, intentionality, since world is first and
foremost made accessible (erschlossen) through mood (Stim-
vtung). Keeping in mind the definition of being-in-the-world as
transcendence and viewing our psychiatric Dasei?isanalyse in its
light you will notice, first, we are

that in this frame of reference
able to grasp and examine the psychoses also; second, we must
see in them certain ?nodifications of transcendence. Insofar as we
do, we say in the mental illnesses we are faced with modifi-
. . . :
cations of the fundamental or essential structure and structural

parts of being-in-the-world as transcendence. It belongs to the
task of psychiatry to examine and confirm these modifications
with scientific precision. . . .
In insanity, in what is termed psychotic forms of being-in-

the-world in general, we found till now modifications of the world
*' Karl Konrad, "Die Gestalunalyse in der Psychiatrischen Forschung," Nerv-

enarzt, Vol. 3 1
, No. 6, p. 268.
(ill]
picture (Weltbildung oder Weltlichung) in the sense of "leap-

ing" (ordered flight of ideas) and "whirlpool" (disordered flight
of ideas) on the one hand, and on the other hand modification in
the sense of demundanization (Ver-Weltlichung) of the Dasein,
that is the "withering" of its world its simultaneous shrinking,
stagnation and moldering.^^ *
What estranges us from the "mentally ill," what makes them ap-
pear to us as alien, are not single perceptions or ideas, but rather
the fact of their imprisonment in a world-design which is enor-
mously restricted because it is ruled by one or a very few
themes.^'^
The emptier, more simplified, and more constricted the world-

design to which an existence has committed itself, the sooner will
anxiety appear and the more severe will it be.^®
What Binswanger is saying is that that which makes existence and

experience possible, that which is existentially a priori has been
"constricted" and "narrowed"; that is, existence is ruled by only
one or a very few categories. The meaning-matrLx within which all
phenomena appear and take on relevance for the Dasein and within
which both world and self are constituted is dominated (in ex-
treme cases) by only one theme. We express this by saying that
there is only one Existential A Priori.
In the above-mentioned case of the ice-skating incident, the
Dasein was ruled completely and only by the Existential A Priori
of Continuity:
What serves as a clue to the world-design of our little patient is
the category continuity, of continuous connection and contain-

ment. This entails a tremendous constriction, simplification, and
depiction of the "world content," of the extremely complex total-
ity of the patient's contexts of reference. Everything that makes
^'Binswanger, Ejcistence, op. cit., pp. 194-195.

" Cf. Goldstein, p. 491. "The low level of existence in the sick, as compared to
the nomiaJ level, can be characterized, first, by shrinkage of world, privation of
pcrstjnalifythrough limitation of degrees of freedom."
1^ Binswanger, Schhophrenie, p. 401.
18 Binswanger, "The I'lxistential Analysis School of Thought," in Rollo May,
Elmest Angel, and Henri F. Ellcnbcrgcr (cds.), Existence (New York, 1958),
p. 205.
;
Psy chopathology
the world significant is submitted to the rule of that one category

which alone supports her 'Svorld" and being.^'
Binswanger's studies of schizophrenia present us with individuals

whose being-in-the-world is ruled in just such a way. The world-
design of Ellen West is governed by the existentially a priori
polarity of ethereal vs. tomb-world; that of Jiirg Ziind by the
Existential A Priori of push and pressure; that of Lola Voss by the
Existential A Priori of familiarity and unfamiliarity (uncanniness)
that of Susanne Urban by the Existential A Priori of danger.^" In all
is viewed as the over-
these cases, mental illness (Geisteskrankheit)
powering of the Dasein by one world-design, and psychosis is
seen as the sharpest expression of this.^^
Before pursuing this train of thought further, we may pause

now to see what light this throws on the issue that emerged in
reference to psychoanalytic definitions of mental illness. When
there is only one Existential A Priori governing the world-design
of the individual, all perceptions as well as all concrete meaning-
situations fall under its one Existential A Priori thus
rubric. This
becomes the "common universal" (cf. Chapter III) of all the indi-
vidual's experience, past, present, and future. With the girl in the
ice-skating incident, for example, nothing can appear to her except
under the category of continuity; things and happenings either
preserve or threaten continuity. The breaking of the heel threatens
the collapse of her world and produces anxiety;* temporally, any-
thing sudden produces the same effect by a disruption in the con-
tinuity of "time-flow." The healthy individual realizes that some-
thing that happens suddenly may be good or bad, pleasant or
unpleasant; its suddenness is not necessarily an essential determi-
nation of its relevance to him. But the sick individual in this case
abstracts from all phenomena only that which corresponds to the
transcendental conditions of his world, in this case a world defined
completely by the Existential A Priori of continuity. To say that
the sick individual abstracts thusly is not to say that he finds him-
self confronted with certain phenomena and then abstracts from
19 Ibid., p. 203.
20 Binswanger, Schizophreme.
21 Ibid.,
p. 308.
• Cf. Goldstein's definition of anxiety as world loss, cited in Rollo May's Mean-
ing of Anxiety (New York, 1950).
[113I
—
them; this would imply that he perceives and then abstracts from
his perception. What is meant is what has been stressed all along
in Binswanger's words,
What we perceive are "first and foremost" not impressions of

taste, tone, smell or touch, not even things or objects, but rather,
meanings.^
The one Existential A Priori thus governs all experience

down to the most immediate; and so in our example we are not
speaking of events and situations that are, among other things, sud-
den and that therefore provide some "objective" ground for such
one-sided abstraction. Rather, it is the Dasein as such that "tem-
poralizes itself" {sich zeitigt) in the mode of suddenness.-^ For

such a Dasein, everything that happens happens suddenly, and
therefore any event has an anxiety-producing potential; and the
Dasein must exert itself to subsume all events under a condition
of always-having-been. Time is thus brought to a "standstill,"
there is no "existential ripening" ^* possible.
In this general context we may now describe mental illness in
terms of a pervasive uniformity of experience, as the widespread
homogeneity of symboUc reference. By this is meant that all expe-
rience, perception, knowledge, etc., participate in and epitomize
the one Existential A Priori.
What we have here is an indication of what we may term the
transcendental conditions of the possibility of abnormality as de-
fined above by Kubie. Repetition, in Kubie's sense, is existentially
possible only where all experience has the same symbolic value, not
in the sense of a sign-reference to an unconscious cause, but
rather in the sense of an expression of the Existential A Priori,
the "common universal" of both the cause and the effect (and,
therefore, that which is the transcendental ground of both cause
and effect). The reader is referred to Chapter III for a more de-
tailed spelling-out of this point. Let us simply note that Kubie's
sense of repetition is inevitable in a Dasein in which a meaning-
22 Binswanger, Grundformen und Erkenmms Menschlichen Daseiru (Zurich,

1953), p. 290.
23 Binswanger, Schizophrenie,
p. 161.
2* Ibid., p. 260.
[iMl
Psychopathology
context is so pervasive as to be the necessary condition of all ex-

perience.
What emerges here also is a sense of the existential "cash-value"
of the term thrownness. The major Dasein-analytic criterion of
mental illness is which the freedom of the Dasein is
the degree in
surrendered over to the power of another. In the neurotic, this
surrender is only partial; although his being-in-the- world is over-
powered and ruled by one or a few categories, he is constantly
struggling to hold on to his own power of self-determination.
This struggle takes the form of the Dasein renouncing certain of
its potentials in order to ward off the threat of dissolution of that
world that has been so restrictedly constituted under the aegis

of one dominant meaning-context, and hence, dissolution of the
self. But since it is just this renouncing of potentials of existence
that represents the beginning of the dissolution (flattening, nar-

rowing, emptying) of the self, all such efforts lead to their own
negation, and the neurotic finds himself caught in a bind. The
attempted solution of his problems results in their reinforcement.
The psychotic goes one step further and surrenders himself com-
pletely over to the power of another. The price he pays for the
lessening of the experience of anxiety is the loss of his own self-
determination. In psychosis the Dasein is completely surrendered

over to one definite world-design.*
In all these cases the Dasein can no longer freely allow the world
to be, but is, rather, increasingly surrendered over to one par-
ticular world-design, possessed by it, overpowered by it. The
terminus technicus for this state of being surrendered over is:
Throvmness.^'^
We however, from the previous chapter that thrown-

recall,
ness is a mode
of merely one of the Heideggerean existentials,
Befindlichkeit. And yet here it seems to loom up as the most
dominant among them. The reason for this will emerge now that
• In this context, Erwin approach to a concep-

Straus's observations suggest an
world as structured by the Existential A
tion of sleep as also the surrender to the
Priori. "In sleep, we do not withdraw our interest from the world so much as we
surrender ourselves completely to it. We abandon ourselves to the world, relin-
quishing our individuality. We no longer hold our own in the world, opposed to
it." "The Upright Posture," Psychiatric Quarterly, Vol. XXVI (1952), p. 535.
25 Binswanger, p. 284 of this volume.
[115]
we have reached the point where we can specify, from the Heideg-
gerean perspective, just what the modifications (Abivandlungen)
of the essential structure of Dasein in mental illness consists of.
Freedom consists in the commitment of the Dasein to its Thrown-

ness as such.^*
Freedom, then, implies the ability of the Dasein to stand over

against the brute fact of what it sees itself as being, the unalter-
ability and causal efficacy of its past, etc., and through Com-
prehension {Verstehen) project itself into the future while at the
same time willing a responsible relation to its own thrownness.
In mental illness, the Dasein is surrendered over to a world-design
and hence to a world of beings to which it does not actively
and for which it assumes no responsibility. The tran-
relate itself
scendental condition for such a state of affairs is an Existential A
Priori that manifests Care primarily in the mode of thrownness
and that thereby renders inauthentic the other existentials. Neurosis
and psychosis are therefore to be viewed as one manner in which
the Dasein exists inauthentically, a manner defined by the dispro-
portionate place of the existential of thrownness. The cash value
of the term thrownness can thus be expressed in terms of repe-
tition. In mental illness, this repetition is, from the Heideggerean
perspective, inauthentic* In Binswanger's words:
The Dasein no longer extends itself into the future, is no longer

in advance of itself, but rather turns round in a narrow circle
into which it is thrown, in a meaningless, and that means future-
less, fruitless, repetition about itself .^^ t
Schematic: (i) Dasein constitutes its world through the

meaning-context of the Existential A Priori; (2) Dasein fivds its
world and its Self so constituted (Befindlichkeit); (3) Dasein
2* Ibid., p. 321.
• For a description of authentic repetition as choosing oneself or relating in
freedom to one's facticity, see Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death and
Either/Or, Vol. II.
^''
Binswanger, Schizophrenic, p. 267.
t In "Extravagance" the unfrecdom takes the form of the attempt to deny
facticity, thrownness. The Dasein is defined thereby. It is thus ju.st as much
ruled by its facticity. Compare Kierkegaard's concept of the despair of possibility
as due to the lack of necessity in Chapter III of Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto
Death. Sec also p. 321 of this volume.
[116]
Psychopathology
either (a) com-prehends its world and its Self by a free open
(Weltoffen) relation and projects itself toward future {Sein-zum-
Tod), having at the same time realized the necessity of its here
and now facticity (the mode of thrownness) or (b) abandons it-
self to its world, to facticity (Verfallenheit, Veriveltlichung) and

is ruled as if from without by its own mode of constituting world
(Ausgeliefertsein); (4)energy expended to maintain self-deter-
mination by depletion of existential potential (progress toward
inauthenticity) =
neurosis; (5) total renunciation of freedom of
self = psychosis. Over-all pattern: pervasive, homogeneity of sym-
bolic reference to one Existential A Priori = repetition.
For Heidegger, the existential mode of thrownness entails the
relation of the Dasein to the fixed, determined facticity that is an
essential component of human existence. When this mode over-
shadows all others, it follows that the Dasein may appear to be
fully understandable by reference to that which is necessary and
fixed in his existence. Ontologically, then, psychoanalysis, with its
doctrines of psychic determinism, the causal efficacy of the past,

the influence of biological forces on ideation, valuation, etc., is
to be viewed as the science of Dasein in the mode of thrownness.

It has all along been maintained that Binswanger's Existential
A Priori is the manifestation of Care, its expression in a particular,
existing human being. From the preceding inquiry into neurosis
and psychosis, the impression may have been given that the Exis-
tential A Priori may in some sense be conceived as separable from
and somehow more basic than one or another or all of the Heideg-
gerean existentials. It may have seemed that one or another kind of
existentially a priori category, such as continuity, by virtue of
something inherent to the category itself may itself influence the
structure of the particular Dasein. It must therefore be stressed
again that the Existential A Priori represents the basic wholeness
of the total-structure of the particular Dasein ("die urspriingUche
Ganzheit des Strukturganzen des Daseins" [Heidegger]). It is not
the case that in neurosis and psychosis one of the existentials rules
out all others, for, in fact, the Heideggerean existentials do not
and cannot "function" in isolation. Each implies the others.
Understanding (Versteben), for example, Dasein's central way of

existing, would be impossible without that basic presence to the
[117]
things-that-are, natural to Dasein from birth. Likewise, there

could be no such BefindUchkeit if it were not of the very essence
of Dasein to stand-in by interpreting, i.e., understanding.-*
The modiiication of the essential structure that is known as mental

illness is a modiiication of the structural whole of Care in that the
Dasein no longer freely relates (through Verstehen) to its o"wti
facticity. The Dasein, as Verstehen and Rede thus becomes sub-
servient to that mode of being-in-the-world termed thrownness.
It is, in Binswanger's words, a "self-chosen unfreedom." ^
When we specify the particular Existential A Priori of an
individual, a concept such as "continuity" describes the manner in
which the Dasein constitutes and relates to its world, and this
means manner in which understanding relates to that which of
the
necessity the manner in which language expresses, grasps, and
is,
shapes the world, the manner in which space is structured mean-

ingfully, the manner in which future, present, and past as such
are experienced. We are also, and perhaps more fundamentally,
pointing to a freedom in the Dasein through which the Dasein has
so structured its world and its self. What is lost in mental illness is
this freedom. To say of an individual that his Existential A Priori
is, say, continuity, is not, of itself, to say that he is "sick." To say,
however, that him to experience the world as he does
in order for
experience the world, he must have surrendered, to a degree, his
freedom of understanding over to the world, is to say he is "sick."
The world over to which he has surrendered his freedom, is not
"the" world, but a world structured by the Dasein itself. This
paradox of self-chosen unfreedom, of surrender over to a world
of one's own structuring is what, for Binswanger, most essentially
characterizes the dynamic vicious circle of neurotic anxiety. The
resolving of the paradox by complete surrender and perpetuated
loss of freedom characterizes the psychotic. Thus a category such
as continuity, when used to characterize the Existential A Priori

in the mentally ill, points to a languishing, struggling freedom
(neurosis) or to freedom as a transcendental condition of existence
that is no longer being fulfilled (psychosis) as well as to the
2**Thomas Lanpan, The Meaning of HdJcuger (New York, 1959), p. 23.
29 Binswanger, Drci Formen Missgliickten Daseins (Tiibingen, 1956), p. 61.
[118]
Psychopathology
transcendentally necessary meaning-context that structured that

world.
It follows that Binswanger's primary emphasis is not primarily
on the number of existentially a priori categories, but on the
manner in which the Dasein relates to its self and world as mani-
fested in and through these categories. The Existenrial A Priori
is not an object before consciousness, but, as was pointed out in
the previous chapter, the horizon of existence, the matrix within
which being, world, and self become accessible to the Dasein. The
freedom of the Dasein does not mean standing over against a con-
cept or category, but points to a mode of the Dasein's relating
itself to that world and self that emerges in the context of the
Existential A Priori. Freedom in this sense implies, then, a constant
openness to things and to the self and a readiness of the Dasein to
creatively understand or recreate that which is.
When Binswanger speaks of the "tremendously varied contex-

ture of references and compounds of the healthy" ^^ he refers to
the plurality of existentially a priori categories that condition the
world of the healthy. Both here and in Chapter III, it has been
pointed out that the "power" of these existentially a priori cate-
gories lies in the Dasein itself as freedom. This multiplicity of
existential a priori categories that characterizes health for Bins-
wanger must be understood as the necessary concomitant of exis-
tential freedom. Any one of these categories can define a neurotic
or psychotic individual as soon as the power that posits it disap-

pears. The varied contexture of references of the healthy represents
the freedom and power of the Dasein as understanding to re-
experience and recreate that which is, while at the same time will-
ing itself as responsible and committed to the world and self thus
experienced and thus created.
I conclude by noting that we have not changed our definition
of the Existential A Priori as the concrete manifestation of the
ontologically a priori structure of care. What we have done, how-
ever, is to emphasize the presence or absence of freedom as an
essential qualification.
80 Binswanger, Existence, op. cit., p. 205.
[119]
—
VI
The Dasein as Constitutive:
Binswanger, Heidegger, Sartre
Kant and Heidegger

In Chapter I the point was made that, for Heidegger, Care and the
existentials function in a manner strictly analagous to the Kantian
categories of the Understanding. The question was then raised as
to the sense in which the Dasein is constitutive and as to what it
constitutes. The answer given was that frame of reference

Beivandtniszusanmtenhang —was that through which the Dasein
constitutes the being of its world and self. It is important now to
emphasize that there is a great difference, for Heidegger, between
saying that the Dasein constitutes the objects and saying that the
Dasein constitutes the being of the objects, Heidegger on no ac-
count wants to say the former, but he does claim the latter.
Again, we may go to Kant to clarify this point. It will be
remembered that Kant calls himself both a transcendental idealist
and an empirical realist. By this he means to say that he is an
idealist insofar as he regards the objects of knowledge as appear-
ances or representations of things-in-themselves, and that time and
space are therefore only sensible forms of intuition.' He is a
realist insofar as he insists that the objects in space and time are as
of our ideas.' In other words, that which the
real as the succession
Understanding constitutes is a representation of an external in-
1 1. Kanr, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans, by Norman Kempt Smith (Lon-
don, 1953), A 369.
2 H. J. Paton, Kaiu^s Metaphysics of Experience (London, 1951), Vol. II,
P- }75-
[120]
The Dasein as Constitutive: Binswanger, Heidegger, Sartre
dependent reality. Things are not in the mind, for Kant, but they
are known and shaped by the mind.
Heidegger presents us with a kind of reasoning and a dis-
tinction that are strikingly similar. We may, I think, put it this
way: Heidegger is but an ontic realist. That

an ontological idealist
is, for Heidegger, the Dasein constitutes Being, but not beings. It
is therefore possible for Heidegger to speak of truth as gegen-
stehenlassen von . .
.^ (allowing over-againstness of . . .) and as
des Seinlassen von Seienden* (the letting-be of beings) without
compromising his position that the Dasein as Care (and temporal-
ization) is the ontological ground of the possibility that beings can
be encountered.^ Indeed, just as Kant's empirical realism is neces-
sarily bound up with transcendental idealism, so Heidegger's onto-
logical "idealism," rightly understood, implies this ontic realism.
The analogy between Kant and Heidegger suggests that, for
Heidegger, ontology is a transcendental discipline on the order of
Kant's method in The Critique of Pure Reason, and, corre-
spondingly, that Kant's critical method, which seems to be "merely"
epistomological, is actually, for Heidegger, an effort in ontology.
I have pointed out in Chapter I the idiosyncratic reasoning to
preconditions, which is the hallmark of the critical philosophy as
well as one of the most salient characteristics of Heidegger's
method. The point to be made now is that, for Heidegger, it is
just this kind of reasoning to preconditions that is definitive of

ontology, as opposed to those disciplines that, while bearing the
same name, have since Plato been concerned with beings, rather
than with Being.^ Langan, in explicating Heidegger's ontic-
ontological distinction, makes this same point:
To grasp something "ontically" is to grasp it in its full determina-

tion as a concrete phenomenon. To grasp it "ontologically," i.e.,
in its full Being, one must think behind the phenomenon to grasp
the ground of its possibility — what it is that makes it possible for
the phenomenon to be as it is.''
8 Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Bonn, 1929), p. 71.
* Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (Frankfurt, 1954), p. 14.
5 Heidegger, Sein und 7.eit (Tiibingen, 1953), p- 366.
* William Barrett, Irrational Man (New York, 1956), p. 189.
' Thomas Langan, The Meaning of Heidegger (New York, 1959), p. 74.
[I2l]
In the Heideggerean perspective, then, what Kant did when he

showed that time is the sensible form of all intuition was to show
that the meaning of beings lies within the Dasein and therefore,
that time is The point to be stressed here is,
the horizon of Being.
put baldly, that for Heidegger, to endow meaning is to endow
—
being and, therefore, the Dasein, as the unique source of meaning
in the world,® is the unique ground of Being,
The by way of objec-
question that naturally springs to mind,
tion,would be to demand of Heidegger some justification of this
equation of meaning and Being. Such a question, however, pre-
sumes the possibility that Being may be conceived as independent
of meaning, and, for Heidegger, this means independent of the
Dasein. The question, in effect, presumes the subject-object split
that Heidegger's notion of the Dasein as being-in-the-world is in-
tended to undercut. Once again we run into the fiat nature of
Heidegger's (and the critical) argument. One cannot ask of Kant
how the categories come into existence, what causes them to func-
tion, for the job of the critical philosophy is to reason to that
which makes possible the nature of this land of question. Likewise
Heidegger claims that the Dasein exists in the way it does only on
the ground of its being essentially in-the-world as the endower of
meaning, reference, bearing {Bewandtnis) All questioning, for .
Heidegger, is possible only on the ground of Dasein's being-in-the-

world conceived in this way.
To ask what is it that the Dasein constitutes when it constitutes
Being, is to askwhat is Being. Since Heidegger does not want the
question of Being to slip into the traditional mode of seeking "out
there" for a being (i.e., ens realissi?mim) ^ he can begin to answer
only by saying that Being is the ground of beings, in the sense
that Being is that which makes possible that beings (the Vorhanden)
as such emerge. The Dasein is the context in which beings emerge
as concrete phenomenal beings. This context is a meaning-context
to which Heidegger gives the name Care. Care not one possible is
meaning-context among others, but rather meaning-context itself,

the transccndentally a priori basis of human existence as it hi fact
manifests. What does the Dasein constitute when it constitutes
Being? The answer is that it constitutes the possibility of beings. It
does this by letting the beings be what and as they are. And since
8 Ibid., p. 1 8.
[122]
The Dasein as Constitutive: Binsivanger, Heidegger, Sartre
beings cannot be except within the context of Care, it turns out,

by an unprecedented dialectical twist, that for the Dasein to
constitute Being means that it does not constitute beings.* "Our
mode of cognition," Heidegger says, speaking of Kant, "is not
*
ontically creative."
What I term Heidegger's ontological "idealism" and ontic
"realism" is his response to the problem that, in his study of Kant,
he so explicitly states:
How can a finite human Dasein in advance pass beyond (tran-

scend) the essent [being, as opposed to Being] when not only has
it not created this essent but also is dependent on it in order to
^*
exist as Dasein?
To reiterate what was

Chapter I, Heidegger's position is
said in
that, ontically speaking, theworld is not-self. Ontologically speak-
ing, the Dasein is in-the-world {auf das Seiende angewiesen) and
constitutes the being of the world by a network of meanings
through which the (ontic) world (das Seiende), is disclosed, re-
vealed (passively, receptively). The Dasein, as the ontological
ground of beings and as that which constitutes Being is, it seems
to me, the sense of Heidegger's repetition (ivieder-holung) of
Kant's Copernican Revolution:
Ontic truth, then, must necessarily conform to ontological truth.

This is the correct interpretation of the meaning of the "Coper-
nican Revolution." By this revolution, Kant thrusts the problem of
ontology to the fore.^^
What is phenomenology in this connection? In

the role of
Chapter was pointed out that phenomenology would be the
I it
method par excellence for a philosophy that holds by necessary

fiat to the notion of constitutive powers of the "self." The reason
given there was in sum that, granted this constitutive function, to

confront the world from a preferred frame of reference or ex-
planatory system is not to understand the world as it is con-
• It may also be that Heidegger is attempting to provide the root of sensibility
and understanding that Kant, in A15, B29, says is unknown. See Heidegger, Kant,
P-33-
9 Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans, by James S. Churchill
(Bloomington, Ind., 1962), p. 76.
10 Ibid.,
p. 47.
" Ibid., p. 22.
[123]
stituted by the self (Dasein?), but, in fact, to constitute the world.

For Heidegger, ontology is the reasoning to the preconditions of
beings qua beings in order to apprehend the essence of Being.
Phenomenology, therefore, since it is the most accurate mode of
access to the possibility of beings (considered as not-self), is, for
Heidegger, the main tool of the ontologist: "Ontology is only
^^ *
possible as phenomenology."
Binswanger''s Relation to Heidegger
As was stated in Chapter I, it is not quite accurate to say simply

that Binswanger's Daseinsanalyse is the extension or application of
Heidegger's ontology to the ontic level. If Heidegger's restate-
ment of Kant's Copemican Revolution consists in placing the
Dasein as Care as the ontologically a priori condition of beings,
12 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 35.
• Now that Heidegger's Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics has appeared in
an excellent English translation, the Kantian elements of his philosophy may be-
come better appreciated. For it is, of course, in this work, rather than in Sein und
Zeit, that the Kantian element is made quite explicit. For example:
"Hence, what makes the relation to the essent (ontic knowledge) possible is
the precursory comprehension of the constitution of the Being as the essent,

namely, ontological knowledge." (p. 15)
"However, ontic knowledge by itself can never conform 'to' objects, because
without ontological knowledge it cannot have even a possible 'to what' (Wonach)
of the conformation." (p. 18)
"This totality composed of pure intuition and pure understanding, united in

advance, 'constitutes' the free-space within which
all essents can be encountered."
(p. 81)
"Does not follow, then, that ontological knowledge, which is achieved in the
it
transcendental imagination, is creative? Not only does ontological knowledge

. . .
not create the essent, it does not even relate itself directly and thematically to the
essent But to what does it relate itself, then? What is known in ontological
. . .
knowledge? A nothing. Kant calls it an X and speaks of an 'object.' ... By a

Nothing we mean not an essent but nevertheless 'something.' It serves only as 'a
correlate,' according to its essence it is pure horizon.
i.e., Consequently, this . . .
something may
not be the direct and exclusive theme of an intention. ... If
ontological knowledge discloses the horizon, its truth lies in letting the essent be
encountered within this horizon. [This] knowledge ... is 'creative' only on
. . .
the ontological level and never on the ontic." (pp. 125-128)
"All projection — and,

consequently, even man's 'creative' activity' is throvm —
{geworfener), determined by the dependence of the Dasein on the essent in
i.e.,
totality, a dependence to which the Dasein always submits." (p. 244)
[im]
then what we have termed Binswanger's Existential Priori A

must represent most complete or only possible exten-
ideally the
sion of Heidegger's thinking to the ontic level. Although Bins-
wanger's studies are ontic in that they concern particular individual
human beings, they are more than ontic in that as far as each in-
dividual studied is concerned, his analyses refer to that which
makes possible the experience of the particular individual. We have,
in Chapter I, called such a discipline (which concerns itself with
the transendentally a priori essential structures and possibihties
of a concrete human existence) neither ontological, nor onric,
but "meta-ontic." The question we now ask is how far do Bins-
wanger's investigations on the meta-ontic level fit into the Heideg-
gerean scheme?
Medard Boss, whose psychiatric writings in many ways show
agreement with Binswanger, is nevertheless the most vociferous
critic of what he sees as Binswanger's misunderstanding of Heideg-
ger. Referring to Binswanger's view that neurosis and psychosis
can be treated as modifications of the essential structure of the
Dasein, Boss says:
Transcendence as that one factor which defines the essence of be-

ing human and its being-in-the-world in Heidegger's sense never
means a kind of relation, realized through a primary immanence,
which can be "modified" to this or that mode of the Dasein.
Transcendence and being-in-the-world in [Heidegger's] analysis
of Dasein are, rather, names for the same thing: that unmodifiable
and basal essential structure of the Dasein which lies at the basis of
all relations.^'
Boss understands the Heideggerean notion of Dasein as the in-itself,

unobjcctifiable receiver of objects; one could almost say that Boss
sees the Dasein as the "pure subject." When Binswanger, in his
essay "Dream and Existence" speaks of a rising and faUing Dasein,

Boss objects:
As Dasein, that is as the completely unobjcctifiable illumination of

Being, ... it can neither rise nor fall.^*
18 M. Boss, Psychoanalyse und Daseinsanalytik (Bern, 1957), p. 93-

1* Ibid., p. 94.
[125]
As Boss understands Heidegger, the Dasein as Being-in-the-world,

is in no sense a reflective, bipolar structure. Boss limits the Heideg-
gerean concept of Dasein to a pure outgoing endower and recep-
tacle. In no case, for Boss, can that ivhich is encountered be spoken
of as part of the essential structure of the Dasein. Thus Boss
criticises Binswanger's concept of the Dasein as Welt-Entivurf, for
Boss understands the notion of Entwurf to imply an object-pole
as assimilated within the structure of the Dasein, thus tainting the
ontological structure of the Dasein with a kind of contingency and
variability reserved only for ontic structures.
Just as it does not lie within the conceptual horizon of [Heideg-

ger's] analysis of Dasein to speak of "modifications" of being-in-
the-world, so we cannot view neurotics or psychotics as having
special and unique world-designs [Entiviirfe]. . . . Indeed from
Heidegger we hear that the concept "world-design" [used] in his
analysis of Dasein is to be understood as world-designwg Welt-
Erwuri because it is the light which proceeds from Being. But if
the concept of world-designiwg signifies the essence of man in
[Heidegger's] analysis of Dasein, an essence which is the non-
objectifiable light and revealer of Being, then one cannot charac-
terize world-design with properties such as specific spatiality or
temporality; materiality or consistency.^''
The issue that Boss raises is, in our context, a crucial one. It
involves the possibility of individual variations of the ontologically
a priori structure of Care. What Boss is claiming is that on Heideg-
gerean terms the formal structure of Care is invariable and that all
individual differences arc to be viewed as falling within the strictly

which
defined a priori rule of the interrelation of existentials to
the name of Care is given. Boss is taking Heidegger's claim that
Care is an "empty formula" in its strictest sense. In other words,
for Boss, the dichotomy of ontological-ontic is exhaustive. What
Binswanger views as conditioning or constituting the individual's
world. Boss would claim is the conditioned. To put it in terms
repugnant to this entire school of thought, we might say that

what Binswanger views as emanating from the subject, Bo.ss claims
is objective. For Boss, the Dasein, as Care, illuminates Being by
receiving beings in the ontological meaning-context strictly de-

*•* Ibid., pp. 95-96.
[126]
finedby Heidegger. All further specification of meanings are to

be viewed as emanating from beings, not from the Dasein. Bins-
wanger, on the other hand, claims that the ontological structure of
Care can vary in individuals and that the particular Dasein thereby
determines or constitutes his world to a greater degree and in more
detail. For Binswanger the over-all structure of Heidegger's ontol-
ogy is mirrored in each individual. Boss can make no room for a
distinction between an ontological and an existential a priori, and
in his psychiatric writings he stops just short of such a point of
view. He does not admit the legitimacy within a Heideggerean
framework of the concept of an existential a priori. In a word, he
rules out what I have termed the meta-ontic level of inquiry, the
reasoning to transcendental preconditions of a given, concrete
world.
From the standpoint of Heidegger's avowed purpose in Sein
und 7.eit, Boss's criticism of Binswanger seems to me a just one.
What the concept of an Existential A Priori does, in effect, is to
render "existentialistic" a doctrine that purports to be mainly a
study of Being and not of man. Binswanger, for example, does not
speak of this or that self, but of this or that particular Dasein,
whereas Heidegger limits himself to speaking of the Dasein. The
implication is that there is something in the being of a concrete
human individual that the Heideggerean account of Dasein omits.
This something can only be the particular Existential A Priori and
the particular world-design. This is not to say that viewed from
Binswanger's perspective, Heidegger has omitted either the in-
dividuality of the Dasein or the multiplicity of the Dasein's mani-
His notion of the Jemeinigkeit (each-to-his-
festations in the world.
ownness) of the Dasein is an attempt to treat the former; and as for
the latter, it cannot be

his task as an ontologist, metaphysician or
simply philosopher to enumerate or make room for the specific
particularity of human beings. Is it not rather the specific degree
of power that the Dasein in its freedom exhibits that is Heidegger's
omission as seen in the context of Binswanger's works?
My point here is this: If Binswanger's works were solely an
application to the ontic level of Heidegger's ontology, then, as we
have seen in above discussion of Heidegger's ontological
the
idealism and ontic realism, Binswanger's task would involve mere
eidetic-descriptive phenomenology; all implications as to the con-
[127]
Introduction to Binsvtanger's Existential Psychoanalysis
stitutive function of the Dasein would have to be studiously

avoided. At most, Binswanger's "structural a priori categories,"
which we have termed the Existential A Prioris, would be
viewed as no more than Husserlian essential structures. That this
is not Binswanger's position — that rather these a priori categories
function in a manner analogous to the Kantian categories of the
Understanding, which constitute the world as known — it has been
the burden of the previous chapters to demonstrate.* That is, a
faithful appHcation of Heidegger (as I understand him) to the
ontic level would not deal with the Dasein as constitutive, this
being reserved for the strictly ontological level. The application
to the ontic level would, rather, entail a discipline of phenomeno-
logical apprehension of essences of emotion, desire, conflicts, etc.
The Heideggerean element in such an attempt would probably re-
sult in theapprehension of categories similar to those of Binswanger,
with the essential diffêrence that no sense of these categories as
constitutive of world would emerge. In this sense, it is Boss, rather
than Binswanger, who is faithful to Heidegger. In the Heideggerean
frame of reference. Boss's level of inquiry is ontic; Binswanger's is
meta-ontic. Binswanger has, in this regard, taken a fundamentally
Heideggerean framework and moved more in the direction of Sartre
than Binswanger himself would, perhaps, care to admit.
Binswanger and Sartre

In Maurice Natanson's interpretive critique of Sartre's ontology
we find a chapter devoted to what Natanson calls Sartre's "Coper-
nican Revolution."
• "The phcnomenological analysis of experience .works
. . predominandy
. . .
with the various kinds of psychological understanding and empathy. Its goal is to
accumulate as many single psychological observations as possible in order to be
able to read off and demonstrate as clearly as possible the form or species of the
experience in question. We, on the other hand, seek in the first place neither the
specification of the factual experience nor that of the process of experiencing, but,
something which stands "behind" or "above" both.
rather, that seek, namely,We
the of being-in-the-world that makes possible such experience, that, in other
mode
words, makes such experience understandable." (Binswanger, Scbw. Archiv., Vol.
29, pp. 215-217.)
"Distinguished from the phcnomenological analysis of act and experience is the
method of analysis of constitutive a priori structural elements which at the time
build the total world of the particular being-in-the-world and determine its na-
ture." Ubid., p. 217.)
[128]
Sartre's "Copernican Revolution" is essentially the attempt to for-
mulate what Kant attempted to show at

at the ontological level
the epistemological level. The basic similarity between Sartre

. . .
and Kant ... is that for Sartre the "molding" of phenomenal re-
ality is at the ontological level derivative of and dependent upon
the activity of the pour-soi, which both "exists" reality and exists
in reality.^*
This appears to coincide essentially with what has been said about
Heidegger in the foregoing pages. However, and this is the first
point I wish to make here, seen from Heidegger's position, Sartre's
investigations are not ontological. Sartre starts by understanding
Being as the in-itself, as the self-sufficient, nonintentional, opaque
plenum unto itself." For Sartre,
This is equivalent to saying that being is uncreated. But we need
not conclude that being creates itself, which would suppose that
it is prior to itself. . . . Being is itself. This means that it is neither
passivity nor activity.^^
From Heidegger's standpoint we might make two points: First, no

matter how original a formulation it is, Sartre's description of Be-
ing as the in-itself still points to a kind of ens realissimum, an epit-
omization of that which is true of beings, rather than Being. At
the most, it can be taken as the description of a special kind of
being, but which still has in common with beings that it is not
human being. Second, Sartre's Being cannot be viewed as the
ground of beings; it is more to be understood as de trop,^^ as neither
related nor unrelated to beings that are essentially, for Sartre,
appearances. Thus, in Sartre, reasoning to preconditions of phe-
nomena cannot lead to Being and is therefore not ontology in
Heidegger's sense.
For Sartre, the transcendental condition of beings, of world, of
human reality, is the freedom (or nothingness) of the pour-soi, con-
sciousness, human being. But for Sartre the pour-soi is not the
18 Maurice Natanson, A Critique of Jean-Paul Sartre^s Ontology (Lincoln,
Neb., 1951), p. 93.
1^
J. -P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans, by Hazel E. Barnes (New York,
1956), pp. Ixiv-lxix.
1* Ibid., p. Ixiv.
i» Ibid.,
p. IxvL
[•29]
source of Being. In Heidegger, it is the Being of the world, the

Being of things and self that is constituted by the Dasein, which
thus provides the matrix for the emergence and passive letting-be of
beings. For on the other hand, each individual human being
Sartre,
constitutes themeaning of his world and therefore his world is a
being for which he is responsible. There is, for Sartre, no general
structure of human being, such as Care, that defines and constitutes
Being as such. Rather each individual chooses his own world, a
world that is thereby mightily lacking in the self-sufficiency and
opacity that, for Sartre, characterize Being. For Sartre the pour-sot
—and that means each individual—cannot escape this freedom of
choosing his world or of being responsible for his world, much as
he yearns for the self-sufficiency of Being-in-itself. But Being
escapes man, he can only "hew beings out of it"; he cannot con-
stitute Being, which means for Sartre that he cannot be both free
and not lacking, both plenum and void. Thus, in speaking of Sartre,
we may reverse what we said about Heidegger: for Sartre the pour-
soi cannot constitute Being because it is condemned freely to create,
constitute, beings.
We are taking the word "responsibilit)'^" in its ordinary sense as

"consciousness [of] being the incontestable author of an event or
of an object." In this sense the responsibility of the for-itself is
overwhelming since he is the one by whom it happens that there

is a world; he is also the one who makes himself be.^
At this point we may ask: to what degree is Sartre's notion of

original projectcomparable to Binswanger's Existential A Priori?
It would seem at first glance that no meaningful comparison of
Sartre and Binswanger on this score could get beyond the appar-
ently overwhelming disparity of the two in their views as to the
degree and kind of freedom in man. I have already quoted a tvpical
passage of Sartre in this respect, the kind of passage that has led
some critics to see Sartre as the champion of a freedom so absolute
as to be scarcely distinguishable from the most radical subjective
idealism. In Binswanger, on the other hand, we find the following:
The Dasein, although it is essentially for its own sake, has not it-
self laid the ground of its bemg. And also as a creature "come into
[130I
existence" it is and remains, as throivn, determined, i.e., enclosed,
possessed and compelled by beings in general. Consequently it is
also not "free" in its world-design.^^
From this it follows that world-designs also should be thought of

as thrown designs and in no case as "free acts of an absolute
ego." ^
What I wish to show is that the disagreement here is only apparent
and that actually both Binswanger and Sartre have a view of hu-
man freedom that in many respects is almost identical. Sartre's
views as to the absolute freedom of the original project have to be
understood with a qualification that Sartre himself provides and
that is too often bypassed by his critics.
I start out on a hike with friends. At the end of several hours of

walking my fatigue increases and finally becomes very painful. At
first I resist and then suddenly I let myself go, I give up, I throw
my knapsack down on the side of the road and let myself fall
down Someone will reproach me for my act and will

beside it.
mean thereby that I was free that is, not only was my act not —
determined by any thing or person, but also I could have suc-
ceeded in resisting my fatigue longer, I could have done as my
companions did and reached the resting place before relaxing. I
shall defend myself by saying that I was too tired. Who is right?
Or rather is the debate not based on incorrect premises? There is

no doubt that I could have done otherwise, but that is not the
problem. It ought to be formulated rather like this: could I have
done otherwise without perceptibly modifying the organic total-
ity of the projects which I am; or is the fact of resisting my fa-
tigue such that instead of remaining a purely local and accidental

modification of my behavior, it could be effected only by means
of a radical transformation of my being-in-the-world — a transfor-
mation, moreover, which is possible? In other words: I could have

^3
done otherwise. Agreed. But at ivhat price?
This "at what price?" is Sartre's way of expressing that all particu-
lar acts must be viewed within the framework of the larger, vaster
21 Binswanger, 2 of this volume.

p. 2 1
22 Binswanger, Ausgewdhlte Vortrage und Aufsatze, Vol. II (Bern, 1955, p.

287.
23 Sartre,
pp. 453-454.
[13']
project. Granted the original project, granted its freedom all par- —
ticular actsand motivations follow of necessity from that project.
For Sartre, man is free at any moment to alter the original project,
but this does not mean that any particular act, in its particularity is
autonomous.
Hence it becomes evident that we can not suppose that the act
could have been modified without at the same time supposing a
fvmdamental modification of my original choice of myself. . . .
This does not imply that I must necessarily stop (on the hike) but
merely that I can refuse to stop only by a radical conversion of
my being-in- the- world; that is, by an abrupt metamorphosis of my
initial project — î.e., by another choice of myself and of my ends.
Moreover this modification is always possible.^*
We see, therefore, that Sartre's notion of original project has this in

common with the Existential A Priori: it is to be taken as inclusive,
all-embracing, universal — it is not to be taken as on the same level
as those choices, situations, or confrontations of which it is the
foundation. It is, in a word, a matrix in the general sense described
in Chapters I and III.
This notion of matrix is also what prevents the concept of Exis-

tential A Priori from leading to a doctrine of "free act(s) of an ab-
solute ego." That which emerges within the context of the Exis-
tential A Priori has a brute fact quaUty, a facticity that, while it
refers ultimatelyback to an original freedom, is, in its particularity,

a given. Thus, both Binswanger and Sartre, in order to maintain the
freedom of man as self-determination, resolutely deny the freedom
of man as indeterminateness, as haphazard, instantaneous arbitrary
will.
Thus Sartre:
In addition we must not think of the original choice as "producing
itself from one instant to the next"; this would be to return to the
instantaneous conception of consciousness from which Husserl
was never able to free himself ... we must conceive of the orig-
inal choice as unfolding time. . .
.^*
And thus Binswanger:

2< Ibid., p. 464.
20 Ibid., p. 465.
[«32]
The Dasein as Constitutive: Binswavger, Heidegger, Sartre
On the other hand the freedom of world-designs is also not "ab-

solute" insofar as they must stand to one another in an a priori
continuity. "We cannot," says Szilasi, "voluntarily interrupt the
conditioned consequences of an horizon of understanding, for
that would mean that the voluntary world-design is completely
unmotivated and senseless. It would appear to us ... to have
come out of thin air.^^
The Ejcistential A Priori and the Original Project are similar,

then, in that each represents a matrix within the context of which
world and self emerge. We have further qualified the concept of
the Existenrial A Priori by explicating it as a meaning-mztnx. That
Sartre's Original Project is also to be understood in this way is evi-
denced when he says
We choose the world, not in its contexmre as in-itself but in its
meaning.2^
Sartre is saying that the original project informs or constitutes real-

ity by providing a framework of meaning within which reality
takes on its form for each individual.
... it is this original choice which originally creates all causes
and all motives which can guide us to partial actions; it is this
which arranges the world with its meaning, its instrumental-

complexes, and its coeflScient of adversity.^*
Thus, for Sartre, as for Binswanger, it is an original, a priori mean-

/«g-matrix that provides the framework and the possibility that be-
ings shall emerge —that provides the accessibility of beings.
To continue the comparison we bring into focus another prob-
lem posed by Natanson:
It is one thing to assert that the meaning of experience is depend-

ent on the meaning-giver: the pour-soi; it is quite another thing to
hold that the object itself is constituted by the pour-soi.^^
Here Natanson, after establishing a fundamental similarity between

Sartre and Kant, is trying to differentiate Sartre's Copernican Rev-
olution from Kant's. He does this by reminding us that for Sartre
2« Binswanger, Vortrage, Vol. 11, p. 287.
2T Sartre, p.
463.
28 Ibid., p. 465.
2* Naunson, p. 94.
[•33I
the en-soi does have a facticity which is independent of and prior

to the individual pour-soi, but the meaning of the en-soi is deter-
minable only through the pour-soi. Thus, Sartre's Copernican

Revolution establishes two points: (i) that realit>' is a function
of the pour-soi although it is not the phenomenal world of Kant;
it is the dialectical reality which the pour-soi "exists"; (2) that the
facticity of things has a realistic status, but that the meaning of

this status depends on the interpretation it receives from the
pour-soi.^^
But it seems to me that Sartre's position is starker than Natan-

son would have us believe. Natanson errs, I think, not so much in
presenting the en-soi as a kind of thing-in-itself (an impression
that, much as Sartre struggles against it, still remains at the end of
Being and Nothingness), but, rather, in seeing the Kantian phe-
nomenal world as a world that while accessible to the pour-soi is
independent of the meaning-structure with which the pour-soi en-
dows its world. The danger here is of relegating Sartre's position to
one in which the old distinction of primary and secondary qualities

becomes the standard of distinoruishin^ between human and extra-
human reality. The point is that for Sartre, as well as for Heidegger,
the objective phenomenal world of Kant the world of objects, —
itself — is on the ground of a particular meaning-
possible only
context, or choice of being-in-the-world, just as for Binswanger
scientific objects emerge only to a Dasein with a particular world-
view. Now it is true that we find such passages in Sartre:
Freedom implies . . . the existence of an environment to be

changed: obstacles to be cleared; tools to be used. Of course it is
freedom which reveals them as obstacles, but by its free choice it
can only interpret the ineaiiing of their being. It is necessary' that

they be there, wholly brute, in order that there may be frecdom.^^
(Emphasis added)
But it would be incorrect to conclude from such passages that

Sartre is referring to an objective world that exists before or inde-
pendently of the pour-soi.
80 Ibid., pp. 95-96.
'1 Sartre, p. 506.
[•34]
It would be absolutely useless to seek to define or to describe the
"quid" of this facticity "before" freedom turns back upon it. . . .
The question itself is unintelligible, for it involves "before" u-hich

has no meaning; it is freedom, in fact, which temporalizes itself
along the lines of a "before" and "after." Nevertheless the fact re-
mains that this brute and unthinkable "quid" is that without which
freedom could not be freedom.^^
This means that we apprehend our choice as not deriving from

any prior reality but rather as being about to serve as foundation
for the e?isemble of significations which constitute reality}^ (Em-
phasis added.)
Thus, we may agree with Natanson that there is a difference be-

tween the meaning of an object of experience and the object itself,
but only ifwe do not understand object as being an articulated
structure. The counterpart of this qualification is that we must not
understand meaning solely as derivative from the object. As with
Binswanger, Sartre is saying that the over-all meaning-matrix, the
framework within which objects in
original project, provides the
their otherness can appear.These objects, in turn, have particular
meanings for the individual. But these objects are always to be
viewed as being constituted by the overarching meaning-matrix.
Object, considered as an articulated structure, independent of
meaning, has no place in either Binswanger or Sartre. Indeed our
whole point in comparing Binswanger and Sartre with Kant is to
point out that the "human" factor in the structure of objects refers
not only to the understanding considered as separated from the
emotions, but that human being as a whole is the precondition of a
structured world, of reality.
The Natanson poses must, then, be paraphrased if it is
issue that
to illuminate Sartre's stand: "It is one thing to assert that the mean-
ing of experience and objects (beings) is dependent on the mean-

ing-giver: the pour-sot; it is quite another thing to hold that mean-
ing is Being and that Being itself is constituted by the pour-sot.''^
Expressed in this way, we see that Sartre's position is the converse
of Heidegger's; that he wants to keep Being as an independent, self-
sufficient quid about which nothing can be said, known, or experi-
82 Ibid., p. 494.
*3 Ibid., p. 464.
[135]
enced, and that beings are what is constituted by the pour-sot by

appropriation. The dualism in Sartre's thought, it therefore seems
to me, is dichotomy between pour-soi
expressible not only as the
and en-soi, but also Being and beings,
as the radical separation of
Binswanger, who is no metaphysician, does not deal with such
issues, having left them to Heidegger to resolve. Yet, as I have tried
to show, his manner of treating each concrete individual as mirror-

ing the Heideggerean ontological structure of the Dasein is not just
a simple "application" of Heidegger. It is rather a position that, by
the very nature of its application has forced Heidegger's notion of
the Dasein 's passive receiving of beings into a harder mold. For
Binswanger is not merely examining the phenomena of experi-
ence in his patients when he speaks of existenziell einheitlichen
Bedeutungmchtunger^^ or apriorische Dasei?isstruktur die die . . .
Phdnomene erfnoglicht.^^ If he can be said to be faithfully applying

any philosophical system, he is, as far as constitutive function of
the Dasein is concerned, closer to Sartre than Heidegger.
Sartre begins his discussion of existential psychoanalysis with
the general criticism that psychological explanations have the fault
of referring to an inexpHcable given, of reducing an individual to
that which cannot and does not serve as the basis of meaninor of the
individual's lifeand world. "What we are demanding," says Sartre,
... is a veritable irreducible; that is, an irreducible of which the

irreducibility would be self-evident, which would not be pre-
sented as the postulate of the psychologist. This demand on
. . .
our part does not come from that ceaseless pursuit of a cause, that
infinite regress which has often been described as constitutive of
rational research. . . . This is not the childish quest of a "be-
which allows no further "why?" It is, on the contrary, a
cause,"
demand based on a preontological comprehension of human real-
ity and on the related refusal to consider man as capable of being
analyzed and reduced to original givens, to determined desires (or
"drives"). . . . This unity (which is sought) which is the being
of theman under consideration, is a free unification, and this uni-
fication can not come after a diversity which it unifies.^*
8* Binswanger, Vortrage, Vol. I, p. 146.

88 Binswanger, Schizophrenie (Pfullingen, 1957), p. 464.
88 Sartre, pp. 560-561.
[36]
Point by point, this is as clear a statement of the role of Existential

A Priori as could be wished. ( i ) Sartre seeks the source of meaning
—the Existential A Priori is the overarching meaning-matrix; (2)
Sartre seeks not a final link in a causal chain, but the ground of the
causal chain —the Existential A Priori has been described as just
such a ground; (3) Sartre seeks a unity that does not come after
the diversiy that it unifies —the Existential A Priori is the transcen-
dental ground of the individual's world.
That Sartre further understands the original project as the
"common universal" in the sense detailed in Chapter III is evi-
denced when he says:
It is ... by a comparison of the various empirical drives of a

subject that we try to discover and disengage the fundamental
project which is common to them all —and not by a simple sum-
mation or reconstruction of these tendencies; each drive or tend-
ency is the entire person.^'' (Emphasis added.)
Existential psychoanalysis seeks to determine the original choice

. . . [which] brings together in a prelogical synthesis the totality
of the existent, and as such is the center of reference for an in-
finity of polyvalent meanings. ^^ (Emphasis added.)
The Existential A Priori as horizon:

But if the fundamental project is fully experienced by the subject
and hence wholly conscious, that certainly does not mean that it
must by the same token be known by him; quite the contrary.^*
What Sartre is proposing is an ever-regressing search for the

preconditions of the world of an individual. The question is always
to be: what is it that makes this world possible, what is it that
makes it possible for A to be the cause of B, what makes it pos-
sible that X is a symbol of Y for this individual. In short, Sartre is
proposing a meta-ontic discipline as the proper basis for psycho-

analysis. Like Binswanger, Sartre objects to a reductive, explana-
tory, "lesser circle" that decides in advance what is the primitive,
basic reality — that in terms of which all else is to be explained.
8T Ibid., p.
564.
38 Ibid., p. 570.
39 Ibid.,
p. 47a
[137]
Sartre's existential psychoanalysis differs fundamentally from the

Freudian in that Freudian psychoanalysis "had decided upon its
own irreducible instead of allowing this to make itself known in a
self-evident intuition." *° Existential psychoanalysis is not looking
for causes or basic drives as psychoanalysis does. It looks for that
in the individual ivhich makes it possible that these causes and
basic drives have the efficacy that Freudian psychoanalysis as-
certains them as having. And this, as will be recognized, is pre-
cisely the point of Binswanger's Daseinsanalyse.
The results thus achieved —^that is, the ultimate ends of the indi-
vidual —can then become the object of a classification, and it is by
the comparison of these results that we will be able to establish
general considerations about human reality as an empirical choice
of its own eads. The behavior studied by this psychoanalysis will
include not only dreams, failures, obsessions, and neuroses, but
also and especially the thoughts of waking life, successfully ad- -
justed acts, style, etc. This psychoanalysis has not yet found its
Freud."
I suggest that in Binswanger it has.
*o/WJ., p. 571.
<i Ibid., p.
575.
[138]
Conclusion
Power and Powerlessness

(Macht und Ohnmacht)
The foregoing comparison of Binswanger and Sartre made within

the confines of the question as to constitutive function need not
blind us to one of Binswanger's most vital themes: that also the
denial of certain possibilities bestows upon the Dasein its power
over against its world. It is this theme that I should like to serve as
the concluding note.
The leitmotiv of this study has been what I have termed Bins-
wanger's notion of the Existential A
Priori, a notion that expresses
the Dasein's dominating contribution to the experienced phenomena
of its world. It has been pointed out that Binswanger's Daseins-
analyse is the effort to ascertain in each individual that which
makes his experience and the phenomena of his world possible.

Binswanger employs the phenomenological, rather than the re-
ductive, explanatory method to this end —
to ascertain the es-
sential structures of the individual's world as it is experienced by
that individual. The diagram of the circles was introduced in order
to illustrate the manner in which systematic explanation, in par-
ticular scientific explanation, transforms the phenomena it encoun-
ters and subsequently explains. In this respect science can be viewed
as a world-design, as rooted in a human orientation toward phe-
nomena much in the way that the individual Dasein is viewed by
Binswanger as constituting its world via the meaning-matrix of the
Elxistential A Priori.
The reader has doubtless noticed the parallel here between
[•39]
human existence and scientific explanation. Just as the Dasein was

viewed as constituting its world under the aegis of a dominant
category or categories, so explanation in general and scientific
explanation in particular was viewed as transforming its world
via the lesser circle as it confronted its world. I do not now mean
to imply that we may speak of the lesser circle of an explanatory
system as an "Existential A
any strict sense. It will be
Priori" in
remembered was defined as a rule of trans-
that the lesser circle
formation in accordance with which the philosopher (and I now
take the hberty of using this term to include the scientist), moving
in the greater circle, accepts certain data as irreducible and primary
and others as derivative and transformable into irreducible, pri-
mary data. The point was made that in explanation the phenomena
as they appear are transformed in the sense that they are either
subsumed under laws that relate them to other, different phe-
nomena, or they are broken into parts that are taken as more real
than the configuration of those parts that make up the phenomena
in question. Strictly speaking, then, the lesser circle cannot be
spoken of as an Existential A Priori since without the lesser circle
there still remain the phenomena, whereas without the Existen-
tial A Priori no appearance of phenomena is possible to the Dasein.
This distinction is all the more necessary when we speak of the
existing, individual philosopher to whom the phenomena are not
only theoretically, but experientially, antecedent to explanation.
Taken in a looser sense, however, the parallel is a fruitful one.
Just as, for Binswanger, the freedom of the Dasein consists in its
choosing responsibility toward its thrownness^ (In Sartre's words:

". . freedom is the apprehension of my facticity"), and just as
.
health was understood Daseinsanalytically as the ability to reex-

perience and recreate that which is, while at the same time freely
choosing the world thus experienced and thus created, so system-
atic explanation must be able to stand detached from the world
that it has structured, aware of the relativity of its suppositions
while remaining committed to them. In this regard, may we not
say that phenomenology is the "health" of explanation, its guarantee
of freedom, its source of vigor?
That this is especially true for the sciences of psychology and
psychiatry is one of Binswanger's guiding principles. But, he warns
1 Binswanger, p. 321 of this volume.
[ 140]
Conclusion
us, this freedom to stand outside a frame of reference that is so

essential to the groundwork of science cannot of itself give us the
power over our world that scientific explanation proper gives us.
In a like manner the individual Dasein may stand over against his
world, he may be in a readiness creatively to understand or re-

create his world, but this readiness in itself is not sufficient for
mastery over the world. The tremendous scope of possibility with
which the Dasein is confronted as it stands in openness to its world
must be narrowed if there is to be an actualization of possibility.
Here we recognize the well-known existentialist theme, first em-
phasized by Kierkegaard, that human existence proceeds by de-
cision, by the cutting off of possibilities.
The "powerlessness" of the Dasein here shows itself in that certain
of its possibilities of being-in-the-world are ivithdrawn because of

commitment to and by beings, because of its facticity. But it is
also just this withdrawal that lends the Dasein its power: for it is
this that first brings before the Dasein the "real" graspable possi-
bilities of world-design. Transcendence, we thus see, is not only
a striding or swinging beyond of the Dasein toward world, but at
the same time, withdrawal, limiting —and only in this limiting

^
does transcendence gain power "over the world."
When, a few pages later, Binswanger speaks of "realizing the

necessary limitedness of psychiatry's world-design, which, like all
world-designs, owes its power precisely to the withdrawal of other

possibilities . .
." ' he is not only focusing on the parallel between
human existence and scientific explanation, but stressing its par-
ticular significance in reference to the power of the Dasein over
against its world. How, within the framework of the problems
considered in preceding chapters, is this to be understood?
It will be remembered that the ideal of an explanatory system
was characterized as the bringing together of two mutually op-
posed goals: to keep that which is to be explained intact as it
appears, while at the same time to reduce it as much as possible to
what is taken as the basic reality. The dangers of overreduction
and its opposite, "phenomenography," were then cited. The anal-
ogy with the contrete, individual Dasein is suggested by the dis-
2 Binswanger, p. z i z of this volume.

* Ibid., p. 217.
[14']
cussion in Chapter V of the Daseinsanalytic conception of psycho-

pathology. There I quoted Binswanger's epitomization of the
psychopathology in his case studies of schizophrenia:
In all these cases the Dasein can no longer freely allow the world
to be, but is, rather, surrendered over to one particular world-
design, possessed by it, overpowered by it. The terminus techni-
cus for this state of being surrendered over is: Throivnness.^
and his characterization of the girl in the ice-skating incident:
Everything that makes the world significant is submitted to the

rule of that one category which alone supports her "world" and
being."*
May we not, therefore, draw the analogy between what we de-

scribed as the homogeneity of symbolic reference in the mentally
ill and the dangers of overreductionism in explanatory systems?
In both cases we find ourselves faced with an impoverishment of
world, a price paid by the psychoric for the lessening of feeUngs of
anxiety and paid by the overreductive system of explanation for
comparative certainty. In both cases this impoverishment of world
can be viewed as a loss of freedom: the psychotic is surrendered
over (ausgeliefert) to his world-design, he is ruled as if from with-
out by a world of his own essential structuring ("projection");
the overreductive system cannot return to the phenomena that
it has reduced; it world that no longer
finds itself committed to a
is the one it sought to understand; it cannot "let the world be."
Both cases, in a word, represent a loss of power: the psychotic

does not act but is only acted upon; the overreductive system can
no longer explain phenomena but only the aspect of phenomena to
which it theoretically can return. In this sense, then, phenomenology
is the art of "letting the phenomena be" and may with justice be
spoken of as the "health" of explanation, its guarantee of freedom.

Our interest in this study has been primarily with the problems
involved in overreduction because of their relevance to natural-
scientific explanation. However, we might briefly speculate as to
Binswangcr, p.
•*
5 of this volume.
1
1
Binswangcr, "The Existential Analysis School of Thought," in Rollo May,

^
Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger (eds.). Existence (New York, 1958), p.
203.
I142I
Conclusion
how the parallel fares when drawn in the other direction. Phe-
nomenography, we recall, comes into being when the lesser circle
grows uncontrollably, when the criterion for primitive fact be-
comes infinitely lax. In such a case we have a surfeit of reaUty, a
bloated system in which the tendency exists for all "entities" and
propositions about entities to be accepted as they appear and "swal-
lowed whole." Since such a system records, along with the phe-
nomena all interpretations of the phenomena, what it gives us is
not an essential analysis or a faithful description of the phenomena
in which all interpretation that transcends the phenomena are ruled
out, but, rather, the phenomena as encrusted with phenomenon-
transcending references and interpretations, i.e., the phenomena as
already reduced. Nor does it give us adequate explanation, but,
rather, throws back the phenomena to be explained as they ap-
peared The tendency, therefore, of phenomenography
at the outset.
is to hold that phenomena have reality, all are more or less
all
basic, all systems have some truth. We might speak here of, as it
were, a "manic" tendency of systematic explanation:
... in a fundamental-ontological sense . . . we can say of the

existential unsureness of the manic depressive that it is a matter of
the thrownness of the Dasein insofar as he, whether for short or
long, is thrown into unambiguous, but oppositional stances to-
—
ward world or, more accurately expressed, unambiguously de-
termined, if also mutually opposed, possible modes of interpreting
world.®
In contrast to the "overreductive" psychosis that Binswanger treats

in Schizophrenie, we have here in his "Ober Ideenflucht" just the
reverse. The manic-depressive springs from one world-design to
another, thrown into each one, yet not actually freely committing
himself to any. The manic-depressive is "possessed" by his mani-
fold and often contradictory worlds just as the schizophrenic is
possessed by one world. phenomenography grants the

Just as
truth and basic reality of all phenomena, so the manic psychotic
is plunged into sundried worlds each of which at the moment is
full reality. Just as the manic psychotic never comes to himself,^
never wins to a final stance, so phenomenography produces en-

* Binswanger, Schweiz, Archiv. f. Neur. u. Psych., Vol. 29, p. 206.
7 Ibid., p. 243.
[•43]
cyclopedic, rather than systematic "explanation." And, like the

manic, phenomenography has no power over its world that never
changes, but merely reappears as it was first encountered.
Thus for the individual and for the system, commitment to a
world is the condition for power over that world. If phenome-
nology as the art of unbiased apprehension of phenomena is the
"health" of systematic explanation, then judicious reduction as
the art of presupposing, is the actualization of that "health." If the
standing apart from the world it has constituted and "letting it be"
is the meaning of freedom of the Dasein, then chosen commitment
to that same world is that freedom reahzed.
The ideal of explanation as the mean between overreduction
and phenomenography is approachable through the phenomeno-
logical venture that strikes to the essence of phenomena as they are
experienced. But power, considered as the ability to change or alter
the world, cannot spring solely from an attitude that seeks only
the essence of experience, as does phenomenology. Phenomenology
cannot act or do But it can provide the source
as science can.
and ground of effective explanation and action in which the loss
of possibility is fully compensated by the gain of actuality.
Here the parallel stops. The freedom of th^ individual Dasein,
unhke phenomenology, cannot stand as separable from its use. The
individual must constitute his world through the meaning-matrix
of the Existential A Priori; indeed, the individual from the first
finds his world so constituted. Thus throivn into a world of its
own structuring, the Dasein can renew its freedom by the readiness
to experience its world afresh, while exercising its power by res-
olute commitment to the world which it structures.
Science, as compared with any other system of explanation in

the history of philosophy, has a unique kind and degree of power.
It has achieved this because, more than any other system, it has suc-
ceeded in distancing man from what he encounters and has thereby
led to the fruition of what Herbert Marcuse^ cites as the will to
subjugate nature. Only since the birth of our science has man
been so completely alienated from his world while at the same
time being steered back toward that world as the sole reality.
Rehgions and philosophies since the beginnings of our civilization
* Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston, 1955), p. no.
[ 144]
Conclusion
have attempted the former; the addition of the latter was reserved
for our times. But only in our century has this attitude extended
to the self. Scientific psychology has brought man himself into the
realm of nature and in so doing has produced one of the most
spectacular paradoxes of our history, the distancing of man from
himself, the theme of self-alienation. What is there left, then, but
the ghost of a ghost, the shadow of the Cartesian cogitans? And
what is the gain? Can we point to the power for which, in our
natural science, we paid the price of the alienation of man from
nature? Or have we not rather reached the point in our science of
selfwhere the precondition of power is no longer alienation of
knower from known, where the whole notion of object as some-
thing which stands over against us must be abandoned in the foyers
of our thought?
We have spoken loosely of the parallel between system and
existing individual. The crisis of our time to which existentialism
and Daseinsanalyse reacts is the danger that the parallel will
grow stricter, that man will belong to science rather than science
being man's, that the lesser circle of science will become man's
Existential A Priori, that— în a deep and cruelly literal sense —^man
will lose his mind.
[145]
TART riVO\
SELECTED PAPERS OF
LUDWIG BINSWANGER
Freud's Conception of Man in
the Light of Anthropology""
To capture in a fleering hour the essence of the scienrific work of

a long life of effort and labor, one must delve into the source
from which it sprang, the Idea that inspired in^The idea behind
a scientific ivork combines the unique personal-psy chological and
cultural-historical conditions that made it possible with the timeless
mission it has to accomplish in and for the world, namely, the
[• translator's note: Regarding Binswanger's use of the term "anthropology":

in Existence (R. May was pointed out that "Binswanger uses
et al., eds., p. 191) it
this word not in its usual American meaning, which is cultural anthropology, the
comparative study of races, mores, etc., but rather in its more strictly etj'mological
sense, that is, anthropology as the study of man {anthropos) and specifically .
. .
the study of the essential meaning and characteristics of being human."

Perhaps the best characterization of what Binswanger means by the word is
provided by Heidegger: " Anthropology' denotes the scienc e of man. It com-
'
prises the information that can be obtained about the nature of man as a being
all
composed of a body, a soul, and a mind. The domain of anthropology includes,

not only those given verifiable properties that distinguish the human species from
plants and animals, but also man's latent abilities and the differences of character,
race, and sex. And inasmuch as man appears not only as a natural being (homo
natitra) but also as a being that acts and creates, anthropology must also seek to
know what man as an active being can and should 'make of himself.' His powers
and obligations depend finally on certain basic attitudes that man as such is al-
ways capable of adopting. These attitudes are called W
eltanschatmngen, and the
'psychology' of these includes the whole of the science of man. Since anthropol-
ogy must consider man in his somatic, biological, and psychological aspects, the
such disciplines as characterology, psychoanalysis, ethnology, pedagogic
results of
psychology, the morphology of culture, and the typology of W
eltanschauungen
[ '49]
Selected Papers of LxmwiG Binswanger
service of Truth.lfThe Idea holds the secret of productivity. Its

task, to use a profound phrase of Goethe's, is none other than
to fulfill the divine mission to be productive.
The Idea of Homo Natura

The Idea that governed the unquenchable productivity of the
man whom we are now considering with esteem and gratitude,
the Idea in whose realization he saw his mission, stemmed from his
conception of man, a conception diametrically opposed to a thou-

sand years of tradition. The essence of man for Freud is neither
ho?no aetemus, or coelestis, nor the "universal" historical man,
homo universalis; quite the contrary. Indeed, equally opposed to
Freud's standpoint is the contemporary ontological-anthropological
conception of man as, in a pregnant sense, a "historical" being,
homo existentialis. For Freud, rather, what is involved is__the
scientific conceptôf homo natura, man as nature,
A productive idea reflects its divine mission in that it is driven

by a specific faith, faith in the capacity to discover something
concerning the reality of existence and to shape the world ac-
cordingly. Not only religious, artistic, and moral ideas draw their
vigor from this faith but also the very idea that life is something
that has to be thought about, fought through, and sufiêred for its
own sake. The scientific man, as a rule, wishes to deny that it is a
faith that gives wings to his ideas, but Freud is the exception. In
one of those many places in his writings that owe their trenchant
force to the power and conciseness of his Idea, he expresses his
basic beUefrr'We believe," he says, in The Future of an Illusion,
"that it is possible for scientific endeaver to come to know some-
thing of the reahty of the world, something which can increase
our power and according to which we can direct our \ives."J)
Every truly productive faith contains a inysterium tre?fie7idu7n,
an element of awe-stricken wonder, even terror, before the im-
mense unknown. I speak of that unknown that binds Freud's ho?no
must converge in it." (M. Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics
[Indiana, 1962], pp. 215-216.)
Heidegger goes on to suggest that anthropolog)' must be rooted in ontology as
he conceives it. Binswanger, of course, agrees with this, and his anthropology is
rooted in Heidegger's ontology.]

itself
[•50]
Freud's Conception of Man in the Light of Anthropology
natura to the primal source of all life and that, more than any
other biological conception of man, distinguishes and stamps Freud,
namely, the instinc ts. "We have always had the feeling," he still
writes in his seventy-sixth year, "that behind these multitudinous

little instincts, something grave and powerful is buried, something
that we wish to approach cautiously. The theory of instincts is,
as it were, our mythology; the instincts are wonderfully vague

mythical beings. In our work we cannot take our eyes off them
for a moment, yet at the same time we never see them clearly." ^
Here we see the unceasing awe of the natural scientist before
the gravity and power of life and imminent death, tjie awe before
a lifg in wh ich, as Freud thought, "we all suffer heavily," ^ suffer-
ing for which there is no compensation or consolation, but whose
toleration remains the "first duty of all living beings." * It is pos-
sible to fulfill this duty only if we orient ourselves toward death:
"
"Si vis vitam, para mortem"; for life becomes more endurable"
onjy if we gi ve to triithfulness more weight, especially truthful-
ness in the face oi death: "What is painful may none the less be
true." * Freud saw man's geniune awareness in his
In truthfulness
position. Nothing offended him more about a person friend, foe, —
—
or even mankind in general than when he discovered him living
"psychologically beyond his means," ' making psychic luxury out
of psychic want, seeming virtue out of actual need. In this, Freud,
like Nietzsche, discerned the inroads of individual and cultural
hypocrisy. No less radically and passionately than Nietzsche, he
carried out his unique mission but, instead of Nietzsche's scorch-
ing, aphoristic thunderbolts, he systematically, empirically, scien-
tifically, w orke d out the gigantic structure of his technique of tin-
masking, and became the first to lift the veil from the riddle of
the sphinx known answer to the question: "What is
as neurosis. In
it?" he gives the eternal answer: man. Thus, added to and indeed
born out of Freud's arch theme of "life and death" is the theme of
"true and untrue" as an epitimization of mankind's own arch theme
of "good and evil." To Freud, these are opposite poles that modify,
• S. Freud, Gesammelte Schriften X, 345 f. Compare XII, 114: "I therefore do

not have the courage to stand before my fellow men as a prophet, and I bow be-
fore their reproach that I can offer them no consolation. For, at bottom, that is
what they all demand — the wildest revolutionaries no less passionately than the
most virtuous believers."
[15']
Selected Papers of Ludwig Binswanger
rather than exclude, each other. What Freud speaks of in Beyond

the Pleasure Principle as the embattled marriage of and deathlife
holds (with, to be sure, an important qualification) for good and

evil. He saw in evil the prere£uisiteJ[o£jhe_e5a.stence_,Q£.ôod;
''in the sadist's" will to destroy he saw the prerequisite for altruism
and culture; in hate he saw the precondition of love; in enmity,
friendship; in sadness, joy, etc. But his doctrine never allows that
this relation be reversed.
Concerning the positive value of evil, evil considered as an
active ontological force,Freud stands in strict opposition to Au-
gustine and Fichte, who see in evil only that which is limiting and
negative. He stands more in the tradition of Jacob Bohme,
Franz von Baader, and Schelling (one thinks also of Goethe's
Mephistopheles and of Nietzsche), Indeed, Freud's work can be
properly evaluated only after it is contrasted with those doctrines
that teach the duality of life-principles and the consequent struggle
between growth and becomes clear that amid
constriction. It then
all the similarities of viewpoint concerning man's fundamental
participation in the antagonistic forces of creativity, Freud's idea
of homo natura presents a basic, elemental divergence. What I
have in mind is not simply the difference in method between, for

example, Schelling's philosophical deductions from metaphysical
potencies and Freud's scientific induction from experience —two
intellectual orientations that, moreover, according to HeracUtus'
insightsabout the way up and the way down, must ultimately lead
to a harmonious coming together. I am thinking, rather, of the
manner in which these philosophers see evil and good as effective
ontological forces, something that one could never say of Freud.
Here we find ourselves before a fact of highest significance:
Freudian doctrine is diametrically opposed to the teachings of
Augustine and Fichte in that in it/the "good," the ethical, is
nothing but a negative, i.e., a limiting, constricting, condemnatory

and oppressive force that possesses no essentially positive, i.e.,
liberating or creative, effectiveness.* All "metamorphoses of the

According to Freud, the primitive instinctual impulses are "in themselves
•
neither good nor bad." Yet he must admit that all the impulses which society
condemns as evil are of this primitive kind. In addition, many instinctual impulses
appear almost from the first in pairs of oppositcs, and a human being is rarely
altogether "good" or "bad." In any case, experience shows "thatthc pre-existence
Qf__powerful_'bad' impulses in infancy is often the actual condition for an un-
[»5^J
—
egoistic in social instincts" and thus, properly said, all metamor-

phoses of evil into good drives and dispositions, occur, according
to Freud, under row^w/iiow. j'Originally, i.e., in human history
[such transformations occurred] only under external compulsion,
but they [occurred] through the bringing into the world of heredi-
tary dispositions for such transformations and also through their
perpetuation and reinforcement 'during the hfe of the individual
himself.' " ^ Indeed, this whole "development" takes the direction
in which external compulsion is introjected, and which, in the
case of the human Super-ego, is completely absorbed. This trans-

formation occurs, as we know, "by the admixture of erotic com-
ponents": "we learn to value being loved an advantage by virtue as
of which we may do without other advantages." Culture is thus "^
"attained through the renunciation of instinctual gratifications and

furthered by every new development which serves the purposes
®
of renunciation."
In all this, we stand before the pure specimen of homo natura:
bodily instinct, the gaining of pleasure (sacrificing a lesser for a
greater gain), inhibition because of compulsion or pressures from
society (the prototype being the family), a developmental history
in the sense of ontogenetic and phylogenetic transformations of
outer into inner compulsions, and the inheritance of these trans-
formations. (Here I must ignore certain particulars of this theory
such as the postulate of the inheritance of acquired characteristics
and the notion of the introjection of external compulsion. Such
lines of thought bypass, without solving, problems of ethics and
mores, raise difficult issues regarding the reduction of historicity
to natural history, and somewhat dubiously substitute empirical and
biographical facts about human development for essential and a
priori human potentialities, etc.) In this theory, we have to dis-
tinguish between homo natura in the sense of the primitive "natu-

ral" man of human history, and ho7?7o natura in the sense of the
primitive natural man of the individual's history, the newly bom
infant. Just as Goethe's primal plant is not an actual plant, but
as Schiller in his famous conversation with the astounded Goethe
pointed out — is, rather, an idea, so is the Freudian primal man not
an actual man, but an idea. It is not, to be sure, the result of an
mistakable inclination toward 'good' in the adult." S. Freud, Geitmtmehe Schriften

'"
(Vierina,T924-i934),X, 323f.
[153]
ad hoc intuitive insight into nature, but rather it arises from a

hardheaded, discursive examination into the mechanics of nature.
This primal man is not the source and fount of human history, but
is, instead, a requirement of natural-scientific research.
The same holds true for hoTno natura in the sense of the newly-
born infant. Here, too, what we have is not an actual man, but an
idea; not an actual beginning, but a necessary requirement of
scientific, biological reflection and reduction. Both biological ideas
treat man —with regard to his genuine historicity, his capacity for
ethics, culture, religion, art — as a tabula rasa. The only qualifica-

tion of this notion of tabula rasa is that in the newly bom infant
there is already a certain biological etching on this tablet, a blue-
print according to which subsequent cultural development takes
place. At this point we must, however, realize that scientific
knowledge speaks of a tabula rasa only when it confronts a certain
limit. Such was the case with Locke and such is the case with
Freud.* The notion of a tabula rasa is never something that comes

first in scientific thought, but something that comes last. It is the
end result of a scientific dialectic that limits and reduces the
• The between Locke and Freud is most instructive. Where Locke

parallel
asks how knowledge extends, Fr^d asks how far man's
far man's capacity for
capacity for civilization, culture, extends. WTiere Locke seeks the method of
correct knowledge, Freud seeks the method of living correctly with respect
to civilization. Where Locke proceeds from the doubt as to whether the goal
of all-embracing knowledge is attainable, Freud proceeds from the doubt as
to whether the goal of an over-all capacity for culture is attainable in man. The
method of both is an approach to the composite as arising from the simple, the
general as derivative from the particular. For both, the psychic life is a "move-
ment" that proceeds according to the laws of its simpler elements (images, for
Locke; instincts, for Freud). Both begin (or, rather, end) with the symbol of the
tabula rasa. Both are strict psychological empiricists and arc rooted as far back as
Descartes. Both reject metaphysical hypotheses as prejudicial. Both are predomi-
nantly oriented toward sensualism and nominalism, etc. There are also, of course,
considerable differences, particularly those stemming from the fact that Freud, be-
ing a natural scientist, was purely an empiricist, whereas Locke was not only an
empirical, but also a critical philosopher. We might sum up the parallel between
them in the following way: Where Locke says, "Nihil est in intellcctu quod
non feurit in scnsu," Freud says: "Nihil est in homine cultura, quod non feurit in
homine natura." Just as, with respect to Locke's prof>osition, we must keep in
mind Leibniz' adjunct, "nisi intellcctus ipse," so wc must add to our Freudian
formulation: "nisi homo ipse." It would therefore read: "Nihil est in homine
cultura, quod non feurit in homine natura, nisi homo cultura ipse." But this "homo
cultura ipse" is the epitome of all a priori cultural forms of human being, just as
"intellcctus ipse" is the epitome of all a priori forms of cognitive reason.
[154]
totality of human experience to one particular kind of experience.

Dialectically, this notion serves as an indication that knowledge
has come up against a limit beyond which it is not able to go. Seen
from the vantage point of the totality of human experience, the
tabula rasa is thus a symbol of a particular negation, the expression
of a dialectical boundary line.
If we now make this symbol into a reality and treat it as a real
beginning of human history, then we witness the highly instructive

scientific spectacle of a complete reversal of the historical con-
nections of nature, history, and myth. Where we find myth in the
earliest periods of human history, where we see history emerge
from the husks of hieratic and mythical traditions and biography
and see how late in this history the science of nature arises, we now
find natural science turning the tables completely, inserting the
product of its own constructions —the idea of homo natura — at
the beginning, converting its "biological, natural development" into
history and then taking this nature and this history as the basis
upon which myth and religion are to be "explained." Thus, the
essential significance of the idea of homo natura is that it clamps
man inbetween instinct and illusion. And from the tension that
arises between these two forces art, myth, and religion arise.
When I refer to Freud's homo natura as only an idea, this
should not be understood as a disparagement. Science, after all,
works as a rule only with ideas. Where, for example, the idea of a
primal plant unveils the "vegetative" creations of nature and il-
luminates individual plants in the light of this revelation —while

leaving it for research to provide subsequent, detailed empirical
verification —with the theory of homo natura, one can work not
only scientifically, but also practically. One can, that is. do
s omething wi^ b fhp ^Hp^, rir^mf ly ,
^^^^ P^'^J'J^ hptihhy .
The Development of the Idea of Homo Natura

into a Natural Scientific Theory and Its
Significance for Medical Psychology
The reductive dialectic used by Freud to construct his theory of

man is, to the last detail, that of natural science. In it, his faith
that he is discovering something about the reality of the world
finds its proper support, and with it his sense of awe before the
I155I
mystery and power of life tirelessly spurs his work forward. Freud
was not one to Hmit his concern merely to the direct object of his
investigations without at the same time being profoundly aware
of the intellectual tool that was his method. He himself has given
us an excellent description of its most essentialprerequisites. He
speaks of se eking identity beneath differences. (Psychoanalytic in-
vestigations show "that the deepest essence of man is instinctual
impulse, whose elemental nature is the same in all men and which
directs him to the satisfaction of certain primal needs.'^ ". the . .
most important and most obscure element of psychological re-

search [is] the organism's 'instincts.' " ^°
He speaks "chemistically"
of the great qualitative differences between substances being "traced
back to quantitative variations in the proportions in which the
same elements were combined." ^^ By elements, Freud means the
individual instincts and instinctual components. We find him con-
fessing "that all we have are merely scientific hypotheses," which
cannot "provide final solutions to these doubtful problems" and
which merely "provide the proper abstract ideas that, when applied
to the raw material of observation, allow order and clarity to
emerge." " But above all, we fin d that one st atement of Freud's
^hat most concisely articulates the scientific method of psycho-
âlysis: ""'I n our method^ observed phenomena must take second
place to fqr ces_that are merely hypothesizejf ("Die wahrgenom-
menen Phanomene miissen in unserer Auffassung gegen die nur
angenommenen Strebungen zuriicktreten").^'
This is the genuine natural-scientific spirit. Natural science
neverbegnu'with just tHe^heTiomena; indeed, its main task is to
divest the phenomena of their phenomenality as quickly and as
thoroughly as possible." This, as we know, was the main reason
Goethe could never accept or appreciate Newton's theories of light
and color. Natural science, like history, speaks in the perfect tense.
But where the historian asks how things really ivere, the natural
how things have become what they are. Psychology,
scientist asks
on the other hand, as an autonomous science in the deepest sense
of the word, s peaks mainly n the present tense,^'^ for the psychol-
i
ogist must ask only what a tbmg really is, an'^'is" in which the
polarity of self- world and past-future is absorbed and preserved
in^the "present tense."
Wherever Freud speaks of knowing the world, of experience,
[156]
research and reason, he means this natural-scientific kind of knowl-

edge. He maintains, "that there is no other source of knowledge of
the universe but the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified
observations — that is, what is called research —and that no knowl-
"
edge can be obtained from revelation, intuition, or inspiration."
Science thus seeks neither to frighten nor console;^^ it recognizes
no "tendentiousness" in itself.'** As such, science is an irresistible
force. "In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experi-
^®
ence." no appeal beyond reason." ^^ Freud is perfectly
"There is
aware^that wha^^
involved is an "attitude toward the world." In
one of the few places in his writings where he uses the word
"spirit," he says: "The scientific spirit engenders a particular atti-
tude toward the things of this world." ^' Indeed, he goes so far as
to recognize that scientific terms belong to a "language of images"
that thus in no way directly grasp and give back the reality of the
world.
We can now characterize t he idea of homo natu ra more pre-
cisely by saying that it /is a genuine natural-scientific, biopsy cho-
logical ide^ It is a natural-scientific construct like the biophysio-
logical idea of the organism, the chemist's idea of matter as the
underlying basis of the elements and their combinations, and the
physicist's of light, etc. The reality of the phenomenal, its unique-
ness and independence, is absorbed by the hypothesized forces,
drives, and the laws that govern them.*
Notwithstanding all the limitations to knowledge that they ex-
press, the above citations are still in keeping with Freud's scientific
however subdued and discipHned this
epistemological optimism,
optimism may appear when compared to that of his teacher, Mey-
nert. It is the optimism of the natural scientist of the last half of the
nineteenth and the beginning of the present century. It is this sci-
entific epistemological optimism that forms the protective soil of

Freudian doctrine, and to which owes its world-conquering it
power. Homo natura is the scientific problem in which Freud

proved his genius. Without opposing his humane and humanistic
dispositions —indeed, quite the contrary— the idea of ho7no natura
• What distinguishes the Freudian homo natura from Nietzsche's conception is
not so much the contrast between eros and the will to power as it is its character
of being a strict, natural-scientific, empirical construct. This is also what sets it
apart from the homo natura of J. J. Rousseau, "Novalis," and Klages.
[157]
Selected Papers of Lxjdwig Binswanger
stands as the scientific edifice that Freud, with amazing integrity

and energy, built out of the inconstant stuff of human life.
Proceeding a step further, we ask how it really aifects our total
understanding of man to interpret him as homo natura and to
take instinctual impulses as the basis of this interpretation.
Formally, as we have already seen, this interpretation is based
on equivalences among and species in the natural-science
classes
sense; materiallyiit is based on imperative human needs, termed
sexual instincts, ariH later known as life-instincts (eros), and the
ways in which they can be satisfied, substituted, or renounced.]
"Sexuahty," for Freud, always included the erotic. The fact that it
occupies so prominent a position stems primarily from Freud's
—
experience with neurosis, which and the more I see of neurosis,
—
the more I must agree îs rooted in the enormous "somatomor-
phic" intricacy, complexity, and, above all, "historicity" of the
sexual instinct and its by-products. I shall speak later of the soma-
tomorphic meaning of sexuahty. As to its historicity, I refer not
only to the extreme complexity that Freud first showed to be char-
acteristic of the biological and physiological development of sexu-
ahty. What I am primarily referring to is t he power and sig nifi-
cance of sexuaht y th at, in shaping our relations to other human
beings, shapes our inner life-history * Hunger and tliirst do not,
in this sense, have the power to shape our hfe-histories.
Where hunger affects "history," it affects world-history and
not that of the individual human being (as, for example, in the
French Revolution or in a polar expedition). Neither has hunger
itself a significant history of its own — not, at least, outside the
physiologist's laboratory. (Concerning thirst, we need not deal
with those cases where there is already a certain "harmonious"
relationshipbetween the drinker and "his" wine.^-) For the rest, it
was precisely hunger that
Freud used to illustrate the leveling,
equalizing power of the instincts: "Suppose a number of totally
• With regard to this term, cf. L. Binswanger, "Lebcnsfunktion und innere

Lcbensgcscliiclitc" (Ausf^. Vort. u. Aufs., Vol. I). The main significance of sexual-
ity and the erotic for the inner life history Ls easier to understand in individual
cases if we consider the particular relations of scxualitj' to the experience of time
and space (extension and momcntization, broadening and shortening of existence),
the experience of change and continuity, of the creative and the new, of repetition
and fidelity, of drivenness, on the one hand, and resolve and decision, on the other,
etc.
[158I
different human beings were all equally exposed to hunger. As

their urgent need for food mounted, all the individual differences
would disappear and in their place one would see the uniform
manifestations of the one unappeased instinct." ^^ Thus, for Freud,
the "physical significance" or "value" of an instinct grows apace

with its frustration, but it seems questionable to him whether the
satisfaction of an instinct is, in general, accompanied by a com-
parable lessening of its psychic significance. But in any case Freud
holds it necessary to consider the possibility that "somethingjivthe
nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization
of complete satisfaction." ^* This quite plausible hypothesis serves
to substantiate the contention that sexuality plays a greater role
than the other drives.
Be that as it may, the main point for us is the tendency of
Freudian theory to level or equate the several aspects of man's
essential being by bringing them to the level of general exigen-
cies or needs and the psychic significance of those needs. This
level is, as we know, that of the body or vitality, and we might
also describe Freud's homo natura as homo vita. Now, Rousseau
tends to see his ho7no natura as an angelic creature dropped from
the arms of a benign Nature into a paradisical Utopia — an, as it
were, homo natura benignus et mirabilis. Novalis' notion of homo

natura leans to a magical idealization of the bodily sphere and a
magical mundanizadon of spirituality. But the homo natura of
Nietzsche and Klages occupies the same level as that of Freud.
That is, the body is given unconditional authority in determining
man^sêntia be ing. "A few hours mountain climbing," says

l
Nietzsche, and Klages concurs, "makes a scoundrel and a saint the

same man." As if, Lowith" rightly remarks, before the climb the
saint and the scoundrel were not bodily essentially the same. Here,
then, bodily fatigue and exhaustion are added to the urgency of
the sexual and nutritive need. However profound and varied the
physical and psychic "significance" of sexuality may be as com-
pared with the nutritive and "ergetic"-vegetative sphere, all three
are similar in that they proceed from the needs of the body.
all
One should not, of course, overlook the importance and value

attributed to the by the highest stages of an-
body by Plato and
cient Greek whose denigration began in Neo-
civilization, a value
platonism and culminated with the arrival of Christianity. But if
[159]
physical needs are given authority over the whole of man's being,
then the image of man becomes one-sidedly distorted and onto-
logically falsified.For then the only thing that will be seen, expe-
rienced, felt, suffered, and missed as real and actual becomes that
which man is qua body, i.e., what he feels "in" or "from" his body,
what he perceives with his body and, eventually, what he ex-
presses "with" his body (Klages), Everything else becomes, of
necessity, a mere "superstructure" —
a "fabrication" (Nietzsche), a
refinement (sublimation), an illusion (Freud), or an adversary
(Klages). ^^ For Kiages, to be sure, the soul stands between body
and spirit (will) as does experience for Nietzsche, and the psychic
apparatus for Freud. But this does not mean that corporeaUty is
not seen generally proper motivational basis in the under-
as the
standing of man. These new, original insights must, however, still
be accommodated within the totahty of man's knowledge of him-
self —
^they must, that is, be anthropologically clarified. This is es-
pecially true for the highly original manner in \\hich Freud's gen-
ius classified and delimited the governing sexual motive. I refer
to the regional motives —
the oral and anal, the phalHc and vaginal,
the ocular and manual, the pectoral and ventral, etc. Although
certain great minds from Plato to Franz von Baader, Schelling or
— —
Nietzsche to name but a few have realized how somatomorphic
even the subtlest, most spiritual aspects of human experience are,
it was Freud who first gave us a genuine soinatog raphy of experi-
ence based on natural-scientific observations and cons tructs. This
is an accomplishment whose anthropological significance cannot
be sufficiently highly esteemed.-^

Klages views bodiliness from the pathic and expressive point of
view; Nietzsche sees it within the framework of the particular
situation (Befindlichkeit) (cf. the above aphorism); for both, bod-
iliness lies within the aegis of the fullness or poverty of hfe. For
Freud, bo dihness lies under the aegis of the unconscious or the Id,
the unb ridled chaos of needs_, drives, affects, and passions — in a
wordj_theêdf:rwre principle. Freud's ho7fio natiira is not only
will to power (though it most decidedly is that too!), but, rather,
"will" to so?nething, of which the will to power represents only a
special case: the will to pleasure, i.e., to "life" and the heightening
of life by the preservation of "unknown, ungovernable forces"
[i6o]
—
that are responsible for life. The basis of man's being is thus bodi-
liness; that is, he is the product and passive plaything of those
powerful, invisible mythical entities called instincts that stand out
against the background of the unfathomable stream of cosmic life.
The myth of a universal life (force) here takes the form of a
highly complex, scientific, and empirically based theory of individual
life, "individual" human beings and their bio-physiological, onto-,
and phylo-genesis. Deep down, the individual life, too, is chaotic,

dark, inaccessible, and only describable in negative comparison with
and in contrast to the "organized" Ego. It is hke a "cauldron of
seething excitement"; it is "somewhere in contact with somatic proc-
esses," and "takes over from them instinctual needs and gives them
mental expression," though we cannot say in what substratum this
contact is made, "These instincts fill it [the Id] with energy, but it
has no organization and no unihed will, only an impulse to obtain
satisfaction for the instinctual needs, in accordance with the pleasure
principle. The laws of logic — above all, the law of contradiction
donot hold for processes in the Id. Contradictory impulses exist
side by without neutralizing each other or drawing apart; at
side
most they combine in compromise formations under the overpow-
ering economic pressure toward discharging their energy. There is
nothing in the Id which can be compared to a negation . .

." ^*;
nor is there anything corresponding to the idea of time, and "no

alteration of mental processesby the passage of time." "Natu-
knows no values, no good and evil, no morality. The
rally, the Id
economic or, if you prefer, the quantitative factor, which is so

closely bound up with the pleasure principle, dominates all its
processes. Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge — that, in our view,
is all that the Id contains. It seems, indeed, as if the energy of these
instinctual impulses is constituted differently to that which is found
in the other regions of the mind. It must be far more fluid and
more capable of being discharged, for otherwise we should not
have those displacements and condensations, which are so charac-
teristic of the Id and which are so completely independent of the
qualities of the object —

in the Ego we would call it an idea with —
which it is cathected. What would one not give to understand these
things better!" ^® Freud's fully developed notion of the Id contains,
therefore, all those characteristics that he had described in his
[i6i]
earlier formulations, as pertaining to "the unconscious," plus some

elaborations. In addition, parts of the Ego and the Super-ego were
also recognized as belonging to the unconscious.
Perhaps now wehave clarified what we meant when we said
that for Freud bodiliness hes under the aegis of the Id. It is the
chaotic reservoir of the instincts (the instinct is, in fact, the "con-
ceptual borderline between the somatic and the psychic" and al-
ways has its "psychic representation" or significance), which pass

over into the psychic. Here one could equally well say either that
the soma is already psychically conditioned, or that the psyche is
already somatically conditioned. But still the essence of the organ-

ism, itself, remains unexplained. For Freud, it is more than bodily
functions or instinctuality; it includes physique, especially the or-
gans of perception and motility. As opposed to the Id, these organs
possess the closest ties to the "organized," "personified" Ego of
the conscious personality, which, in the course of civilization, has
arisen out of the Id. Bodily functions or instinctuality are therefore
related to the vegetative sphere, and the corporal body to the ani-
mal sphere (these terms are used in the sense given them by the
Zurich physiologist, Hess). Both, as just indicated, pass over into
the psychic apparatus and are closely related to it. Here, then,
emerges yet another aspect of Freud's preanalytic period: the neu-
robiological. Of this, let it only be remarked that it, too, plays its
role in Freud's construction of the psychic apparatus. Does he not,
in The Interpretation of Dreams, say that the psychic apparatus
^°
Imown to us in the form of
"is also an anatomical preparation"?
However much he warns us against the temptation to localize psy-
chological functions in any anatomical fashion, his findings con-
cerning aphasic disturbances and his experience with the hnguistic
apparatus constructed in connection with them tend to confirm
his theoretical speculations.
I do not wish to go into any further detail here in discussing

Freud's concept of the psychic apparatus. But one thing must still
be said: Freud's psychic apparatus seems, at first glance, compara-

bLe to a diagrammatic representation of a bodily organ, a diagram
such as those used by lung or heart specialists to indicate their
clinical findings. But such a specialist needs only a pencil and paper
in order to represent the organ schematically. Freud, however, had
first to conceptuahze the organ itself on the basis of much experi-
[i6z]
ence and painstaking thought, for diagrams end where the psyche
begins.(The psychic apparatus is thus both organ and clinical dia-
gram, on the one hand an epitomization of "topical" systems and

instances, their dynamic workings and economic functions, and on
the other hand, a schema for investigating the psychic life and its
anomalies'!) For Freud, a mental disturbance has not been properly

examined'ôr theoretically investigated until its relations to the en-
tire schema have become clear. His treatment of anxiety is an ex-
ample. ^^ The same is true of repression, which he does not treat as
a general psychological concept —
something others before him had
already done in a sporadic or aphoristic fashion but as a function —
or mechanism. To have worked out the complicated mechanis-
tic details of repression stands as one of his great scientific achieve-
ments. No one at all familiar with the problems he dealt with can
fail to realize what an enormous concentration of scientific re-
search and thought was required before even one sentence in the
language of Diathematical functional equations could be formu-
lated concerning the psychic hfe of human beings.
Freud once said it was false to maintain that repression kept all
the derivatives of the repressed out of consciousness. For if these

are far enough removed from the repressed instinctual representa-
tion—whether owing to the process of distortion or by reason of
the number of intermediate associations — they have free access to
consciousness. He summarizes this contention in the following
"mathematical" formula: I t is as though the resistance of conscio us-
ness against them {the "derivatives^'') were a function* of their
remoteness fr om ivhat ivas originally repressed.^- Compared to a
mathematical formula such as this, which is the result of an enor-
mous compression of empirical facts (in the area of free associa-
symbolic expression, etc.), Herbart's mathematical
tion, resistance,
formulae concerning the "dynamics of images" seem to be idle
armchair entertainments. One might even formally express Freud's
whole Hfe work by stating that the idea of homo natura can lead to
the possibility of expressing psychic processes in a mathematical
functional equation. Freud succeeded in demonstrating mechanism
at work in what was apparently the freest reaches of the human
mind, thereby creating the possibility of mechanically "repairing"
• There seems to me no doubt that this expression must be understood not only
in a dynamic but also in a mathematical sense.
[163]
the mind (with the psychoanalytic techniques of unmasking and

annuling repression and regression by means of the transference
mechanism). Thus, in an undreamed of way, Freud confirmed
Lotze's^^ claim about the unqualified universality of mechanism.
The entire mechanism of the psychic apparatus is set in motion
from the depths, the Id, by means of the psychic representation of
all instinctuahty, the wish. Wishing is the only context within which
the Freudian homo natura is merely an
directed. But even this is
explanatory construct emanating from a general sundering of hu-

man being, primitive and otherwise. For an actuaUty man, and
certainly primitive man, does not strive for pleasure as such, but
for the possession or experience of a particular thing that brings
him pleasure, /Here, therefore, we are within the sphere of mean-
ings and their particular specifications. Only a being that can only
wish may be thought of as stretched between instinct and illusion.
And, conversely, only when we posit such a being can such
basic modes of human existence as the religious, the ethical, and
the artistic be explained as illusion or derived from the need for
illusion. Wishing is not constitutive of mankind as such, however
constitutive it may in fact be for the psychic apparatus built into

hoTHO natura.
its particular mecha-
\yhat at b ottom sets this apparatus and
nisms in motion Freud developed this concept with as-
is a wish.
tounding consistency, particularly with regard to the mechanisms
of dream work. That dream ivork (not the manifest dream and
not the latent dream thoughts or the previous day's residue) can
be set in motion only by means of a wish stimulus is as much a
necessary postulate of the psychic apparatus as it is a fact of expe-
rience. If this appears to be a vicious circle, then scientific method
in general has not been understood. Just as the notion of the psy-
chic apparatus is a theoretical epitomization of the actuality of ex-
perience, so "experience" is a theoretical verification of that epit-
omization. All of natural science exemplifies this circle.That this
wish 7rnist be unconscious from what has been said of the
is clear
Id, This, however, does not imply that the notion of the uncon-
scious dream-wish was fabricated "for the sake of theory." On the
contrary, the theoretical manner in which experience is approached
is sucli that between theory and experience there exists an open,
mutual correspondence. Freud correctly estimated that this theory
[164]
was his main service to science. He did not attribute major sig-
nificance to the "practical task" of interpreting symbols but rather
to the "theoretical" task of explaining the supposed "operations"
of the particular modes of functioning of the psychic apparatus.
Of both the practical and the theoretical had to be
course,
"wrought de novo,^'' for the one task is inconceivable without
the other. But the scientist's special pride in the latter is unmistak-
able and thoroughly justified. "The process of dream-work," we
read in the 29th Lecture,^^ something quite new and strange, the
"is
like of which has never before been known." But even in The His-
tory of the Psycho-analytic Movement he said of Jung's analysis
of schizophrenia that "the most important point has been, not so
much the possibility of interpreting the symptoms, as the psychical
''
mechanisms of the disease."
The various revisionist psychoanalytic movements that have,
with great ease, cast off this theoretical nucleus of psychoanalysis

have also forfeited their right to be mentioned in the same breath
with Freud. Foi(what singles out Freud's doctrine is his attempt to
demonstrate ivhat follows as a mechanical necessity from the given
conditions of man's natural organization and the impact betiveen
these conditionsand environmental factorsyV\ns is wh at_we_ie£m
the discovejy of a mechanism at work. Here necessity usurps the
place of freedom, mechanicalness the place of reflection and de-
cision. And with this we find ourselves in the sphere of medicine.
"For," says Lotze in his famous treatise on instincts, "how poorly
our health would, in fact, fare were reflection, rather than mech-
anization, its protector." What we
have described as the theory
^'
of homo natura prides itself not only on having demonstrated

the mechanism that guarantees and "protects" the normal course
of psychic events, but also on having demonstrated just those mech-
anisms that can serve to explain how psychic disturbances "follow
as a mechanical necessity from the given organizational conditions"
(the mechanisms, that is, of neurosis and psychosis). Finally, it
takes pride in having demonstrated those mechanisms (transfer-

ence mechanisms) that can be used to repair the disturbance and
protect the newly acquired health of the organism. Here we stand
upon the firm ground of what is called medical psychology and
psychotherapy. was Freud who conquered this whole
It territory
for natural science. Since Freud, no scientist can work in this area
[165]
without, in one way or another, dealing with his theories. How-

ever much these theories may
change and develop, they \%dll
later
remain the touchstone of our scientific conscience and ingenuity.
But medicine, and psychiatric medicine as well, comprises only
one domain of human civilization, that which is concerned \\'ith
the protection of health by means of biological and psychological
mechanisms. Health is doubtless one of man's greatest goods and
its protection one of the noblest tasks of civilization. But man has
even more to protect than his physical and mental health. The
many-sidedness of his being must be adequate to the many-
sidedness of his struggles; the natural-scientific insight into the
"unqualified universahty" of mechanisms must be matched with
the anthropological insight into the limitations of this significance
for the totality of human-being.
The Idea of Homo Natura in the

Light of Anthropology
The main result of our investigation has been to establish that
Freud's idea of homo natura is a scientific construct that is only
feasible if it is based on a destniction of man's experiential knowl-
edge of himself — a destruction, that is, of anthropological experi-
ence. As have elsewhere tried to show,^" this is as true of homo
I
natura in chnical psychiatry and psychopathology as it is of every

so-called objective psychology. Anthropological investigations and
criticisms are quite relevant to all these ideas of hovio natura:
what is involved is a protection of human existence in general, as
opposed to the purely medical protection of the health of this ex-
istence and the purely natural-scientific preservation of its relation
to nature. The task of anthropology is to break down such spe-
cialized concepts of man, to retrieve them into the totality of hu-
man existence, and to determine their "place" and significance
therein.
But anthropology would be throwing the baby out with the
bath if, as a result of current attempts to define and interpret man
not as man, but as nature, as //fe, as ivill, as spirit (pneuma), etc., it

were to discard the specialized concepts of man entirely. One ex-
treme is as dangerous as the other, both for the specialized human-
istic sciences and for anthropology. We
shall, therefore, try to es-
[i66]
tablish at least four senses in which the Freudian idea of homo

natura and its scientific elaboration are significant for anthropol-
(First.') construing man, as it does, on the basis of psychobio-

logical mechanisms, Freud's theory of homo natura is also a most
impo rtant metb odqlogjcAL organizing principle for anthropology.
It shows how order and system can be brought into our knowl-
edge of man by subsuming all regions of his being under one uni-
tary, organizing principle. With this instrument of organization,
natural-scientific knowledge is able to make great strides in ad-
vance of anthropology, which, for its part, is first and foremost
based upon the multiplicity, individuality, and essential intercon-
nection of "observed" phenomena, and which, therefore, must take
the form of phenomenology. In this regard, natural-scientific
knowledge does the pioneer's job of staking off entire areas and
delimiting particular regions, of surveying and weighing, the job
of selection and preliminary classification. This work is governed
by the principle of profitable applicability and of hard, rigorous
natural-scientific necessity. What it results in scientifically is the
ascertainment and knowledge of abstract forces* and powers, by
which man is which he is surrendered, and which regu-
ruled, to
late an3~serve~^tTTemachinery of his Ufe. But at the same time we
must always remember "that the machinery which brings forth
the image of a phenomenon is not identical with the meaning of
the image," ^^ that, therefore, man is more than an homtne-machine
in Lamettrie's sense.
The (econd way in which mechanism is significant for anthro-
pology concerns precisely the fact that it shows man to be more
than a machin e^.j n '"har he ran relate himself in some way to his
mechanis m. The reverse side of absolute mechanism, of iron neces-
sity, is unquestionably the notion of absolute freedom. The more
mechanically we interpret man, the more freely he is seen to rise

above mechanism. "La plus intime hberte," writes an important
French contemporary to whom we owe much, "consiste dans la
conduite d'un homme a I'egard de son caractere." ^^ This, in fact,

is anthropologically the most significant function of mechanisms.
Without it, we could not understand the anthropological tension
• "Forces refer to no experience, they are a supplement of thought." R. Lotze,
Kl.Schr.,\, 153.
[167I
Selected Papers of Ltjdwig Binswanger
that exists between "nature and spirit," necessity and freedom, be-
tween (in the passive sense) being lived, being overpowered?, being
driven, and the spontaneity of existence.
Insight into the mechanism of homo natura allows, (^îrp, for
th e discovery of "rifts in t he fabric of everyday life" (Lowith)
that through the process of unmasking, show mental well-being to
b^ a co nglomerate of patched-over needs. The idea of ho7no na-
tura and the ascertainment of psychobiological mechanisms are the
least fallible measures against which man can test and examine his
existential posture in the world. iMechanism always says "No"; the
onus probandi of the "Yes" Hes on the side of freedom, on the side
of existence. Where mechanism must exist-
enters the field, there
ence, its adversary, prove itself. Nothing can withstand the com-
pelhng force of mechanism as well as existence. It, and it alone, can
undei~mine mechanism.
[^Fourthh^tht idea of ho7no natiira epitomizes instinctuality,
i.e., the^Hrivenness of human existence, a drivenness conceived ac-
cording to the principle of mechanical necessity. This general no-
tion of a pure, vital hfe force has, for anthropology, the sismifi-
c ance of a u nitary "morphological" or formal principle, precisely
in the way in which a leaf is a unitary morphological principle for
botany. Instinct as conceived by Freud is the primal shape or
form underlying all anthropological metamorphosis or transfor-
mation. Goethe believed that, in the metamorphosis of a plant, the
primal form of the leaf vanished into its modifications, which were
the blossom, the stamen and pistil, the calyx, the seed and the fruit,
and that the primal form, as such, persisted only as a formal idea.
Freud, on the other hand, sees in all human metamorphosis or
cHange always the same basic form of the instinct itself persisting
as an indestructible, ever-present operational factor. In this respect,
Freud's doctrine, as opposed not only to Goethe, but also to
Nietzsche, does not lead to a concept of genuine change. Goethe's
statement that our ''''whole feat consists in giving up our existence
in order to exist'' •*"
could never have been written by Freud. In
Freudian "doctrine," the main stress is placed not upon existence
as change, but upon that which persists and remains amid change,
the instinct. But anthropology must attend to both the unitary
primal form within change ajid the multiplicity of change as gen-
uine meta-morphosis. For change, after all, essentially requires the
[168I
_ —
metd of morphose, the trans of transforrnatio, the passing over

from one shore of being to the shore of a new being.
It was, on the other hand, Goethe himself who wrote this
sentence, which is so reminiscent of Plato's Timaetis: nature in ''''if
its lifeless beginning had not been so basically stereometric, haw
could it have finally attained to life in all its incalculability and

rnrmeasure ability?'^ *^ Here again we see the accent placed upon
the unchangeable principle of form and, as in the Timaeus, we find
Goethe capturing the stable principle behind the techniques of
nature.
Applied to Freud, this sentence could be paraphrased: "If man
in his lifeless beginning were not so basically instinctual-mechanical,
how could he have finally attained to the life of the mind in all its
incalculability and im7neasureability ?" Here, too, we see Freud as

nat ural scient ist, indeed js phil osopher of_nature, seeking to ex-
plain the multiplicity of life by one or (if we include the form-
destroying principle of the death-instinct) two unitary principles.
Bur, as has already been noted, man is not only mechanical neces-
sity and organization, not merely world or in-the-world. His ex -
isten ce is understandable only as being-in-the-world, as the pro-
jection and disclosure of world —
as Heidegger has so powerfully
demonstrated. To this extent, his existence already embodies the
principle of the possibility of separating necessity and freedom,
"closed" form and "open" change, the unity of the formal struc-
ture and abandonment and change into new formal structure.
its _
however, we must spell out what this means and how we
First,
come to oppose mechanism to freedom, ^^homo natura" to exist-

ence, and natural science to anthropology. ^
In every psychology that make s man, as such, into an object
particularly those psychologies founded by natural scientists such
as Freud, Bleuler, von Monakow, —we
find a rift, a âp
Pavlov^'
thr ough which it is clear that what is being scientifically studied is
no t the whol e rnan, not human-being as a whole. I'.verywhere we
find something that overflows and bursts the bounds of such a
psychology. (This "something," which is not given even a passing
glance by natural-scientific psychology, is precisely what, in the
eyes of anthropology, is most essential.) Limiting ourselves to
Freud, we need only open one of his works at random to come
upon this "something." We see him, for example,*^ writing of the
[169]
—
construction and operations of our psychic apparatus, of our

psyche as that precious instrument by means of which we main-
tain our Uves; we see him writing about our psychic hfe, our
thoughts.
With all these possessive pronouns, what is being spoken of is a
being that is presupposed as self-evident and that is just as self-
evidently being bracketed out, namely, existence as ours. The
same is true, of course, of the personal pronouns in such phrases
as: "I think, I am inclined, he declares, he reports, he recalls, he
forgot, he resists, I ask him, he repHes, we estabhsh, we trust the
future, we were agreed," etc. Here, too, what is being spoken of is
an existence as mine, his, and so forth, and an existential communi-

cation, an interhuman or we-relationship, a relationship, that is,
between and someone like him, namely, another person.
a person
Whenjhis my or our, this / or he or we are bracketed out, the
result is that psychology becomes "impersonal" and "objective,"
while losing, at the same time, the scientific character of a genuine
psychology and becoming, instead, natural science. Freud investi-
gateshuman beings with the same "objectivity," the same exis-
tential surrender "to the object" that characterized his researches
on the medulla of Ammocoetes-Petromyzon** in Briicke's labora-
tory, except that instead of an eyesight sharpened by the micro-
scope, he attends with an ear sharpened by his incorruptible senso-
*^
rium and his natural genius for understanding "human concerns."
In place of a reciprocal, "personal" communication within a
we-relationship, we find a one-sided, i.e., irreversible, relationship
between doctor and patient, and an even more impersonal relation-
ship between researcher and object of research. Experience, par-
ticipation, and confrontation between human beings in the present
moment gives way to the "perfect tense" of theoretical investiga-
tion. In this way, Freud reached his tremendous scientific insight
into man as a creature divided in himself, suffering, struggling,

self-conceaHng and self-reveahng —an insight, by means of which
he contributed more to the (natural) science of man than anyone
before him, and probably than anyone after him.
But we now know that natural science does not comprise the
whole of man's knowledge of man In^jpf^ r as it bracke ts out pcr-
SQa_aad communication a nd^ as we shall see, self and meaning
insofar, in ajgyrdâsit: brackets out existence — ît can never en-
[170]
lighten us as to why a man

upon himself the divine mission
takes
to bepFoductive why he makes
in the search for scientific truth,
this mission into the guiding light and meaning of his existence,
why he suffers and struggles in its name and perceives therein a

personal duty heroically to be fulfilled against all the resistance of
an apathetic world.
What we rift or gap is thereby widened. Just as
have called the
natural-scientific —
psychology a contradictio in adjecto systemat- —
ically ignores the most basic anthropological fact that Dasein is
*
al ways ?m72e, you rs, or ours, and that we ourselves always stand
in relation to the abstraction of soul t as well as to the abstraction

of body, so, too, it ignor es the entire structure of ontological
probl ems th at^rrounds the question as to the genuine ivho that
so relateS-itself, the question as to the human self. When this self is
objectified, isolated, and theorized into an ego, or into an Id, Ego,

and Super-ego, it is thereby driven out of its authentic sphere of
being, namely existence, and ontologically and anthropologically
suffocated. Instead of following Heraclitus in seeking*^ himself, and
St. Augustine in returning into himself, Freud _and_ailjithet- sci-
entists we have named pass by this problem of the self as though it

were something too obvious to warrant attention. Precisely in
regard to this issue, it becomes plain that there are two ways to
practice psychology. The one leads away from ourselves toward
theoretical determinations, i.e., to the perception, observation, and
destruction of man in his actuality, with the aim in mind of sci-
entifically constructing an adequate picture of him (an apparatus,

"reflex-mechanism," functional whole, etc.). The other leads "into
our self," but not in the mode of analytic-psy chology (which
would again make us into objects), nor characterologically (which
would objectify us with regard to our individual psychological
"class"). The second way is that of anthropology, which concerns
itself with the conditions and potentialities of the Dasein as ours,
or —what comes to the same thing —that concerns itself with the
possible kinds and modes of our existence.
Regarding our relationship "to the body," i.e., in anthropological terms, our
•
existence as bodily, its spatial and temporal characteristics, its relation to forgetting
and repression, etc., cf. my "Ober Psychotherapie."

t Soul is cither a religious, metaphysical, natural-scientific, or, at most, objective-
psychological concept, but not a genuine psychological concept.
[171]
This path "into our self" here refers first and foremost to the
self of the scientist's own particular existence. It refers to that
ground upon which he stands, that which is most authentically his
own. It refers to the Dasein that he assumes as his own ivithin the
element of the ivorker in science, the seeker, shaper, and spokes-
man of scientific truth in and for the world. AH this is the self-
evident supposition of every scientist. In fact, however, of all
things it is the least self-evident, but rather that which is sought

out and questioned by any psychology that does not attempt to be
just a natural science, but a genuine psycho-logy.
Perhaps what I mean
will be made clearer if, with Freud's per-
mission, I mav be allowed to quote a passage from one of his
letters to me: [It has alivays seemed to me that ruthlessness and
arrogant self-confidence constitute the indispensable condition for
what, ivhen it succeeds, strikes us as greatness; and I also believe
that one ought to differentiate between greatness of achievement
and greatness of personality .^ Here Freud expresses just what we
mean: that there exists a general human potentiality of being one^s
(self's) own master, and of having confidence in one^s self (a po-
tentiahty, of course, that also embraces its opposite of un-self-

sufficiency). We see further that this potentiality can be either
self-evident or not self-evident. Here Freud is being more anthro-
pological than he ever is in his scientific doctrines, for he is de-
scribing a certain mode ofhuman existence, which always means
a£ertgin_EQode.iiiJ4diich man assumes and lives his Dasein as a self.
Wh en the scien tist succeeds in viewing his own kind of exist-
ence or being-in-the-world as his type of selfhood, he cannot, at
the same time, help but see that many other kinds of selfhood are
possible and are, in fact, lived through. We recall that, "The sci-
entific spirit engenders a particular attitude toward the things of
this world." But along with this spirit, there also exist other kinds
of "spirit" that are just as basic and that "engender" still other
toward the things of this world. Those, how-
sorts of "attitudes"
ever, who are completely permeated with the notion of the pri-
macy of science and the scientific spirit will not see the truth of
this.
Certainly science, and particularly natural science, is not and

ought not to be prohibited from illuminating all regions of being,
including human being. It must, however, realize that all modes of
[172I
human and "experience" are autonomous, — Ranke's are in

words
—existence
"immediate to God." That modes of human
is: all exist-
en ce and experi ence believe they are apprehending something of

thej;eality of being , in the sense of truth, and do so, indeed, in ac-
cor dance with their own proper "forms of reason," which are not
replaceablgb y or translatable into other forms. Freud tells us that
the truth cannot be attained except by scientific reason; Augustine
says, "Non intratur in veritatem, nisi per charitatem," and Pascal
agrees with him: "On n'entre dans la verite que p ar la charite"
Vone cannot penetrate truth except through love)j Plato (in the
Fhaedrus) is convinced that the path to the "Highest good must
lead through divine madness, mania, while Nietzsche-Zarathustra
"rides" the dionysiac metaphor to every truth. Indeed, as Kant's
three great critiques of reason, the modern cridques of historical
and mythological forms of reason (Dilthey, Heidegger, Cassirer,

etc.), and Nietzsche's and Klages' efforts toward a critique of
"life" all show, every form that reason takes may be exposed to
criticism. That, however, is the task of philosophy.
Each of the se_mQdes_o£ apprehending being represents an es-
sential form of human existence. When one form takes on the role
of judge over all the others, then the essence of man is leveled or
reduced to one plane. Even though, therefore, the picture of man
formed by natural science encompasses all regions of human being,
it is unable to give unmediated articularion to the intellectual and
linguistic forms peculiar to these regions and is thus unable to ex-

press the way man lives within each of these regions. (This is the
task of anthropology, considered as the totality of man's experi-
ence of himself in all his modes of existence.) The natural-scientific
method, in which the observed phenomena take second place to
the merely assumed drives, furthers this levelling process. Thus,
the more the idea of homo ruxtura is permeated with scientific rea-
son, the less room it leaves for the idea, not only of mythical, reli-
gious, and artistic man, but also of scientific man, just as the purely
religious idea leaves little room for that which is peculiar to the
scientific and artistic. The same is true of the artistic with respect
to the scientific or the purely ethical, and hkewise for the ethical
with respect to the artistic, etc. But it would be a great error to
conclude from this that "everything is relative." Such a conclusion
would overlook the main thing, namely, the existence which opts
['73]
for one of these modes (whether it just accepts a particular mode

as its fate, or at the same time wills to take it upon itself as its
own). With respect to these "relativities" existence is ever the ab-

solute.
These forms of reason do not hang suspended in the air. Sci-
ence, art, ethics, religion are not abstractions. They are types and
modes in which the Dasein exists, and in which it understands, in-
terprets, and expresses itself. The fact that all these forms of exist-
ence are possible reveals to us the historicity of the human Dasein;
their actual realization reveals its history. The genuine antipode to
Freud is, which permeates the work of Herder,
therefore, that
Goethe, W.
von Humboldt, Lotze, Dilthey and, in our times,
Heidegger, or Ziegler: the notion that what man is can only be
learned from his history. As far back as 1883 Dilthey*^ wrote:
"Man, considered as a fact preceding history and society, is a func-
tion of genetic explanation." "The individual always experiences,
thinks, and acts within a historically conditioned communal
sphere." This is but a corroboration of what we already knew,
namely, that the construction of every scientific picture of man
must begin with a destruction of his historicity, i.e., with that
which man, as historical Dasein in the "structural context" of
experience, expression, understanding, and meaning, can objectify.
Nowhere is this destruction more careful and thorough than in
the natural sciences. Thus, the natural-scientific idea of ho7}w na-
tura must "destroy" man to the degree that he is taken as living
and being understandable in only one of his manifold mean-
as
ing matrices (Bedeutungsrichtungen) It must work through the .
natural-scientific dialectic until only the dialectical reduction-

product, the tabula rasa, remains. In this process, all that makes
man into a man, and not an animal, is obliterated. Moreover, all
those who seek to "deal" scientifically and practically with man

must and do begin from this point. Only when man "as he lives"
isthus destroyed, can one begin to construct him according to a
particular principle or idea, be it Nietzsche's Will to Power as
holding the possibility of making man's tortured life meaningful
again, or be it Freud's pleasure principle as having the power to
preserve and heighten life.
All this corresponds to the method of natural science in general,

which first reduces the world to an event bare of meaning in order
[174]
—
subsequently to allow man to interpret this same artificially ob-

jective event "subjectively" —even while the world has already
been encountered "laden with meaning." ^' So,
(as it ever is) as
too,r'man" is reduced to a meaningless event, a creature driven
and overwhelmed by bUnd forces, in order to interpret what it is
in human life that goes beyond these forces —namely, meaning

as poetic fiction (Nietzsche), or as illusion, consolation, or beauti-
ful semblance. Now it is one thing to think it possible to use this
kind of destructive-constructive procedure in order completely to
unmask all of humanity's belief in meaning. This attitude is known
as nihilisjn. But it is quite another thing to attack the hypocrisy of
a particular cultural epoch, orgroup of people, or individual per-
son, and, in fact, expose "beyond their means." It is
them as living
this latter role in which both Freud and Nietzsche demonstrated

their geniusJJTo confuse the unmasking of a particular hypocrisy
with the destruction of the meaningfulness of human existence in
general is to fall into the grave e rror of interpreting a priori or
essential potentialities of htmian existence as genetic developmental
processes, the error, in short, of interpreting existence as natural
hi storx - It results in "explaining" the religious mode of existence
by the anxiety and helplessness of childhood and early manhood,
the awareness of God by the father complex, the ethical mode of
existence by external compulsion and introjection, the artistic by
the pleasures of beautiful semblance,* etc.
This anthropological critique is also, of course, directed to the
theory of siiblnnation. Here, too, we are faced with a confusion of
two things. We have, on the one hand, the indubitable fact of the
"transition" of an instinctual impulse from a lower to a higher
form — or, in other words, a "transition" from directedness toward a
"lower" to a "higher" meaning-content. The trouble is that this
fact is confused with the assumption of a "derivation" of higher
forms with their own particular meaning-contents out of the lower.
We must emphasize that no criterion for judging a form as lower or
higher can be mined out of instinct or the pleasure principle as such.
For pleasure is just as much of an abstraction as force or power.
Here we can but repeat what Lotze wrote in his review of
• Concerning art, Freud in this respect is markedly methodical and cautious.
Cf. his Leonardo, his studies of Dostoevsky (Ges. Schr., XII, 7 ff.) and his study
of the Moses of Michelangelo (X, z86).
[175]
Fechner's On the Highest Good for, in this context, too, Fechner

was Freud's scientific prototype. Lotze criticizes Fechner's "maxi-
mum of pleasure" as "formless" and containing "in itself no fur-
ther morphological principle." He argues that it involves a "name-
less, unnamed pleasure" that "allows no qualitative content to
shine through" and that this maximum "seeins to be the pinnacle
of an additive scale." * This pleasure, furthermore, represents
merely accumulation and quantity" instead of being scaled ''''ac-
'"''
cording to its meaning." Such pleasure is an "abstraction," an "in-

adequate life principle"; its (pleasure's) true value will always
seem to us contingent upon its object or content." "Truthfulness,
diligence," etc., are not simply means to the end of attaining the
most forms "within which the height of
pleasure, but, rather,
pleasure can first blossom forth," "means by which the qualitative
pinnacle of pleasure can first be attained." ^" (Emphasis added.)
We can, at this point, speak of the "relation of pleasure to
human We have only to make the objective principle
existence."
and mechanisms of pleasure anthropologically retroactive, i.e., to
retrieve into the Dasein what phenomenologically is fundamental
to it. We see then that what Freud, following Fechner's model,
el evated to the pl pasnrp pnnripip k nnp ^nd-only one particular
nio de of human existence or bei ng-in-the-world. It was this mode
that Heraclitus singled out and defined anthropologically as man's
existence in the ''Hdios" -cosmos, as the reversion to the private
world.^^ Sleeping, dreaming, the surrender to passion and sen-
sory pleasure are what Heraclitus cites as instances of this form
of being. What is involved here is a form of selfhood in which
the self in its historicity is not yet presentationally apparent
(cf. Kierkegaard's concept of repetition), but is merely "mo-
mentarily" arrested and caught up. What is involved, in other
words, is a form of being that can be characterized as being-
overcome or being-overpowered. It is thus a form of passivity, the
passive givenness of human momentary being,
beings to their
Klages' "pathic must." This by no means implies that one cannot
speak here of a human self. For human passivity, the human
"must," is not simply and merely reactivity, being-donc-ro {Wid-
erfahmis). Essentially, it is a particular way in which rhc self re-
• Here Lotze has anticipated Elrwin Straus's (The Primary World) critique of
atomistic psychology.
[«761
lates itself, which may be characterized as the self-having-zo-\ct-

itself-be-overcome. Instead of a self grounded in itself, sufficient
unto itself, a self that can mature only via a working encounter
with the world, we have here a self that is not autonomous, a self
swept along by its images, wishes, and drives. Freud succeeds in
constructing homo
natura by generalizing this one cosmos, this
one anthropological mode of being, into an objective principle and
an absolute life and death power. When, furthermore, he succeeds
in discovering the face of homo natura as ever lying beneath that
of homo cultura, the anthropological significance can only be that
we can never entirely give up, or completely rise above Ufe in the
idios-cosmos, the private world. This, however, only means that
the various modes of human existence are not simply interchange-
able, but are, rather, immanent in each other. If this is so, the same
must also be true for the koinos-cosmos, for the movement into
the spiritual-historical community, the participation in and the shar-
ing of reason, ethics, art, and religion. Nor can life in either of
these cosmoi ever be completely nil, forman is as much a com-
munal as he is an individual being; he navigates his life back and
forth between them.
I f Freud repeated ly finds that mankind, like the individual,
"fives beyond his means," this does not mean that the pleasure
principle dominates human fife in its entirety, but only that man in
his everyday life takes his existence too lightly^ that the Dasein
makes light of itself. This unseriousness, this shirking of difficul-
ties, manifests itself, as Freud revealed to mankind, in the neuroses,
those adult forms of infantile, i.e., dependent, fife, that cling to
themoment and continue to cfing to it without insight. The actual
mode of such an existence, determined by and confined to the
moment, is wishing, wishing "beyond" real fate: reckless phantasy.
Opposed is living in the truth, and doing and saying the
to this
they are exemplified in Freud's own fife. The "Western
truth, as
command to act," of which Thomas Mann once spoke, is truly the
command to seek and to proclaim scientific and artistic truth. This
command was uttered and heeded for the first time in the age of
the Greeks; it was uttered, for the second time, more shrilly and
imperatively in the age of the first natural scientists; but most
shrilly, most urgently and most distressingly in our own age, the
age of scientific technology.
[ '77]
Selected Papers of LuD^vIG Binsw.\nger
But Western man does not live in the house he has thus labored
to build; he findsno home, no realized goal. Instead, the more he
follows this command to act, the more he is set adrift, "Since
Copernicus," says Nietzsche, "man has been running from the cen-
ter into X." * Wishful thinking could not arrest his flight, nor
can flight put an end to his wishful thinking; the more fate has
tried to accustom man to measure, number and weight, the more
As Nietzsche has said, man
reckless has been his wishful thinking.
is "The more he strives upwards toward the heights
like a tree:
and toward light, the more powerfully his roots strive earthward,
—
downward, into darkness and depth into evil."/Unly the produc-
tive man, the man who loves and seeks the truth, the man in —
other words capable of change: only this man to whom the com-
mand is not an order and a whip, but a task and mission
to act
"unto and unto death," the explorer and the artist, only he can
life
"hold out," suspended between good and evil, rising and falUng,
balaêd between wishing and fate, and endure this Hfe of suffer-
ing,
y
Thus Freud, in his historical existence, stands before us as the
paradigmatic man of this centur)^ At the other extreme, we see the
—
many, the all-too-many the unproductive ones and deserters
from the truth, those unredeemed and cowed by pain, those fet-
tered and incapable of change, the too-good and the too-evil, who
fear either to rise or to fall, who have run aground because of
their unbridled wishes and who have been wrecked by a fate that
—
commands moderation the neurotics and the fanatics, whom
Freud studied and through whom he conceived and developed the
idea of hoino natura.
It is clear that as mankind as a whole has been running away
from the center into X, the number of individuals who have them-
selves found no center has inevitably grown immense. It is equally
• Freud recognizes three such "blows to human narcissism": First, the cos-
mological by Copernicus; second, the biological by Darwin: "Man is not a crea-

ture different from animals or superior to them; he himself is of animal descent,
more closely related to some species and more distantly related to others. His later
acquisitions have not succeeded in effacing the evidence, both in his physical struc-
ture and his mental dispositions, of his parity with them. This is but the second,
the biological blow to human narcissism ." (Ges. Schr., X, 351); third, the
. .
psychological by Freud himself, which consists in his showing man that "the ego
is not master in its own house" (Ibid., p. 355).
[178]
clear that at present psychology must take the place of theology,

health of redemption, symptom of suffering, the physician of the
and that instead of the meaning and substance of life, pleas-
priest,
ure and unpleasure have become the major problems of life. In

Nietzsche, the "philosopher with a hammer," and in tl:c physi-
cian Freud, the century has found both its taskmasters and its edu-
cators. NLetzsch e defi ned the unknown X, which mankind is
into
running, as_the cycle of the eternal return of the same —
a solution
that his contemporaries neither desired and nor could accept —
thought that he had found measure and a center^ in "the striving
a
beyond man," in the superman. Freud, on the oth er hagj defi ned ,
the u nknm ^
X as th£_X)uxcome of the struggle between eros and
death,^^ and beUeved he had discovered a measure and a center in
his Insight into a human nature that, even as it "develops," remains
fundamentally the same, and in man's wise submission to the laws

and mechanisms of this nature.
But as an explorer of nature, he could not rest content with
merely pointing out the goal. He also worked laboriously to indi-
cate the path, the "method" by means of which the individual
might reach that goal. As a physician, he helped the individual to
follow that path with untiring patience. In his own human exist-
ence, he lit the way for mankind, teaching us to respect the hid-
den forces in life, to trust the power of scientific reason, to face
the truth in ourselves and in the inexorability of death.
Notes
1. S. Freud, Gesammelte Schriften (Vienna, 1924-1934), Vol. XI, 465.
2. Ibid., XII, 249 f.
3. Ibid., XI, 464.

4. Ibid., XI, 292.
5. E.g., ibid., X, 345; XI, 231.

6. Ibid., X, 324.
7. Loc. cit.
8. Loc. cit.
9. Ibid., X, 322 f.
10. Ibid., VI, 223.
M. I bid., XI, 168.
[ 179I
12. /Wi.,xn, 235.

13. Ibid., VII, 62.
14. Cf. H. Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung;
Rickert,
L. Binswanger, Frobleme der allgemeinen Psychologie;
Eirtfiihrung in die
T. Haering, Philosophie der Naturwissenschaft.
15. Cf. R. Honigswald, Denkpsy chologie (2nd ed.), and Erwin Straus, The Pri-
mary World.
16. /i';i.,XII, 319.
17. Ibid., V, 211.

18. lbid.,W, 207.
19. Ibid., XI, 464.
20. Ibid., XI, 436.
21. /Wi., XI, 448.
22. Ibid., V, 209.
23. Loc. cit.
24. Loc. cit.

25. Lowith, "Nietzche im Lichte der Philosophie von L. Klages," Reichls Philosoph.
Almanack, TV, 310.
26. Cf. Klages, Die psychologischen Errtmgenschaften Nietzsches, as well as the
above-cited article by Lowith. I have learned much from both. But Lowith's
corrections of Klages' conception seem necessary to me.
27. See also "Dream and Existence" [this volume].
28. Freud, XII, 228.
29. Ibid., XII, 239.
30. Ibid., II, 456.
31. Cf. 32 nd Vorlesung, Ges. Schr., XII
32. Freud, V, 470.
33. R. Lotze, Kl. Schr if ten. III, 310.
34. Freud, XII, 165.
35. /«i., IV, 435.

36. Lotze, I, 228.
37. Binswanger, Ober Ideenflucht (Ziirich, 1933). But see also 'Treud and the
Magna Charta of Clinical Psychiatry" [this volume].
38. See Lotze's polemic against the atomic theory of his old friend Fechner, Kl.
Schriften, III, I, 229.
39. Rene Lc Sonne, Obstacle et Valeur.
40. Goethe, "Maximen und Reflexionen," Schriften der Goethegesellschaft, XXI,
57-
41. Goethe, XII, 156.
42. For Pavlovian psychology, see Elrwin Straus, The Primary World;
a critique of
F. Buytendijk and H. Plessner, "Die physiologische Erklarung des Verhaltens,"
Acta Bibliographica, Series A (1935), I, 3.
43. Freud, XII, 416 f.
44. Ibid., XI, 121.

45. Ibid., XI, 120.
46. Cf. Frg. 1 01, Diels.
47. April 14, 191 2.
48. Sec Freud, VII, x.
49. With regard to this, see my controversy with Elrwin Straus in "Gcschehnis
und Fricbnis," Ausg. Vort. u. Aufs., Vol. IL
50. Lotze, II, 282 f.
[180]
51. See "Dream and Existence" [this volume] and my "Heraklitus Auffassung des
Menschcn," in Augs. Vort. u. Aufs., Vol. I.
52. See Lowith, Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen,
'935-
53. See Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
[181]
Freud and the Magna Charta
of Clinical Tsychiatry
A great idea fills the man of genius

and protects hiifi fro?n everything
except his fate. hofmannsthal
It was on September morning of the year 1927. Having broken

a
away from German neurologists and psychiatrists
the congress of
that was meeting in Vienna, I had hastened to Freud in the Semmer-
ing, impatient to return at last the unforgettable visit he had paid
me at an unhappy time in my life. Now I was about to leave and we
were talking about the old days. Soon, however, the conversation
turned to what, twenty years earUer, had brought us together and,
in spite of considerable differences of opinion, had held us together
— his lifework, his "great idea."
Using as a concrete cUnical example a very severe case of obses-

sional neurosis that had greatly preoccupied both of us,* I raised
the question as to how we were to understand the failure of such
patients to take the last decisive step of psychoanalytic insight,
which the physician expects of them, and instead, persist in their
misery in defiance of and technical progress made so far.
all efforts
As a contribution toward answering this question, I suggested that
such a failure might be understood as the result of something that
could only be called a "deficiency of spirit," that is, an inability on
the pan of the patient to raise himself to the level of "spiritual com-
munication" with the physician. Only on the basis of such com-
munication, I said, could they gain insight into the "unconscious
(
• translator's note: See Binswanger's note about this in his Freud: Revtims-
cences of a Friendship (Grunc & Stratton, 1957).]
I182]
Freud and the Magna Charta of Clinical Psychiatry
instinctual drive" in question and be enabled to take the last de-

cisive step toward self-mastery. I could hardly believe my ears
when I heard him say, "Yes, spirit is everything." I presumed that
by spirit, Freud meant something hke intelligence. But then he
continued: ''Mankind has always knaum that it possesses spirit; I
had to show it that there are also instincts. But men are always un-
satisfied, they cannot wait, they always want something whole
and ready-made; but one has to begin somewhere and only very
slowly move forward.^' Encouraged by this admission, I went a
step further, explaining that I found myself forced to recognize
in man something like a basic religious category; that, in any case, it
was impossible for me to admit that "the religious" was a phenom-
enon that could somehow be derived from something else. (I was
thinking, of course, not of the origin of a particular religion, nor
even of religion in general, but of something that I have since
learned to call the religious I-thou relationship.)
But I had stretched the bow of agreement too far and began to
feel its resistance. "Religion originates in the helplessness and anxi-
ety of childhood and early manhood," Freud curtly said. "It can-
not be otherwise." With that, he went to the drawer of his desk:
"This moment for me to show you something," and he laid
is the
before me a completed manuscript that bore the title, "The Future
of an Illusion," and looked at me with an inquiring smile. From
the trend of our conversation I easily guessed what the title meant.
It was time for me to go. Freud walked with me to the door. His
last words, spoken with a shrewd, slightly ironic smile, were: "I
am sorry I cannot satisfy your religious needs." Never was it more
difficult for me to take leave of my great and revered friend than
it was at that moment when, in full awareness of the "great idea"
that culminated his gigantic struggle and had come to be his destinv,
he held out his hand to me.
The most important, the most authentic problem that must be

faced in interpreting Freud's work is this: Does his work signify
only a "slowly progressing" beginning, that is, a torso that mav
legitimately be thought of as part of "the whole"? Or is his "gre.it
idea" about the instinctual nature ofmankind of sufficient compass
to stand inno need of any "enlarging"? If we deny the latter, then
we are obliged to view Freud's great idea as not being the last \\ord
[183]
that can be spoken about man. And we thereby find ourselves con-
fronting a further alternative that is crucial in that it places the
interpretation of Freud in a genuinely historical setting: Is this
"enlarging" to be undertaken ivith Freud himself or must it be
attempted without him? In other words: if, for us, "understanding
Freud," means "going beyond Freud," how far does Freud go with
us and how far must we be prepared to go without him? The con-
versation I have just quoted indicates that we ought not to identify
Freud's theories wîth the whole of his spiritual or intellectual ex-
istence. I all of Freud's monumental
have not found one place in
writings where he mind" or "spirit" side by side with
places "the
the instincts, not one place where he recognizes it as basic and con-
tents himself with speaking "also" of the instincts. Everywhere in
his writings human spirituality "arises out of" instinctuaUty. This
is perhaps most clearly evident where he derives the ethical from
narcissism.
Freud's remark that mankind has always known it "possessed
though
spirit," it perhaps stands as a singular admission, expresses
something that is imphcit in many of Freud's statements. He writes,
for example, to Romain Rolland on the latter's sixtieth birthday:
"Unforgettable man, to have soared to such heights of humanity
through so much hardship and suffering!" Even this one sentence
expresses a deep awareness of man's spirit. For, if soaring to such
"heights of humanity" through hardship and suffering does not re-
fer to spirit, to man's basic, autonomous spirit, then I should like
to know what else spirit may mean.* Deep it is, this awareness, be-
cause, in Nietzsche's words, it is an awareness of great suffering as
the last emancipator of the spirit. Even more than his struggles with
his great idea, this "painful" awareness seems to express the total
existence of the man whose genius Swiss psychiatry firsi recog-
nized and whom even today, a full generation later, it still proudly
views as one of its greatest champions and leaders.
• I am, of course, aware that Freud thought "the impulse to perfec-

jicrfcctly
tion observed in a minority of human
beings" could be understood "cjuite easily as
a result of instinctual repression." But apart from the fact that such a "sublima-
tion" into the spiritual signifies something quite different from a "genesis" of the
spiritual, it is precisely Freud's adiniration that Is a spiritual act. The problem of
spirit is, in general, not a problem of origin or genesis, but of content. It is the
"content" that the repressed assumes in its return that decides a man's worth and
the degree to which we admire him.
[.84]
In suggesting that we must not identify Freud's doctrine with

the whole of his spiritual existence and that his awareness of man's
spirit is not contained and encompassed by his great idea, we must
of course face the objection that "theory and existence" are in any
case never congruent, that Idea and Existence or, as a modern
French writer puts it, determination et valeur are, despite their
"affinity," still incommensurable. Our view, however, gains a spe-
cial significance just because this objection is correct; for Freud's
doctrine is, in his own
words, "simply psychology, certainly not
the whole of psychology, but rather its substructure, and perhaps
its general foundation/ However, should it become necessary, un-
der any circumstance, for the total existence not merely one facet —
thereof, however important —to
become manifest, then it Ues
within the foundations of psychology. For here it is a question of
attempting to understand man in the totality of his existence. But
that is possible only when based on the perspective of our total
existence. It is possible, in other words, only if with our total ex-
istence we
can articulately recall to ourselves the "what" and
"how" of being human. Only then can a hypothetical construct,
bound and limited by its time, its intellectual environment, and its
particular goal, be replaced by a real self-understanding "of hu-
manity," by an insight into man's most basic ontological potentiali-
ties —by, in sum, a genuine anthropo-logy.
Of all disciplines, it is above all psychology that should be
rooted in anthropology. Since, as we have just illustrated, existence
can never be absorbed in the idea or in thought, and since psychol-
ogy, on the other hand, seeks to be a science, a system of true prop-
ositions based on logic, we find ourselves faced with the alterna-
tive of either giving up the hope of a science of psychology or, on
the other hand, of allowing our existence as much purchase as pos-
sible in our psychological thought, of thinking existentially. This
is not the place to show that this is possible or how psychology as
a science can actually be pursued via existentials. Nor, indeed, is
it necessary any longer to do so. For in the grandiosely consistent

one-sidedness of understanding man from the perspective of only
one region of being and only one categorical aspect, namely
his
as a part of nature, as "life," Freudian thought coincides with that
of clinical psychiatry. If, therefore, a discussion of Freud and clini-
cal psychiatry's founding charter can limit itself to that thought,
[185]
then we can attain the necessary distance and the possibility of his-
torically understanding that thought only if we approach it within
the horizon of an awareness that man is more than "hfe."
The establishment of chnical psychiatry, its actual Magna
Charta upon which its basic conceptual categories and its character
as medical science rest, dates from the year 1861, the year in which
the second edition of Griesinger's Fathologie und Therapie der
psychischen Krankheiten appeared. Griesinger's place as the drafter
of clinical psychiatry's Magna Charta is based not upon his famous
statement that mental diseases are diseases of the brain, a view that
had already been at least intimated by both French and German
and that was to be fully utilized by Meynert, Wernicke
alienists,
and his school, down to Kleist, Nor is it based upon the psychiat-
ric understanding of the clinical material of the time, an accom-
phshment in which Griesinger was assisted by the French school
and, among the Germans, primarily by Jacobi's friend, Zeller. It
is due, rather, to the fact that, in his own words, he used "the hght
of empirical psychology" to understand psychic and psychopatho-
logical phenomena, explaining that psychic phenomena, because of
their "organicity," ought only to be "interpreted" by natural sci-
entists. His purposes were thereby well served when he hit upon a
psychology that permitted psychic phenomena to be described in

a way that enabled the psychologist to understand and interpret
them as functions of an organ, the brain a psychology, therefore,—
that reduced human psychic hfe to quantitatively variable, dy-
namic elementary processes taking place in objective time. Gries-
inger, himself, conceived of these processes after the analogy of
"reflex action in the nervous system." In the sense, that is, of
"motor-sensitive" cerebral reflexes that, however, were governed
in manifold ways via the "intermediary zone" of imaginarj' repre-
sentation.*
Actually, this was Herbart's" psychology corrupted into a math-
ematical game by linking it with the profoundly speculative Leib-
nitzian notion of "unconscious representations." Behind this psy-
chology stood a metaphysical realism that was easily transformed
into a scientific materialism. Only then was the way made clear
• The theoretical part of Freud's interpretation of dreams as well as his whole

doctrine of "the genesis" of the reality principle out of the pleasure principle is
based on such a view.
[186]
Freud and the Magna Chart a of Clinical Psychiatry
for the birth of a psychiatric theory or declaration of principles

brought forth in the spirit of natural science, culminating in the
proposition that "madness is only a symptom-complex of various
abnormal cerebral conditions." The following passages indicate,
however, how soberly and cautiously Griesinger advocated his
materialism, as compared with those who have succeeded him to
this day. "What, now, is to be said to a flat and insipid materialism
that would throw over the most valuable actualities of human

consciousness merely because it cannot lay its hands upon them in
the brain? Insofar as empiricism treats the phenomena of sensation,
imagination, and will as activities of the brain, it not only leaves

untouched the actual content of the human psychic life in its whole
richness and expressly clings to the fact of free self-determination,
it also leaves open the metaphysical questions as to what it may be
which enters into these relations of sensation, imagination, and will

as psychic substance, and as to the form psychic existence assumes,
etc. It must patiently await the time when questions as to the con-
nection between the content and form of human psychic life be-
come problems of physiology, rather than metaphysics." "The
fanatics and pietists of materialism might do well to consider a
point that I think has not been sufficiently emphasized in previous
discussions. The elementary processes in neural matter are prob-
ably identical in men, particularly if these processes are thought
all
of as essentially electrical and therefore, of necessity, extremely

simple, consisting of pluses and minuses. How, then, could these
processes directly and exclusively give rise to the infinite multiplic-
ity of representations, feelings, and goals not only of an individual
^
man, but of a whole century?"
We see, then, that this Magna Charta of clinical psychiatry by
no means clings obstinately to the "direct and exclusive" validity
of one principle serving as the guide-line for the understanding of
man. Insofar as it views the free self-determination of man and the
actual content of human psychic life in all its richness as lying out-
side its proper sphere, it door open for a "descriptive and
leaves the
analytical" or verstehende psychology. Such a psychology, which
proceeds precisely from this richness of content, was later inaugu-
rated —in almost the same words —
by Dilthey, only to suffer vio-
lent attacks by experimental psychologists of the time, and to suf-
fer indeed, as was true of Freud, not only attacks, but ostracism. But
[187]
Selected Papers of Lxtowig Binswanger
Griesinger himself approaches the position of a verstehende psy-

chology when, for example, he explains: "Almost all fixed ideas
are at the very start expressions of a prejudice or a satisfaction of
the individual's own emotional interests. Exclusive attention to them
as though they were the principal element in insanity always leads,
therefore, to a one-sided and limited understanding. Treatment and
understanding in particular cases can be based only upon insight
into the psychic conditions that lie at the root of their emer-
gence." * We know that Freud himself calls on Griesinger as chief
witness in The Interpretation of Dreams^ where he speaks of his
"acute observation" in showing "quite clearly that ideas in dreams
and in psychoses have in common the characteristic of being fulfill-
ments of wishes." Griesinger is also invoked in the Tivo Princi-
ples,^ where Freud speaks of certain cases of hallucinatory psy-
chosis in which the event that precipitated the psychosis is denied.

We thus see that psychiatry's original charter left enough leeway
for the bloodless colonization of at least one of Freud's basic tenets.
But today this charter shows signs of having become so dogmati-
cally rigidified that many of its advocates deem any measure proper
that would condemn and excommunicate those scientists who seem
to hold opposing views.
Griesinger's theory of the Ego, to which, even today, our psy-
chiatric textbooks often give word-for-word assent, also offers
enough points of contact with Freud's conceptions of Ego, Ego
and Super-ego, and Ego and Id. For that doctrine was so struc-
tured that it could, if necessary, re-interpret dynamic conflict, and
thus also ethical conflict, in dynamic-pathological terms. Be that as
it may, Griesinger is, at it were, "more modern" than Freud in that
he understands what is "unassimilated" by and oppositional to the
Ego not as an Id (an it), human thou,'" whereby
but, rather, "as a
the genuine dialogical character of psychic conflict is much more
strictly preserved.* Otherwise, the ego for Griesinger is also an
• It is interesting to note that where Freud wishes to represent the dialogical
character of psychic conflict, he takes care to abandon the role of the theoretician
and relates a fairy tale. See the story of the good fairy and the little sausage, in the
V orlesimgen {GesoTrtmelte Schriften, VII, 221 f.). I am aware,
Only once, so far as
docs he present the Ego as conversing with the Id: "When the F.go assumes the
features of the object, it focuses itself, so to speak, upon the Id as a love-object
and tries to make good the loss of that object by saying, 'Look, I am so like the
object, you can as well love me' " " {Ges. Schr., VI, 375).
[188I
"abstraction" ^ in the sense that it is "that firm unyieldingly per-

sistent nucleus of our individuality in which the results of our en-
tire psychic history have combined." ^ Griesinger, too, speaks of a
diminished "power and energy of the ego" in the sense of "its repre-
sentational complexes being held back,^^ something that occa-
sions a "particularly painful psychic condition most tormenting
and oppressive in its nebulousness," * whereby "the newly emer-
gent pathological representations and drives engender a mental
bifurcation, the feeling that the personality is disengaged, and
*
threaten to overpower the ego."
All of the above are cited not only to indicate parts of the psy-
chiatric charter that can fit in with at least some of the essential
elements of Freudian theory, but above all to indicate the most im-
portant characteristic of this charter, namely, the depersonalization
of man. This depersonalization has by now gone so far that the
psychiatrist (even more than the psychoanalyst) can no longer sim-
ply say, "I," "you," or "he" wants, wishes, etc. —the only phrases
that would correspond to the phenomenal jacts. Theoretical con-
structs dispose him, rather, to speak instead of my, your, or his Ego
wishing something. In this depersonalization we see at work that
aspect of psychiatry's founding charter that is most at odds with
every attempt to establish a genuine psychology. An explanation
of this baleful influence need go no further than the clearly recog-
nized task that psychiatry, since Griesinger, has set itself —namely,
to create a psychology that, on the one hand, serves to bring a
reified functional complex into relation with a material "organ,"
but on the other hand, allows this organ itself to be divided
that,
into and understood in terms of its functions. To be convinced of
the latter, i.e., to sec how much the scientific "image" of the brain
varies with changes in psychological theory, one has only to com-
pare, say, Mcynert's "brain" with that of Goldstein. The former's
is complex amoeba with "pseudopoda" or "feel-
a sort of infinitely
ers" extending to the outside world; the latter's is an "organ of se-
lection," depersonalized, highly refined, and thoroughly equal to
the most varied situations and tasks.
In the life of nations, the most enduring and fruitful constitu-
• Here we have the positive phenomenal signs of the sustained effects of "un-
conscious" complexes, such as would be indispensable for a yet unwritten "Phe-
nomenology of the Unconscious."
[189]
Selected Papers of Lxn)wiG Benswanger
rions and civil codes are those that steer clear of political extremism
and juridical one-sidedness. The same is true for the life of science.
What in almost a flash gave Griesinger's project the character of a
durable psychiatric charter was not least that he steered clear of
and overemphasis of particular tenets without compromising
biases
himself.He had, in addition, an extremely sharp eye for ivhat
was and what was not possible at the tifne and, above all, a clear
vision of what was beneficial to the over-all task of psychiatry.
Therein Ues his main genius. We see this with particular clarity in
the position he took on the subject of brain pathology. Though he

allowed himself to believe in a future merging of psychiatry with
brain pathology, it nevertheless seemed to him that, "at present
every attempt to effect such a fusion is premature and completely
unfeasible." "If the basic inner connection with brain pathology is
but kept in mind, and if here, as there, the same proper method (as
anatomic-physiological as possible) is but followed, then the highly
monographic working out of such symptomatically structured dis-
eases will help, not harm, brain pathology. Such a fusion, however,
is even less hkely since psychiatry will have barely established its
place as a part of brain pathology, and since many practical sides of

psychiatry [problems as to the function of a mental institution, re-
lation to forensic medicine, etc.l give psychiatry its own particular
scope and problems and require it under all circumstances to re-
^"
tain a great deal of autonomy even as part of cerebral pathology."
In these lines the drafter of psychiatry's Magna Charta speaks
to succeeding generations as their enlightened leader and taskmas-
ter. But not for long; his warning voice is soon to be drowned out
by the intoxicating impression of rapid progress in brain anatomy
and localization of functions. Indeed, Meynert pithily declared: "I
lead our psychiatric knowledge back to Elsquirol and know how to
value the model which Griesinger gave him." * And yet Meynert
violently upset Griesinger's finely poised balance between psycho-
logical and brain-anatomical conceptions and terminology, allow-
ing the cellular and fibrous structure of the brain so much theoreti-
cal weight that psychology was degraded not only to an appendage
of brain anatomy and pathology, but to a mere translation of the
—
same into a second language. It could thus as it did in the work of
•
T. Mcyncrt, Klinische Vorlemngcn iiber Psychiatrie. For Meynert, too, reflex
process is primary, and consciousness only secondary.
[190]
the great von Monakow —

come to a direct juxtaposition of "brain
and breeding," * and it became possible to think of the "higher"
parts of the brain as the "workshops of the good," to explain re-
ligion and myth by reference to "proximal association," to speak of
an "apparatus of spiritual processes," and to endow individual cor-
with the ability to be "ensouled." In this and later more
tical cells
moderate speculation about cortical cells and localization, one sees

clearly the dangers in undertaking to introduce number and quanti-
fication into psychology. A good example of this dan-
particularly
ger is shown in Aleynert's statement that the mind cannot be a
monad because there are two hemispheres which in their totality
are endowed with consciousness." What Rokitansky valued so
highly in the young Meynert, namely his earnest striving "to im-
press the character of scientific discipUne upon psychiatry by found-
ing it upon anatomy" had come to grief in the "immoderacy" of
this striving, in his lack of Griesinger's unsurpassed vision for the
whole of psychiatric endeavor and the hartnony of partial goals
that it defined and furthered. Like any medical science, cHnical
psychiatry can tolerate just so much theory. And whoever even
slightly exceeds this amount will not be admitted into its legislative
assemblies. This is the answer to the question as to why Griesinger
is thus admitted and not, for example, representatives of earlier
psychic, ethical, somatic, or "eclectic" theories —why Griesinger
and not Heinroth or Fleming, Jacobi or Nasse; why Krae-
Ideler,
pelin — and not Meynert or Wernicke; why Bleuler and not —
Freud.
We venture now to say that of most encompass-
all these, the
ing theoretical psychiatric Wernicke. Even his
mind belonged to:
teacher, Meynert, said of his own work that he sought to consider
mental disturbances "not merely from the standpoint of therapeu-
tics, a standpoint that sees psychic phenomena in relation to their
ramifications and ends without trying to penetrate to their roots
without, indeed, even touching the ground in which these roots
lie, namely, brain-anatomy." Rather, "theories of mental illness
must be raised to a comparable scientific level." '^

In this way, the
concept of psychosis already becomes something quite different
from what it is for "therapeutics." The same is true of Wernicke.
Though he was also an outstanding clinical observer and investiga-
• See the collection of popular scientific lectures.
[191]
tor, though he took account of enormous amounts of empirical,

cUnical material, and though we owe to him exceptional and, in
part, completely new descriptions of indi\ddual psychopathological
conditions, his main interest was not the therapeutics of his day as
such — not, that is, the descriptive and classificatory medical science
of mental disturbances and their anatomic and biological bases. It
was, rather, something with an entirely different significance —

theory of mental illness in the sense of a psychopathology of brain
functions. As Liepmann, his student, never tired of saying: "Wer-
nicke, with magnificent consistency and single-mindedness, always
wished to have psychiatry merged with brain-function neuropath-
ology"; he sought "to make the psychic into a neuropathological
object," and he found the pathology of an idea —
e.g., a megalo-
—
manic idea not in the content of an idea, but in its dynamic signif-
icance. For him psychosis was not, as it was for Kahlbaum and
Kraepehn, a name for a "sickness" that had a definite cause and
followed a definite course. It was, rather, "the totality of psychic
aberrations proceeding from a disturbance of basic neural func-
tioning." "
That his influence upon clinical psychiatry is much greater and
more lasting than Meynert's stems, in my opinion, not only from
his more advanced knowledge of brain structure and function and
his more precise techniques of observation and research. It stems,
rather, from the greater conciseness and consistency of his theory,

as well as in his frequent and uneven efl'orts to reduce psychology
to physiology. For example, despite, or, rather, precisely because of
the progress made in brain localization, he gives less weight to the
kind and number of anatomical elements of the brain than he does
to the kind, intensity,and tempo of the physiological functions of
the brain. Most is the consistency with which he applies
striking
this point of view to the entire area of the symptomatology of
particular pathological conditions, so that, to cite one example, he
succeeds in bringing the flight of ideas, the compulsive busyness,
and the "characterological idiosyncrasies" of the manic under one
—
and the same term leveling* and derives this from a single func-
tional disturbance.
The further developments of the charter of clinical psychiatry,
• See, for example, his division of the psj'chic process into a psychomotor,
intrapsychic, and psychosensory "tract."
[•9^
insofar as it is not influenced by Wernicke but is associated with

the names of Kahlbaum, Kraepelin, and Bleuler, is too well known
to require further elaboration here. What strikes us as new in this
further development is, as we know, the genuinely medical, clini-
cal concentration of interests upon the grouping or classification
of diseases according to pathological-anatomical states found to be
associated with them, their symptomatology, and their historical
course within the total Hfe-history of the individual. With this, goes
the distinction between patterns of clinical states or "habitual
forms" (Hoche's syndromes) and genuine forms or processes of
disease. What is decisive here is clinical knowledge of the typology,
the presence or the absence of anatomical brain pathology, knowl-
edge of the cause and course of the disease, and observation of the
patient extending sometimes over the course of his whole life and —
above all, the extension of clinical interest beyond the particular
individual to his familial background.
If, now, mental illnesses are still understood as brain diseases, it
is nonetheless true that observation, investigation, and treatment
reach far beyond the sphere of neurological psychiatry and extend
to the whole of the organism. Clinical psychiatry now becomes a
branch of general and specialized biology, of, that is, the doctrine
of total organismic function. It is thus clear that interest has been
diverted from the relationship between psychic phenomena and
processes in the brain, and that, in any event, this relationship is no
longer the center of observational interest. The role of "medical

psychology" accordingly becomes quite different. Instead of try-
ing to determine the interrelationships between the structure and
functions of the brain, it is now concerned with events "in the or-
ganism," which are defined, in part, from a psychological point of
view. Psychology now becomes a "branch" of biology. The clear-
est examples of this are the biopsychological theories of von Mona-
kow and Paulow. The instincts are no longer, as with Griesinger,
especially "intense" sensations and feelings, but are, rather, special
concentrations of partial manifestations of events in the organism,
among which are to be reckoned mental phenomena, because of
their transformation into the biological-neurological "psychism."
Sensation, feeling, image, thought, inference, in short psychism as
a whole now takes a place alongside the chemism, physicalism, and
mechamsm of the organism. Instead of, if it may be so expressed, a
['93l
Selected Papers of Ludwig Benswanger
neurological materialism, we witness the triumph of a crass biologi-

cal materiahsm. Clothed therein is the "great idea" of modem psy-
chiatry: it, too, is based upon the old charter, undisturbed by and
blind to the fact thatman is more than "life." For it according to —
its program and the greater number of its proponents
official
morality, culture, reUgion, and even philosophy have, in Uke man-

ner, the rank of "biological facts,"
Over against this stand the tentative efforts at anthropological
investigations in psychiatry in which man is not pigeon-holed by
categories (natural-scientific or otherwise) but is understood from
the perspective of his own — human being, and which seek to
describe the basic directions of this being. "Mental illness" is thus
lifted out of the context of either the purely "natural" or "mental"
and understood and described within the context of primal hu-
is
man What is revealed thereby is not only that the

potentiahties.
mentally ill "suffer from the same complexes as we," but also that
they move in the same spatio-temporal-historical directions as we
—though in different modes and ways. Here mental illness is not
explained in reference either to disturbances of brain function or
biological function of the organism, nor is it understood in refer-
ence to life-history. It is, rather, described with regard to the mode
and manner of the particular being-in-the-world concerned.
If we wish to evaluate the significance of Freud's doctrine for

clinical psychiatry according to objective criteria rather than on
the basis of personal acquaintance and disposition, then what I
have described as the Magna Charta of clinical psychiatry and its
historical development must be kept in mind. In what follows I
shall speak of Freud's significance only with regard to this Magna

Charta.
I have already hinted that Freud's "great idea" intersects with
the "great idea" of clinical psychiatry in the endeavor to explain
and understand human beings and mankind from the perspective
of "Hfe." Both in Freud's doctrine and in the charter that clin-
ical psychiatry laid down for itself there breathes the same spirit,
the spirit of biology. For Freud, too, psychology is a (biolog-
ical) natural science. "The most important, as well as the most
obscure, elements of psychological research" are the "instincts of
'*
the organism." Instinct is "the conceptual border between the
[ '94]
somatic and the psychic." The psychic component is not some-

thing autonomous or presentational, but merely representational,
"representing organic forces," *^
i.e., "effects stemming from within
*"
the body and carried over to the psychic apparatus." For Freud it
is the physiological and chemical processes that are properly pres-
entational or present and that we must describe "in the pictorial
language of psychology," because we still lack the "simpler" lan-
guage for it. "The shortcomings of our description would most
likely disappear if for psychological terms we could substitute
physiological or chemical ones. They, too, only constitute a picto-
rial language, but one familiar to us for a much longer time and
perhaps also simpler." *
Psychology is thus a preliminary undertaking, a necessity from
which biology will some day free us. None of this contains any-
thing that runs counter to the psychiatric Magna Charta. Though
the insights of the man who drafted this charter were, as we have
seen, much more "broad-minded," they were quickly interpreted
by much narrower, neurological or biological
his successors in a
sense — as I have shown to be the case with Meynert and Wernicke,
and aswe know to be the case with von Monakow, Bleuler, Kretsch-
mer, and many others.
To understand Freud's great ideas correctly one must not,
therefore, proceed from psychology — a mistake that I myself made
for a long time. For otherwise one does not do him justice and
stumbles at every point against the thoroughly unpsychological
concept of a psychic apparatus, against its topographically over-
lapping structure of well-defined "systems" related dynamically
and economically to each other. But if these notions are as Freud —
—
wished understood biologically, they then fit easily into psychiat-
ric thought that, like Freudian theory, accommodates both Fechner-
ian theories (topics, pleasure-pain principle, quantification of the
psychic, psycho-physics) and Herbartian theory (dynamics and
conflicts of representations).
This, however, is only the beginning. Much too little attention
has been paid to the fact that Freud never disavowed his physio-
logical (Briicke) and, especially, his neurological and neuropatho-
• Ger. Schr., VI, 253. This passage also throws some light on Freud's meta-
physics. Here he seems to see in scientific language images or symbols of an un-
knowable, indescribable reality standing behind them.
[•95]
logical (Meynert, Wernicke) background. We see it still in his

study of the Ego and the Id (1923) in the highly interesting dis-
cussion (Vol. II) about the relation between the Ego, the system
Pes, the system Pcpt-Cs, and verbal images. Freud's "systematiza-
tion" of the psychic into a psychic apparatus not only finds its
precedent in Meynert's "mental apparatus," but must also be un-

derstood "neurologically," i.e., with reference to brain physiology
and physiopathology.* In this context, Freud's research on aphasia
isextremely useful. Neither a historical nor a hermeneutic under-
standing of Freudian doctrine is possible without a thorough ac-
quaintance with it—and not only because it was the theory of
aphasia that first allowed the construction of a iieurological (in
the true sense of the word) psychic apparatus, limited though it
was to the neurological basis of language and speech. It is, rather,

because of the fact that here Freud encounters a researcher who
introduced a decisive new idea —one alien to Wernicke — into
aphasia theory: Hughlings Jackson. t With the notion of biological
involution and disinvolution (or: potentiation and depotentiation),
which was later to be so fruitfully worked out by Goldstein, Jack-
son eifected a connection between neurology and biology of func-
tions. It is upon this connection that Freud's thought is based. The
greatness of his conceptions and his destiny rests, in the last analysis,
upon the fact that he extended this kind of thinking to the entire
psychic life of individual; society, and mankind in general —and
pursued and developed it through painful decades of ceaseless,
patient labor.
Development thinking is also contained in the original charter
of clinical psychiatry, not only with respect to the evolution of
the brain on the scale of animals leading up to man, but also with
respect to the "temporal metamorphoses" of age: "In these tem-
poral metamorphoses, these progressions from gradual growth to
• In contrast to Meynert, he avoids the temptation of brain localization: "I shall

entirely disregard the fact that the mental apparatus ... is also known to us in
the form of an anatomical preparation. . .
." See Ges. Scbr., II, 456.
t Freud, Zur Auffassung der Aphasien: Eine hiuorische Studic (I-eip/.ig and
Vienna, 1891). This work, which is often cited today because of the distinction it
draws between asymbolic and agnostic aphasic disturbances, has an air of the mod-
ern about it not because Freud was saying even then that "the significance of the
element of localization for aphasia has been greatly overestimated" (p. 107), but
rather because there he recognized the particular importance of Hughlings Jack-
son's theories for the study of aphasia.
[196]
Freud and the Magna Chart a of Clivical Psychiatry
the peaks of mamrity to deterioration, brain activity parallels all
other organic functions and reveals itself as also subject to the de-
^^
velopmental laws of the organism." Jackson extended the notions
of development and retrodevelopment to include pathological dis-
turbances of psychophysical brain function, and Freud went
even further in including pathological disturbances of total human
psychic development. While this undertaking, attempted by Freud,
permits a connection with the structure and functions of the
brain, in its entirety it beggars a projection onto the brain. Even,
indeed, in aphasia, relationships are infinitely more complex than
could be suspected from the famous projection schemata. With re-
gard to this, Freud, as opposed to Meynert, exercised wise theo-
retical restraint in constantly stressing the speculative nature of
his efforts to connect brain structure and function. He had already
learned from Jackson that the brain is able to react as an entity to a
lesion that incompletely destroys the language apparatus. He
learned, that is, "that the partial loss is the expression of the general
functional degradation" or "weakening" of this apparatus: "if
answers the incompletely destructive lesion ivith a functional dis-

^^
turbance which could also arise through non-material damage."
—
This last sentence which Freud himself underlined seems to me —
of the highest importance for the development of his theories! In
appraising the function of the language apparatus under pathological
conditions, Freud gave precedence to Hughlings Jackson's statement
"that all these modes of reaction represent cases of functional
dis-involution of the highly organized apparatus and correspond
^®
accordingly to earlier conditions of its functional development."
He cites the statement of the great English scientist, in which
the tempo peculiar to each disturbance is stressed: "Different
amounts of nervous arrangements in different positions are de-
stroyed with different rapidity in different persons." *
What Freud knew about the physiological and physiopatho-
logical function of "the brain" and its complex mechanisms was at
his disposal before he made his special study of the neuroses. And
we may see in it the bridge that leads to his insights into the way
• Freud, Zwr Auffasmng der Aphasien, p. 102. Here he links himself also with
At the same time, he reveals himself
Jackson's critical psychophysical parallelism.
as being under the influence of J. S. Mill's Logic (p. 80). Like most psychiatrists,
Freud remained at bottom a positivist and psychologist in Mill's sense.
[ '97]
the brain reacts to "non-material damage," insights that can easily

fit in with his experiences regarding hypnosis and suggestion. As he
progressed beyond this area and grew more and more familiar
with the ]xit-historical element of neurosis in general and of the
infantile portion of the hfe-history in particular, with the growing
insight into the role of sexuaUty and of defense or repression
with, in fine, his growing awareness of the role of psychic conflict
in neurosis and with the corresponding increase of insight into the
historical genesis of neuroticsymptomatology, the element of bio-
logical development occupied more and more of a central place
for Freud, the biologist. For development is the only historical
principle that biology recognizes. His main goal, therefore, was to
trace everything he encountered of history and historicity back
to biological development and to project it upon this element.*
Griesinger's views about "temporal metamorphoses," about the
growth and deterioration of brain activity were now far from
sufficient. It was now necessary to begin further back with regard
to his developTnental laws of the organism (which also "embrace

the psychic activity of the brain"). But, as indicated above, for
Freud "organism" means the sum total of instinctual processes
embracing the psychic, chemical, and physical events within a bio-
logical individuality. It means, in short, "the instincts" and their
specification in individual tasks and performances. Normal and
pathological development of the organism was for him equivalent to
normal and pathological development of "the instincts" and their
functional interplay. But here, too, we never find such a thing as
"partial" instinctual damage. It is, rather, the whole organism that
always reacts to partial damage, to a falling or being driven back
of an individual instinct or instinctual component. The result of this
highly complex life process is the neurotic svmptom as an expres-
sion of a degraded or "weakened" total functioning of the organ-
ism. It relates itself to the injury just as do the speech or brain ap-
paratuses themselves. It seeks to accommodate it, to master it by
falUng back to a lower level of functioning. Since Freud, then, we
speak of neuroses and psychoses when there occurs in the brain ap-
paratus a disturbance that is "not wholly destructive" and that in
most (purely functional) cases leaves its material completely intact,
• The over-all task of psychiatry is not thereby exhausted; sec my "Lebens-
funktion und inncrc Lcbcnsgcschichte."
[198]
but that compels or induces the apparatus to reach back (regress)

to earliermodes of functional reaction (which in the meantime
have been somewhat escalated). Since what we have here are dis-
turbances that, in contrast to genuine brain lesions, leave intact the
material structure of the apparatus, the organism can content itself
with reaching back to levels that it has already contained in the
course of its individual development. This life-event, embracing,
in its entirety, the disruptive, developmental, and retro-develop-
mental factors, and taking place at a particular time with a particu-
lar tempo in a particular person is termed by Freud neurosis (or
psychosis). Much more so than the Wemickean concept of psycho-

sis, it is a concept whose many biological aspects set it apart from
clinical psychiatry but that, nevertheless, contains nothing that
contradicts the original charter. Its most important aspect, how-
ever, is indusputably the notion of regression, which, though similar
to dis-involution, refers far beyond it into the psychic by virtue of
its and which embraces both the
"active," "oppressing" tendency,
hfe function of remaining and falling behind (fixation) as well as
the life-historical forces of restraint ("repression").* It is the de-
gree and extent of this "backward" movement that, as we know,
determine the form of neurosis and psychosis as well as their entire
symptomatology.
The role this aspect plays in Freud's theory of sexuahty is too
well known to bear repetition here, Freud's theory of sexuality
was desgined to gain a basis for the whole of the evolutionary and
revolutionary system; it is a theory in which one sees the magnifi-
cent further development of his special insights about the pathology
of brain function into a conceptual edifice embracing man, world,
and human experience.
To recognize this is also to recognize that the interpretation
and naming of individual instinctual vectors is of secondary im-
portance for psychiatry. What Freud, in a very broad sense, un-
Freud has contributed more to the understanding of inner life history than
•
any We, however, distinguish our position from his in

single person before him.
that we see the Wic-historical element as the fundament of "anthropology," while
Freud sees therein only a "pictorial language" for biological events. The concept
of regression as it recurs in The Interpretation of Dreams (degeneration of
thoughts into images) is by no means as encompassing as the one we encounter
laterwith particular clinical clarity in, for example, the "Psychoanalytischen
Bemerkungen viber den Fall Schreber" (Ges. Schr., VIII).
[»99l
Selected Papers of Lxjtjwig Binswanger
derstands by sexuality is not contained in what the physiologist

understands by the sexual drive, and especially not in what the
psychologist, philosopher, or theologian understands by love. We
need think only of how immensely far apart are Freud's notion
of self-love in the sense of narcissism and, say, x\ristotle's self-love
in the sense of philautia or self-love in the Christian sense.* What
Freud strove for was always to translate the pictorial language of
—
psychology into "simpler" and ^we may add more uniform, —
coarser, chemical and physical "images" that, for him, seemed
closer to reahty. Freud does not concern himself with "pansexual-
ism," especially not during the period of his highest development,
which began with the writing of Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
His final recognition of nvo kiiids of instincts the Hfe and the —
—
death instinct which he expressly-*' owed to the "reliance upon
biology" (Hering's, among others), illuminates \\'hat Freud under-
stood by
sexuality and sexual instincts: certainly nothing psycho-
logical, and certainly nothing similar to the physiological, but,
rather, a tendency in the basic biological processes those proc-
esses, namely, that are involutive and assimilatory or "construc-
tive," as opposed to those that are disinvolutive and dissimilatory

or "destructive." t
• It is not simply that what is lacking is a phenomenological description of
—
what he understands by love, but rather and this is even more important what —
is missing is any interpretation and description of what he understands by "self."
As sensitive to this lack as is anthropology, among whose basic concepts is that of

the self, so insensitive to it is official psychiatry, which assiduously avoids a phe-
nomenological description and interpretation of the meaning of its psvchological
concepts. Wernicke's distinction between somato-, auto-, and allopsychic mental
disturbances is simply an especially crass example of this neglect. These and many
other such distinctions are merely like occasional great beacons. They can never
form the basis of concept construction for psychopathology.
tThe use by Freud of the expressions Aufban (construction] and Abhau
[destruction], which correspond
best to the terms used by Jackson as well as
Haering is —
above all save for Beyond the Pleamre Principle in the
to be noted —
following summary: "The widely ranging considerations as to the processes which
make up life and lead to death seem to necessitate that we recognize tuo kinds of
instincts corresponding to the antagonistic processes in the organism of construc-
tion and destruction. The one kind, which works silently toward the goal of lead-
ing the living creature to its death, deserves, therefore, the name of the 'death
instinct.' It manifests outwardly, by the cooperation of the numerous multi-

itself
cellular organisms, as tendencies of destruction [Destrtiktion] or aggression. The
other group of instincts arc the analytically more familiar libidinous sexual or life
instincts, best understood collectively as I'.ros, whose goal it is to form ever greater
unities out of living substance so that life may be perpetuated and brought to
[ 200I
The same is true of the "unconscious." It represents primarily

a developmental system in the psychic apparatus and serves only
secondarily as an expression in the pictorial language of psychology.
The same is also true of the oral and anal stages, etc., and of the
terms "Ego," "Id," and "Super-ego." With regard to the latter,
for Freud the individual is "an unknown and unconscious Id,
upon whose surface rests the Ego, developed from its nucleus,
the Pcpt-system. That is, the Ego is essentially a representative
of the outside world, reahty, over against which stands the
Super-ego as "attorney for the inner world." * But as regards the
oral and anal, the submissive and aggressive tendencies of — as we
may also say — the "individual psychobiological apparatus," these
notions, like all upon the experience
of Freud's thought, are based
and observation of the manner which people behave. And these
in
modes of behavior must certainly play a role for any genuine an-
thropology that seeks to ascertain the fundamental meaning matri-
ces of human beings. I have, for example, learned to consider the
existentialmeaning matrix of "oral" (movement) toward me and
{vwvement) away from me, as well as that represented by the
slang phrase "having a big mouth" —
from an anthropological point
of view.t
Our subject matter would be incompletely sketched if, in con-
clusion, we did not cast one more glance at the relation of Freud's
investigational methods and therapy to clinical psychiatry's Magna
Charta. Concerning the first, we may say that it was Freud who
raised psychiatric techniques of examination to the level of a tech-
higher levels of development. In the living creature, the erotic and death instincts
are ordinarily compounded and alloyed. But their disengagement is also possible.
Life, then, would consist of the expression of conflict or interference between the
two kinds of bringing to the individual, by means of death, the victory
instincts,
of the destructive instincts, but also the victory of Eros by means of reproduc-
tion." "Libido Theory," in Handworterbuch fiir Sexttalwissenschaft, and Gey.
Schr.,X\,ii2i.
• See The Ego and the Id, Ges. Schr., VI, 367 and 380. That which in The Ego
and the Id (after Beyond the Pleasitre Principle the most significant work of
Freud's late development), sounds almost unbearably shrill to the ears of psychol-
ogists and anthropologists becomes the most valuable building blocks of Freud's
biological system.
+ See Vber Psychotherapie and Vber IdeenfJucht (pp. 114 ff.). Of course there
are other meaning matrices that psychoanalysis does not recognize, such as,
still
for example, that of rising-falling. See, in this regard, "Dream and Existence," this
volume.
[201]
nique in the truly medical sense of the word. In the pre-Freudian

era, the psychiatric "ausculatation" and "percussion" of the neurotic
patient was, as it were, performed through the patient's shirt, in
that all direct contact with personally erotic and sexual themes was
avoided. Only when the physician was able to make himself into a
complete physician, to include within the sphere of the examina-
tion his total person and the sympathetic, antipathetic, and sexual
forces directed toward him by the patient, only then could he cre-
ate between patient and doctor an atmosphere of personal dis-
tance and, at the same time, of medical cleanliness, discipUne, and
correctness. It was this atmosphere that was able to raise psychiat-
ric technique to the level of general medicine. This, too, was pos-
sible for Freud only because his total existence was that of a re-
searcher, and because of the quality of his system of thought as I
have just sketched it. He saw in the "attitude" of the patient to the
doctor only the regressive repetition of psychobiologically earlier
parental "object-cathexes" and eliminated what was 7iew in the pa-
tient's encounter with him. Insofar as this he was able to
he did
keep the physician as a person in the background and allow him
to pursue his technical role unencumbered by personal influences
— as is the case with surgeons or radiologists. The method of hav-
ing his patients free-associate also goes hand in hand with this neces-
sary and therefore unconscious repetition of repressed "situations"
and the resistence arising from them.
must not be forgotten
It
that the notion of strict psychic "determinism," which Freud al-

lowed to guide him in this method, was not based on any mere
intellectual theory. It was, rather, grounded in the established bio-
logical and psychological fact that every "experience" down to the
simplest perception or even sensation (Erwin Straus, Scheler, and
others) has a very definite place (Stellenivert) in the development
of an individual, according to the degree and kind of effect it has.
Because of this, a perception, sensation, or "association" must be-
come manifestly discernible again when the total situation to which
it owes its "origin" and placing is repeated.
We come now to our conclusion. Freud once said that psycho-

analysis stands to psychiatry "somewhat as histology to anatomy";
"one studies the external form of the organ, the other studies the
way it is constructed out of tissues and elementary parts; a contra-
diction between these two kinds of studies, of which one is the con-
[202]
tinuadon of the other, is unthinkable." ^^

As I hope I have shown,
Freud is correct with regard to the latter, but not the former
claim. In psychiatry, as it were, "histological" and thus "micro-
scopic" examination would correspond to a more detailed "mi-
croscopic" analysis of clinical symptomatology and its material
substrata, undertaken for the purpose of deepening and enlarg-
ing the classification of psychoses with regard to their general
etiology and course. Here, therefore, what we have is, rather, two
points of view that intersect. We same situation
are faced with the
aswe were in regarding the doctrines of Meynert and Wernicke.
Of the latter, Liepmann has said that it points research in a direc-
tion "perpendicular" to that which clinical psychiatry usually takes.
All these doctrines attempt —insofar as they are relevant to clini-
cal psychiatry — to move in one direction from the "knowledge of

psychic phenomena in all their multifariousness" to "a penetration
to their roots." Meynert seeks to impress the character of scientific
disciplineupon psychiatry "by means of an anatomical foundation,"
Wernicke by means of "anchoring" its charter in neuropathological
brain functions, and Freud by extending psychiatric research to the
study of the psychobiological developmental history of the orga-
nism as a whole.
The psychic object becomes with Meynert an anatomical,
with Wernicke a neuropathological, and with Freud a biological
theory. But as we have seen, the spirit of the psychiatric charter
tolerates thepredominance of no theory and thus also refuses to
have psychiatry founded upon Freudian theory. On Freud's side,
however, we have found nothing in his theory that runs counter to
this charter. Though his doctrine may be preponderantly material-
istic —corresponding in this respect with the intentions of the
founders of the psychiatric charter —the direction he sets for psy-
chiatric research is nevertheless the only one that does not "leave
untouched the actual content of the human psychic life in its whole
richness." That this richness of "actual psychic content" — as Dil-
they puts it — is projected upon and reduced to a psychobiologi-

cal apparatus its least disturbing aspect to the dogmatic
ought to be
proponent of the psychiatric clinical charter. For he, too, leads us
merely to an enormous simplification of the life of the psyche
and to a reduction of it to a crude natural scientific schema'' gov-
erned by a few principles. Freud, however, seeks out that rich
[203]
Selected Papers of LuDwac Binswanger
psychic content in its deepest detail and source, insofar as he pur-

and translating psychic con-
sues the difficult route of transposing
tent into various biologically functional "systems" and "modes of
speech" and then constructs thereof a uniquely encompassing and
complex conceptual system. In these respects, therefore, we may
say of Freud not only that he builds upon the ground mapped out
by Griesinger's reference, in the psychiatric charter, to emotional
interests and their connection with insanity not only, that is, —
does Freudian theory fill a very pronounced gap in this charter
— but, in addition, it deepens the very ideas already contained in it
by casting hght upon things that could never have been seen from
within this charter alone. Now man is no longer merely an ani-
mated organism, but a "Hving being" who has origins in the finite
life process of this earth, and who dies its life and Kves its death;
illness is no longer an externally or internally caused disturbance
of the substance or function of the organism, but the expression of
a disturbance of the "normal" course of a life on the way to its
death. Sickness and health, the "alarum" and the "soundless quiet"
of hfe, struggle and defeat, good and evil, truth and error, human
nobility and debasement are here —
all of them fleeting scenes in
the passing drama of the marriage of hfe and death. But, we must
add, here "man" is not yet man. For to be a man means not only to
be a creature begotten by living-dying life, cast into it and beaten
about, and put into high spirits or low spirits by it: it means to be
a being that looks its own and mankind's fate in the face, a being
that is "steadfast," i.e., one that likes its own stand, or stands on its
own feet. Thus, too, sickness, labor, suff'ering, pain, guilt, and
error are not yet, with Freud as we consider him here, (historical)
signs and stages; for signs and stages arc not merely fleeting scenes
of a passing drama, but "eternal"moments of a historically deter-
mined being, of being-in-thc-world as fate. That we are lived by
the forces of life is only one side of the truth; the other is that ive
determine these forces as our fate. Only the two sides together can
take in the full problem of sanity and insanity. Those who, like
Freud, have forged their fates with the hammer the work of art —
he has created in the medium of language is sufficient evidence of
this —can dispute this fact least of all.
[ 204I
Notes
I. S. Freud, Gesanrmelte Schriften, XI, 387.
I. See M. Dorer, Historische Grundlagen der Psychoanalyse (Leipzig, 1932).
3. Griesinger, Pathologic und Therapie der psychischen Krankheiten, 2nd cd., 6 f.
4. Ibid., p. 73.
5. Freud, II, 98.

6. Ibid., V, 409.
7. Griesinger, p. 48.
8. Ibid., p. 56.
9. /WJ., p. 63 f. Cf. also 72 f.
10. /Z?/rf., p. 9 f.
1 1. T. Meynert, yier den Wahn, p. 85.

12. Cited from Meynert, Deutsche Irremrzte, II, 133.
13. Monatsschr. f. Psych, u. New., Vol. 30, 191 1.
14. Freud, VI, 223.
15. I bid., V 111,426.
16. Ibid., VI, 223.
17. Griesinger, p. 3.
18. Freud, Zixr Auffasstmg der Aphasien, p. 32.

19. Ibid., p. 89.
20. Freud, Gesarrrmelte Schriften, XI, 223.

21. Ibid., VU, 262.
22. Cf. Vber where I have thrown into relief the four clinical
Ideenflticht, p. 147 f.
reduction-principles and brought them under the following formula: "It is

everywhere a matter of the transformation of the complex ego-principle —
with its polarity of object and experience, of / and you(Du) and its connec-
—
tion with the problem of communicative understanding and culture into the
oni-dimensional id-principle."
[205]
mm.
Heidegger^s Analytic of Existence
and Its Meaning for Tsychiatry
And do you think that you can

know the nature of the soul intel-
ligently without knowing the na-
ture of the whole?
PLATO, Phaedrus, 270c
Martin Heidegger's analytic of existence is doubly significant for

psychiatry. It affords empirical psychopathological research a new
methodological and material basis that goes beyond its previous
framework, and its treatment of the existential concept of science
places psychiatry in general in a position to account for the actual-
ity, possibility, and limits of its own scientific world-design or, as
we may also call it, transcendental horizon of understanding. These
two aspects are quite closely related, and both have their roots in
Heidegger's Sein und Zeit and Vom Wesen des Gnmdes.
The purpose of Sein und Zeit was the "concrete" working out
of the question as to the meaning of Being. Its preliminary goal was
to interpet time as the possible horizon of any understanding of Be-
ing. To this end, Heidegger, as we know, gives us the "concrete"
working out of the ontological structure of the Dasein as being-
in-the-world or transcendence. In thus indicating the basic struc-
ture of the Dasein as being-in-the-world, Heidegger places in the
psychiatrist's key by means of which he can, free of the
hands a
prejudice of any scientific theory, ascertain and describe the phe-
nomena he investigates in their full phenomenal content and intrin-
sic context. It was Edmund Husserl's great achievement to have
shown, after Brentano, just what this "phenomcnological" method

is, and to have indicated what enormous vistas it opened for re-
[206]
Heidegger's Analytic of Existence and Its Meaning for Psychiatry
search in the various sciences. Husserl's doctrine, however, con-

cerns itself solely with the sphere of intentionality , considered as
the unitary relation between transcendental subjectivity and tran-
scendental objectivity. The shift from the "theoretical" ascertain-
ment and description of psychic processes or events in a "subject"
to the ascertainment and description of the forms and structures of
"intentional consciousness," consciousness of something or direct-
edness toward something, was a quite decisive shift for psycho-
pathological research. Nevertheless, this consciousness was still
suspended in the air, in the thin air of the transcendental ego. The
— in the full sense of the word — "fundamental" accomplishment of
Heidegger consisted not only in stating the problematic nature of
the transcendental possibility of intentional acts. What he did, in
addition, was problem by showing how the intention-
to solve this
ality of consciousness is grounded in the temporality of human ex-
istence, in the Dasein. Intentionality in general is only possible on
the basis of "transcendence" and is thus neither identical with it
nor, conversely, does it make transcendence possible. Only by re-
ferring intentionality back to the Dasein as transcendence or be-
ing-in-the-world and only, therefore, with the inclusion of the
transcendental ego in the actual Dasein, was the ("objective-tran-
scendental") question posed as to the nvhat-ness of the beings
that we ourselves are.* We may thus say, with Wilhelm Szilazi,
that Sein und Zeit is the first inquiry into our existence "with regard
to its objective transcendence."
Since, in "The Existential Analysis School of Thought," ^ I
have already sketched the path thus taken, we turn our attention
now to the second aspect of Heidegger's dual significance for psy-
chiatry —namely, the question as to the actuality, possibility, and
limits of the horizon of understanding, or world-design of psy-
chiatry in general. This problem might also be characterized as con-
cerning the awareness by psychiatry of its own essential structure
as science, or, again, as the effort of psychiatry to understand itself
as science. It goes without saying that in this brief space I can only
hint at what the answer to this problem might be.
• Here is one juncture where the gap separating Sartre and Heidegger reveals
itself. Sartre does not refer back in this manner; indeed, he reproaches Heidegger:
"that he has completely avoided any appeal to consciousness in his description of
Dasein." Being and Nothingness, p. 85.
[207]
Selected Papers of Lxjdwig Benswanger
A science does not understand itself simply by being clear as to the

"object" it studies and the basic concepts and research methods by
which it conducts these studies. Rather, a science understands itself
only when it — in the full sense of the Greek logon didonai —ac-
counts for its interpretation (expressed in its basic concepts) of
its particular region of being upon the background of that region's
basic ontological structure. Such an accounting cannot be executed
with the methods of the particular science itself, but only with the
aid of philosophical methods.
Science autonomous with regard to what, in its terms, can be
is
experie?iced. Here it justifiably protects itself against any phil-

osophical "encroachment," just as, for its part, any philosophy
aware of its own purposes restrains itself from such encroachment.
While, shown, science and philosophy share the same
as history has
roots, this means
whereas science sets the questions by which
that
it approaches that which is, philosophy poses the question as to the
nature of proof as ground and foundation the question, that is, as —

to the function performed by transcendence, as such, of establish-
ing a ground. This is simply to repeat in different words that a — —
science can understand itself only if it accounts for the original
formulation of its question within which, qua this particular sci-
entific mode of grounding, it approaches the things it studies and
has them speak to it. To this extent, and only to this extent, is sci-
ence to be "referred" to philosophy; to the extent that is, that the
self-understanding of a science, considered as the aniculation of an
actual store of ontological understanding, is possible only on the
basis of philosophical, i.e., ontological understanding, in general.
II
Whereas physics and biology and the humanistic sciences as well

rest upon their own particular "actual store of ontological under-
standing," ~ the same cannot be said of psychiatry. In its clinical
setting, psychiatry views its object, the "mentally ill human being"
from the aspect of nature, and, thus, within the natural-scientific
[208]
mainly biological —horizon of understanding. Here psychiatry's

object is — as it is in all of medicine —the "sick" organism. But in
psychotherapy, it views its object from the aspect of "the human
being," and thus within an (either prescientific or systematic) an-
thropological horizon of understanding. Here the object of psy-
chiatry is the "mentally ill" Other, the fellow man. The incompat-
ibility of these two conceptual horizons or reality-conceptions is
not resolvable within science and leads not only to endless scientific
controversy, but, also, as the present situation in psychiatry shows,
to a split into two separate psychiatric camps. This fact alone
shows how important it is for psychiatry to concern itself with the
question as to what we human beings are.
In actual practice, these two conceptual orientations of psy-
chiatry usually overlap — as one quick glance at its "praxis" tells us.
The clinician, too, first "relates himself to" his patient or seeks "an
understanding with him." And
from this relating or precisely
understanding he attains his initial perspective from which to ascer-
tain the sy?nptoms of the disease. It was, in fact, Honigswald who
expressed the view that psychiatric symptoms are primarily dis-
turbances of communication and thus refer^ to a "meaning given
to human intercourse." One of the basic demands of medical psy-
chotherapy, on the other hand, is to view the prospective patient
also as an organism, the demand, namely, that what must first be
ascertained is whether the patient is intact "as" an organism espe- —
cially as regards the central nervous system and whether the pos- —
sibility of such a disturbance of intactness sets up certain therapeu-
tic limitations from the outset.
To the extent, now, that the psychiatrist views the organism as

a natural object, i.e., "physicalistically," to the extent that he thus
views the fellow man before him, with whom hetries to come to
an understanding and who is his partner in the community of man
and is another "human soul" — to that extent will his ontological
understanding be clouded, at the outset, by the psychophysical
problem. For, the mind-body problem is not an ontological prob-
lem, but a problem of scientific knowledge, a purely theoretical
problem. "Theory," therefore, is called in for help in "solving" this
problem. No theory, however, can really "solve" it, but can only
seek to bridge mind and body with more or less perfunctory theo-
[209]
retical sham solutions ("auxiliary hypotheses"), or immerse the

whole problem in a pseudophilosophical (materialistic, spiritualis-
tic, biologistic, orpsychologistic) smoke screen.
The problem of mind and body, though it arises out of urgent

practical scientific needs, is incorrectly formulated because science
— as it must — fails to see that what is involved are two quite differ-
ent scientific conceptions of reaUty which cannot be bridged
by any theory nor merged together by any amount of speculation.
For as soon as I objectify my fellow man, as soon as I objectify his
subjectivity^ he is no longer my fellow man; and as soon as I sub-
jectify an organism or make a natural object into a responsible sub-
ject, it is no longer an organism in the sense intended by medical
science. The situation can be put to rights only if we go behind
both conceptual horizons or reality-conceptions —that of nature
and that of "culture" —and approach man's basic function of
understanding Being as the establishing of ground — transcenden- a
tal function. Our task, then, is to use philosophical rigor in under-
standing both the power and the impotence of these two concep-
tions considered as scientific, or even as prescienrific or "naive,"
modes of transcendental grounding or establishment.
III
Scientific understanding is oriented toward fact and factuality,
i.e.,toward reaHty and objectivity. Such a project (or design)

separates areas of fact and places the various entities in a factual,
real, objective, and systematic interconnection.^ Heidegger has
shown that such a project is not simply a demarcation of regions,

but is also the establishing of a ground. That is, in such a project a
particular sphere "of being" (beings) are "thematized" and
thereby rendered accessible to objective inquiry and determination.
If this is so, then such a project must be constantly subjected to a
critique that concerns itself with the fundamental issues of all sci-
entific inquiry. It is not only philosophy that performs this func-

tion of criticism. \Vc find it constantly being effected in the way
scientific concepts of themselves break down and undergo trans-
formations — in, that is, the various crises of science.
Today psychiatry finds itself in just such a crisis. The "Magna
[210]
Heideggefs Analytic of Existence and Its Meaning for Psychiatry
Charta" * or framework that was its guide up to now has been
broken down on the one hand by psychoanalysis and by psycho-

therapy's generally deepened understanding of its own scientific
bases, and on the other hand by ever-increasing insight into the
game of psychosomatics, and above all by "structural" t and em-
pirical existential-analytic research, which has widened the scope
and cast hght on psychiatry's horizon of understanding.
Simply as regards this "crisis," Heidegger's phenomenological-
philosophical analytic of existence is important for psychiatry. This
is so because it does not inquire merely into particular regions of
phenomena and found "in human beings," but, rather,
fact to be
inquires into the being of 7min as a whole. Such a question is not
answerable by scientific methods alone. The conception of man
as a physical-psychological-spiritual unity does not say enough.
For, as Heidegger says, the being of man cannot be ascertained by
the "summative enumeration" of the rather ambiguous ontological
modes of body, mind, and soul. What is needed is the return to
(subjective) transcendence, to the Dasein as being-in-the-world,
even \\ hile constant attention is being accorded its objective tran-
scendence.
It is, of course, true that modem psychiatry also seeks to know
the nature of the "soul" by regarding the nature of the whole
as Plato prescribed (see thechapter motto). But psychiatry, as a
branch of medicine, primarily views this whole as "life," as a bio-
logical whole, and every "consideration" of this whole ordinarily
takes place at the level of factual objective "relations," In addition,
the soul is understood as something neutrally present (vorhanden)
in or with the body. But even aside from these considerations,
what is meant by the Greek expression to Holon — in contrast to
to Pan —
is not the totality of the whole, but as — in Aristotle
wholeness as such. Heidegger's analytic of existence, by inquiring
into the being of the whole man, can provide not scientific, but
philosophical understanding of this wholeness. Such an understand-
ing can indicate to psychiatry the limits within which it may in-
quire and expect an answer and can, as well, indicate the general
horizon within which answers, as such, are to be found.
(Sec "Frcud and the Magna Charta of Clinical Psychiatry" in this volume.]
•
This term is meant to include those psychiatric schools of thought attached to

t
the names of E. Minkowski, Erwin Straus, and V. E. von Gebsattel.
[2. ij
It is incorrect to accuse Heidegger's analytic of existence of

failing to deal with nature, for it is through this same analytic of
existence that the basis for the problem of nature can be obtained
— via the approach to the Dasein as situationally attuned (befind-
lich-gestiTmnten) existence among beings. It would be equally in-
correct to accuse Daseinsanalyse of "neglecting the body." Insofar
as a world-design is seen as thraum —and this means situationally
attuned —then, explicitly or not, attention is being directed to the
Dasein in its bodiliness.
In practice, whenever the psychiatrist himself tries to look be-
yond the limitations of his science and seeks to know the ontologi-
cal grounds of his understanding and treatment of those placed in
his care, it is Heidegger's analytic of existence that can broaden his
horizon. For it offers the possibility of understanding man as both
a creature of nature, and a socially determined or historical being
—and this by means of one ontological insight, which thus obviates
the separation of body, mind, and spirit. Man as a creature of na-
ture is revealed in the thrownness of the Dasein, its "that-it-is,"
its facticity. "Has the Dasein, as such, ever freely decided and
will it ever be able to decide as to whether it wants to come into
'existence' or not?" The Dasein, although it exists essentially for
its own sake (uvvwillen seiner), has nevertheless not itself laid the
ground of its being. And also, as a creature "come into existence,"
it is and remains, thrown, determined, i.e., enclosed, possessed, and
compelled by beings in general. Consequently it is not "completely

free" in its world-design either. The "powerlessness" of the Dasein
here shows itself in that certain of its possibihries of being-in-the-
world are withdrawn because of commitment to and by beings,
because of its facticity. But it is also just this withdrawal that lends
the Dasein its power: for it is this that first brings before the
Dasein the "real," graspable possibilities of world-design.
Transcendence is thus not only a striding or swinging of the
Dasein toward the world, but is, at the same time, withdrawal,
limitation —
and only in this limiting does transcendence gain power
"over the world." All this, however, is but a "transcendental docu-
ment" of the Dasein's finitude. The thrownness of the Dasein, its
facticity, is the transcendental horizon of all that scientific sys-
tematic psychiatry deHmits as reality under the name of organism,
body (and heredity, climate, milieu, etc.), and also for all that
[2.2I
which is delimited, investigated, and researched as psychic deter-

minateness: namely, as mood and ill humor, as craziness, compul-
sive or insane "possessedness," as addiction, instinctuahty, as con-
fusion, phantasy determination, as, in general, unconsciousness.
Now, whereas the science of psychiatry not only observes and
establishes connections between these two spheres, but also erects
the theoretical bridge of the psychophysical Daseinsanalyse, on

the other hand, shows that it is the scientific dichotomization
of man's ontological wholeness that gives rise to this postulate in
the first shows that this dichotomization results from

place. It
projecting the whole of human being upon the screen of that

which is merely objectively present [vorhanden] It also indicates .
the general world-design of science as stemming from one and the

same Dasein, from, namely, the Dasein's ontological potentiality
of scientific being-in-the-world. Here, too, it is true to say that
what lends the world-design its (limited) scientific power is ob-
tained only through its powerlessness to understand the being of
human existence [Dasein] as a whole.
It is to Heidegger's great credit that he summed up the being
of the Dasein under the all too easily misunderstood title of Care
(=caring and to have phenomenologically explored its basic
for),
structures and make-up. Thrownness, in the sense of the facticity
of the Dasein's answerability to its that-it-is, is only one component
("existential") of this structure, the others, as we know, being
existence (project) and fallenness.* Thus what in psychiatry is
irreversibly separated into discrete realities of fields of study,

namely, the finite human Dasein, is presented here in its basic
structural unity. (It cannot be emphasized too often that this
presentation signifies something quite different from the approach
to man under the aegis of one particular idea, such as the idea of
the will to power, libido, or any idea involving man as, in general,
a creature of nature, or even, indeed, the idea of man as a child of
God, as homo aeternus, etc.) But where there is structure there
can be no dissociation of one structural member from the structural
whole. Each, rather, remains impHcated in the others, and a change
in one structural element involves a change in the others. The
Dasein can thus never get "behind" its thrownness and can only
• For the significance of fallenness "toward the world" —and not only the
—
Mitwelt see Schizophreme.
[213]
project those possibilities into which it is thrown. Only, therefore,

as surrendered to its that^ as thrown, does the Dasein exist within
the ground of its power-to-be. The self of existence, although it
has to lay its own ground, can therefore never have power over
this ground. As a being, it has to be "as it is and can be." Its being
is a projection of its own power-to-be, and to this extent it is
always already in advance* of itself. This being in advance of
itself also concerns the whole of the Dasein's structure. Correspond-
ing to all that we know of its thrownness (as already-being-in-

the-world), the being-in-advance-of itself of the Dasein, its futu-
rity, isthrough and through implicated with its past. Out of both
these temporal "ecstasies" the authentic present temporalizes it-
self. This is what was referred to in the opening pages as the "way"
of Sein und Tjeit: the attempt to understand the basic structure of

the Dasein via the unitariness of temporality and its ecstasies.
I have elsewhere^ tried to indicate the significance of this way

for psychopathological knowledge and the understanding of the
basic forms of human existence. Here, however, we are concerned
with pointing out its significance for psychiatry's understanding of
itself. The insight into the temporal essence of the Dasein, or
transcendence, not only instructs psychiatry as to its "object"
the various modes of "abnormal" human existence —but also in-
structs it in its understanding of itself in that it compels it to
realize that its dissection of human being into various factual
regions with their corresponding conceptualizations cannot be the
last word. For, as I have already mentioned, it thereby takes one
level, that of things objectively present [vorhanden] "in time and
space," here and now, and projects upon that level what makes
the understanding of spatialization and temporaHzation possible in
the first place: the Dasein. But if psychiatry rcahzes —and this is
true for all sciences — how provisional its world-designs, its
reaHty-conceptions, are, it will hold on to its basic concepts less

rigidly and will find it easier to deepen and change these concepts.
It is obvious, afrer all we have said, that these conceptual changes
can be instigated only within scientific research and its particular
• Regarding tlic extent to wliicli tlic various psychotic forms of manic depres-
sion and scliizoplircnia are rooted in various modes of tliis being-in-advance-of-
itself of the Dasein (be it from tlie aspect of attunement [Gestiimntheh] or "Ex-
travagant" ideal-formation), sec my studies Vber Ideenftucbt and Schizophrenie.
[214]
crises, and therefore only within psychiatry's efforts in its own

proper sphere of activity. A
"dogmatic" importation of philosoph-
ical doctrines as such has almost always been detrimental to science
and research.
IV
It is not enough to realize the necessary limitedness of psychiatry's
world-design, which, like all world-designs, derives its power from
the elimination of other possibilities. The analytic of existence can,
in addition, show psychiatry ivhat, materially, must be "with-
drawn," must be neglected, when man is dissected into body, mind,
and soul.
I have already cited Honigswald's essay on philosophy and
psychiatry. In it, he also remarks that it must essentially be ex-

pected of the organism "that it call itself /." The analytic of exist-
ence indicates the root of this "expectation," namely, the basic
anthropological fact that the Dasein is, in its being, concerned es-
sentially with this being itself, in other words, that itswhereto and
wherefore is always directed toward itself. This being for itself by
no means signifies an attitude of the I to itself that gives it the
possibility of calling itself /. If this potentiality is to be "expected"
also of the organism, it is because we realize that if this power to
say / (and me and vnne) is lost sight of in the reality-conception
wherein man is projected, then the splitting of man into organism
and Ego, body and soul, physical and psychic, res extensa and
res cogitans, will never and that what will be lost
be set aright,
sight of is man as he really is. There may be many "factual"
grounds for undertaking this separation. But this should not
prevent us from seeing that it is undertaken only "for the sake
of the matter" and ceases to be valid once we turn our attention
from the particular "circumstances" to the being of the Dasein it-
self. For, the being for itself also concerns the Dasein qua organ-
ism or body, the Dasein that is organism only as mine, yours, or
his, and under no circumstances, is purely and simply organ-

that,
ism and body as such. It is, consequently, naive to see the psycho-
physical problem as a riddle of the universe.
For science, this also means that as biologists, or even as physi-
ologists, we ought not to view the organism only as a natural ob-
[215]
Selected Papers of LuDw^G Binswanger
ject, but must keep in mind that the concept of organism results
from a natural-scientific reduction ® of man to his bodily existence
and the further reduction of this bodily existence to a mere neu-
trally present, "ownerless," object.
One remembering, forgetting,
brief example: the conception of
and recollection as Mneme
and Exphoresis (Semon, E. Bleuler,
among others). Here, memory and recollection are conceived
purely as brain functions, as "processes in the brain." As opposed
to this, however, it is not hard to show that "the brain," hke the
organism itself, can still only be my, your, or his brain in its "real-
ity." In other words, the mnemonic "brain-function" can be un-
derstood only within the perspective of my Daseiifs power to
be-in-the-world as retentive, forgetful, and recollective. This
means, in short, that memory cannot be understood solely within
physiology. It means, rather, that retention as well as forgetting
involves a retreat by the Dasein to its bodilv existence and that
recollection means a return of the Dasein from its involvement "in
the body" to its psychic existence.'^
The degree to which both modes of human being are interre-
lated through their "alliance," through what Plato termed koi-
nonia, was recently well shown by Wilhelm Szilazi in his Heideg-
gerian interpretation of Plato's Fhilebus.^ There we find quite
clearly stated that the "elements" of the Dasein's power of being
stem from the totality of ontological potentialities (the All), but
that corporeahty only becomes body I'W the koinonia that links
"the soul" with that which is corporeal.* Equally clearly drawn is
the way in which the Dasein "distances" itself from its bodily in-
volvement, its thrownness, in order first to be fully pee as "spirit."
Wherever one leaves out the koinonia of the Dasein's ontological
potentialities and their gradations —which Aristotle characterized
as syntheton — then an understanding of man is unattainable. For
then, instead of the facticitv of the Dasein, which, though it is an
inner-wordly being, diff'ers basically from the factuality of the
neutrally on-hand (the Vorhanden), in place of this facticity, the
"universal riddle" of the psychophysical problem rears its head.
Turning now to the concept of disease in psvchiatry, we must
consider Paul Hiiberlin's excellent essay "The Object of Psychia-
• Thus Haberlin (see below) makes no bones about saying that the isolated
body ("body without soul") does not exist.
I216I
try." ^ On the basis of anthropology,^" Haberhn comes to the con-

clusion that the pathological character of mental diseases is somat-
ically, rather than psychologically, patterned, and that only the so-
called neuroses are really psychic diseases and only they should
really be called psychoses. The extent to which this view ap-
proaches the state of affairs in psychiatry is the extent to which it
presupposes a koinonia of mind and body that is of a different kind

than that which we ourselves are presenting here. Haberlin under-
stands the body as the image of the mind, and he characterizes man
as a "mental nation" governed with relative success by its founder,
the mind. These two types of disease are distinguished, according
to Haberlin, in that in one case the mind is "at odds" with itself
while in the other case (what is usually called mental disease), it is
primarily the central —
organization of the body that is disturbed.
Both kinds of disease necessarily express themselves mentally and
physically. In the first case, that of the so-called neuroses, the mind
cannot uniformly carry out its functions, among which is the func-
tion of governing the body, and we therefore, to a greater or lesser
extent, find somatic consequences in neurosis. But in the case of
the so-called psychoses, the mind, in turn, suffers from the disturb-
ance in the organism because this disturbance hinders its govern-
ance of the body and, in its receptive aspect, presents the mind
with image of the world so that it, the mind, reacts ab-
a distorted
normally. Thus, in both cases, the normal relation between body
and mind {koinonia) is disturbed. Every disease affects both sides,
regardless of where the primary conditioning factors lie.
And ive too, from the perspective of Heidegger's analytic of
existence, must conceive of both mental disease (Haberlin's soma-
tosis) and neurosis (Haberlin's psychosis) as a disturbance of koi-
nonia, of the functional unity of the Dasein's ontological potential-
ities. On this basis it is, for example, understandable that the mental
disease called melancholia can be conceived as a disturbance of the
koinonia between the bodily and mental being of the Dasein, which
manifests itself on the one hand as a "vegetative" disturbance of the
organism, and on the other hand as an "isolated," heightened, and
distorted form of the finite Dasein's inherent guilt. It is not surpris-
ing, therefore, that melancholia can arise because of family trag-
edy, loss of power, or concrete guilt on the one hand, or on the
other hand, in connection with intestinal diseases or even "for no
[217]
reason at all." Nor is it surprising, then, that we can "cure" the

melancholic with electroshock, or calm him with opium, or com-
fort him with assurances about his recovery and thus spur him on
toward a steadfast endurance of his suffering. In each instance, we
seek to restore the koinojiia of body and mind. That in this case
success is easier when the patient is treated from the "physical"
side only indicates the nature of the melancholic form of existence
that involves the dominant power of thrownness as already-being-
in-the- world (mood), i.e., pastness (Gewesenheit) over existence
as being-in-advance-of-itself in the future. It in no way argues
against the notion that the mental illness known as melancholia in-
volves the Dasein as a whole. The same, in mm, is true of the
"neuroses." No matter how well psychopathology may understand
neurosis (in strictly Freudian terms) as "psychic conflict," from
the point of view of existential analysis, the neuroses must not
merely be understood within the perspective of existence. That hu-
man beings ca?i become "neurotic" at all is also a sign of the
thrownness of the Dasein and a sign of its potentiality of fallenness
— a sign, in short, of its finitude, its transcendental limitedness or
unfreedom.
Only he who scorns these limits, who — in Kierkegaard's terms
— is at odds with the fundamental conditions of existence, can be-
come "neurotic," whereas only he who "knows" of the unfreedom
of finite human existence and who obtains "power" over his exist-
ence within this very powerlessness is unneurotic or "free." The
sole task of "psychotherapy" lies in assisting man toward this
"power." It is only the ways to this goal that are various.
Naturally, the philosophical analytic of existence neither will
nor can intrude upon psychiatry's conception of reahty, nor doubt
its empirically established "psycho-physical" connections. How-
ever, what it can do and what it seeks to do is simply to show that
what we have cited as psychiatry's dual reality-conception owes its
power and meaning to its being limited to particular scientific
world-designs and not the being of those beings that it thematizes.
All those issues, therefore, that extend beyond the field of this
"thematization," i.e., questions as to human freedom, "time and
space," relation of "mind and matter," questions of philosophy, art,
religion, questions as to the nature of genius, etc. —such questions

are not to be answered by the science of psychiatry.
[2.8]
A word, in conclusion, about the psychiatric problem of the

unconscious. While psychoanalysis, as we know, interprets the un-
conscious from the perspective of consciousness,* it is clear that a
doctrine that does not proceed from the intentionality of con-
sciousness, but that, rather, shows how this intentionality is
grounded in the temporality of human existence, must interpret the

difference between consciousness and unconsciousness temporally
and existentially. The point of departure for this interpretation
cannot, therefore, be consciousness. It can, instead, only be the
"unconscious," the thrownness and determinateness of the Dasein.
A closer examination of this issue would, however, require a sepa-
rate paper.
From the perspective of psychiatry's transcendental under-
standing of itself as a science —and only from that perspective—we
may now interpret the being of the psychiatrist. t Those whose
concern is man's physical health know that they must be not only
"medical men," but also physicians. To the extent that diagnostic
judgment is rooted not in observations of the patient's organism,
but in the "coming to an understanding" with him as a human be-
ing, as one who also exists humanly — to that extent what is essen-
tially involved is not just the attitude of the "medical man" toward
his scientific object. What is involved is his relation^^ to the patient,
a relation rooted equally in "care" and love. It is of the essence of
being a psychiatrist, therefore, that he reaches beyond all factual
knowledge and the abilities that go with it, and that he reaches be-
yond scientific knowledge found in the fields of psychology, psy-
chopathology, and psychotherapy. This swinging beyond or tran-
scending the factuality, objectivity, and reality-orientation of
psychiatry can be understood only from the point of view of tran-
scendence itself as being-in-the-world and being-beyond-the-
world.^^
• Whereby there obtains the disproportion between the high methodological

esteem given to consciousness —
indeed, in this respect the best thing that can be
said of the workings of the unconscious is that it approaches consciousness or even
—
excels it and low esteem accorded its material, psychological significance.
t It goes without saying that what holds true for the physician in general is
also true of the psychiatrist, namely: "For him health is the principle of his pro-
fession, and wherever he disregards its recognized limits, he makes himself guilty
at every step." See the sharp and unambiguous treatment of "Das Prinzip des
arztlichen Berufs" by Paul Alatussek in Festschrift ftir Kttrt Schneider (Verlag
Scherer, 1947).
[219]
Not only at the initial interview or examination, but also during

the course of the whole treatment, being a psychiatrist goes be-
yond being a medical man (in the sense of knowing and mastering
the field of medicine). The being of a psychiatrist I mean, of —
course, a psychiatrist, as such, "good" psy-
and not what is called a
chiatrist — no whole, and thus
involves, therefore, the insight that
no "whole man" can be "grasped" with the methods of science.
Now, if the psychiatrist is oriented toward encounter and mutual
understanding with his fellow man and is oriented toward under-
standing human beings in their totality, in the koinonia of their
ontological potentialities and the koinoma of this totality with
more universal ontological potentialities, then the being of the psy-
chiatrist reaches beyond the purely "theoretical" ontological po-
tentiaHties of man and is
directed toward transcendence itself.
It follows from this that the psychiatrist in his being summons
and lays claim to the whole man. Whereas in other branches of sci-
ence it may, to a greater or lesser extent, be possible to separate
one's vocation and existence and, so to speak, find one's "existential
center of gravity" in a hobby or in some other scientific activity,
or in philosophy, a rehgion, or art, it is not so in psychiatry. In a cer-
tain sense being a psychiatrist also claims the existence of the psy-
chiatrist. For where meeting and mutual understanding furnish the
grounds and basis for everything that can be viewed as symptoms

or even as disease and health per se, and where, therefore, there can
be nothing human upon which in a psychiatric sense judgment —
cannot be passed, then hobby, science, philosophy, and religion art,
must be capable of being projected and understood from the per-

spective of personal existence as ontological potentialities and con-
ceptual projects. Where this is not the case — as the history of psy-
chiatry shows —every psychiatric judgment actually is deprived of
a solid basis. Consequently, the being of the psychiatrist cannot be
understood without understanding transcendence as "the freedom
to establish a ground."
This "freedom" now permits us to understand that the scien-
tific concerns and necessities (basic concepts, research methods) of
psychiatry must stand not in a rigid, but in a flexible and vital rela-
tion to the Dasein as bcing-in-the-world and being-beyond-the-
world. It also permits us to understand why scientific progress in
psychiatry is especially bound up with the interaction between re-
[220]
Heidegger^s Analytic of Existence and Its Meaning for Psychiatry
search into matters of fact and transcendental reflection upon its
nature as science.
Notes
[i. SeeRoUo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger (eds.), Existence
(New York, 1958), pp. 191-213.]
2. See the (expanded) lecture of W. Szilasi (January 10, 1945) in Wissenschaft
als Philosophie (Zurich, New York, 1945).
3. See Richard Honigswald, "Philosophie and Psychiatrie," Archiv. f. Psychiatrie
u. Nervenkrankheiten, Vol. 87, No. 5 (1929), and Binswanger, Uber die
manische Lebensform," Ausg. Vort. u. Aufs., Vol. II.
4. See Szilasi, op. cit.
5. Grundfomien und Erkenntnis menschlischen Daseins.
6. See my "Ober die manische Lebensform," and above all the excellent treat-
ment by Rene Le Senne of "La dialectique de naturalisation" in Obstacle et
Valeitr. See further, T. Haering, Philosophie der Natttrwissenschaft (1923).
7. See "Ober Psychotheiapie."
8. W. Szilasi, Macht und Ohrrmacht des Geistes.
9. P. Haberlin, in Schiveiz. Archiv. f. Psych, u. Neur., Vol. 60.
10. Der Mensch, eine philosophische Anthropologie (Ziirich, 1941).
1 . See Grundforfnen, Part II.
12. lind.
[221]
Dream and Existence
{ When we hope or expectation and what

are in a state of deeply felt
we have hoped for proves illusqry, then the worldin one stroke —
— becomes radically "diiferent,"JWe are completely uprooted, and
we lose our footing in the world. When this happens we say later
after we have regained our equilibrium —
that it was "as though we
had fallen from the clouds." * With such words we clothe our ex-
perience of a great disappointment in a poetic simile that arises
not from the imagination of any one particular poet, but out of
language itself. In this respect language is every man's spiritual
root. For it is language that "envisions and thinks" for all of us be-
fore any one individual brings it to the ser\dce of his own creative
and intellectual powers. But, now, what of this "poetic simile"? Is
it a matter simply of an analogy in the logical sense, or a pictorial
metaphor in the poetic sense? To think either is utterly to bypass

an understanding of the i mier nature ofôetic similes. For this na-
ture lies, in fact, behind that to which logic and contemporary
[• translator's NOTE: The idiom in German
is aus alien Hinmieln fallen (to be
bitterly disappointed or utterly disillusioned)and wie vo7n Hiintnel geâlien sein

(to be astounded). English contains many similar linkages between falling and dis-
appointment, such as, "The ground gave way beneath my feet," "I came down to
earth with a thud," and "The rug was pulled out from under me." The interesting
— —
but for Binswangcr's point unessential difference berween the rvvo idioms is
that the German locates in the sky any person with deeply felt hopes, while the
English rcser\es this place for a person with cxhorbitant or unrealistic hopes. The
primary point here, however, concerns the falling itself, which is expressed by the
idioms of both languages. The phrase "to fall from the clouds," which I have used
here, should not, therefore, be understood as implying anything about the reason-
ableness of the shattered hopes.]
Dream and Existence
theories of poetic expression refer.(The nature of poetic similes lies
in the deepest roots of our existence where the vital forms and con-
tents of our mind are still bound together^ When, in a bitter disap-
pointment, "we fall from the clouds," then we fall we actuaUy —

fa^ Such falling is neither purely of the body nor something meta-
phorically derived from physical falling. Our harmonious relation-
ship with the world and the men about us suddenly suffers a stag-
gering blow, stemming from the nature of bitter disappointment
and the shock that goes with it. In such a moment our existence ac-
tually suffers, is torn from its position in the world and thrown
upon its own resources. Until we can regain our equilibrium in the
world, our whole existence moves within the meaning matrix of
stumbling, sinking, and falling. If we call this general meaning
matrix the "form," and the bitter disappointment the "content,"
we can see that in this case form and content are one.
There are those who do not concern themselves with man as a
whole, but see only one aspect of him, as biolo^sj s do when they
view man as no more than a living organism( Such observers will
say that faUing —the high-low vector— is rooted purely in the liv-
ing structure of the organism) For, they will point out, bitter dis-
appointment is accompanied by a deficiency of muscle tone and
tension in the striated muscles so that we are apt to swoon or sink.
Language, they will say, is only a reflection of this purely physical
circumstance. According to this view, our falling from the clouds
or the giving way of ground beneath our feet is a purely analogical
or metaphorical transference from the sphere of the body to that
of the mind, and within the latter it is simply a picturesque form of
expression without genuine content or substance, a mere fagon de
parler.
Klages' t heory of expressi on goes^deeper. But with all his em-
phasis on the unity of soul and bod)\his theory is still based on the
presupposition that "the psychic" manifests itself in particular
spatio-temporal forms that accord with our psychological organi-
zation?) For example, a weakly defined psyche manifests itself in
weak nandwriting, arrogance in our carrying our heads high. And

because the psyche manifests itself in such forms, language makes
use of expressions drawn from the spatial-sensory sphere to indi-
cate psychic characteristics and processes. This view is not uncon-
vincing. But it nevertheless presupposes agreement with Klages'
[223]
Selected Papers of Lxn)wiG Binswanger
underlying theory of expression, which treats the body as the man-

ifestation of the soul and the soul, for its part, as a Uving body. I, for
one, am far from sharing these theoretical assumptions.
My views are in line with Husserl and Heidegger's doctrine of
meaning, which Lowith first saw as applicable to the particular
problem of language that concerns us here. When, for example, we
speak of a high and a low tower, a high and a low tone, high and
low morals, high and low spirits, what is involved is not a Unguistic
carrying over from one existential sphere to the others, but, rather,
a ge neral meaning jnatrix in which all particular regional spheres
have an equal "share," i.e., which contains within it these same par-
ticular, specfic meanings (spatial, acoustic, spiritual, psychic, etc.).
Sinking or falling thus represent a general meaning matrix, a vector
meaning pointing from above to below, which contains a particu-
lar existential significance for "our" Dasein, according to the
"ontological existential" of, say, the extending and turning out-
wards of spatiahty, the being-thrown of mood {Stiinmung) or the ,
interpretation of com-prehension {Verstehen). In bitter disap-

pointment, the ground gives way under us or we fall from the
clouds not because disappointment or shock represent, as Wundt
said, an "asthenic affect" that —
in the form of physical staggering,
—
stumbUng, or falling reveals itself as a threat to the upright bodily
posture and thus serves as a real physical model for poetically im-
aginative language. It is, rather, that [language of itself, in this
simile, grasps hold of a particular element lying deep within man's
ontological structure —namely, the ability to be directed from
above to below —and then designates this element as fallingJ Appeal
to asthenic affect and its bodily expression need not be made. What
does need to be explained is why disappointment, as such, has an
asthenic character; and the answer is that in disappoinmient our
whole existence no longer stands upon "firm," but upon "weak"
legs —
and, indeed, no longer even stands. For because its harmony
with the world has been rent, the ground beneath its feet has been
taken away, leaving it suspended and hovering. Such existential
hovering need not necessarily assume a downward direction; it can
also signify liberation and the possibility of ascending. But if the
disappointment persists as disappointment, then our hovering passes
into tottering, sinking, falling. Language the poetic imaginatio n,
,
[224]
Dream and Existence
and:;;;âbovg_allr^the dreanij^draw from this basic ontological struc-
tii£e,
Though our way of thinking is not very popular among psy-

chologists and becoming progressively more
psychiatrists, it is
clearly delineated in the philosophical movement to which I have

just referred. From our point of view, the most questionable of the
many questionable problems that have puzzled our age is that of
the relation between body and soul. We
do not essay a solution to
this problem, but, rather — by attempting to remove it from its
hoary metaphysical and religious rut, by doing away with such

formulations as interaction, parallelism, and identity of mind and
body —we wish to show
has been erroneously conceptual-
that it
ized. Only then can the way

open for the treatment of such in-
lie
dividual problems of anthropology as that which concerns us here.

That disappointment is expressed in phrases such as "falling
from the clouds" is also, of course, based on further essential con-
nections that are grasped by language, for example, our outlook is
said to be "clouded" by passionate hopes, wishes, and expectations,
or we say, when we are happy, that it is like "being in heaven." But
faUing itself and, of course, its opposite, rising, are nor themselves
derivable from anything else. Here we strike bottom ontologically.
This same rising and falling is to be found in all religious, myth-
ical, and poetic images of the ascension of the spirit and the earthly
weight or pull of the body. Thus, to cite one example, Schiller's

wondrous image of the transfiguration of Heracles:
Joyous in the strange, new state of hovering.
He flows upward, and the heavy, dreamlike image

Of earthly life sinks and sinks and sinks.
[Froh des neuen, ungewohnten Schwebens,
Fliesst er aufwarts, und des Erdenlebens
Schweres Traumbild sinkt und sinkt und sinkt.]
But if we wish to say who, in fact, this ive is who happily as-
cends or unhappily falls, then we find ourselves somewhat embar-

rassed for an answer. If we are told that this ive simply means nve
human beings and that any further questions are redundant, then it
must be replied that it is precisely here where all scientific ques-
tioning should begin; for the question as to who "we human be-
[225]
Selected Papers of Lxhjwig Binswanger
ings" actually are has never received less of an answer than it has in
our age, and today we stand again at the threshold of new queries
with respect to this we. Here, too, the answer has been given by
poetry, myth, and dream rather than by science and philosophy.
They, at least, have known one thing: that this ive, the existential
subject, in no way lies openly revealed, but that it loves to conceal
itself "in a thousand forms." In addition, poetry, myth, and dream
have always known that this subject must on no account be iden-
tified with the individual body in its outward form. With respect to
existential rising and falhng, for example, poets have always known
that it is equally vaUd to express the subject, the existential "who,"
by either our bodily form (or by a part or member of this form),
or through any property belonging to it or anything that justifies
our existence in the world, to the extent that it can serve somehow
to express this rising and falling. The question as to the who of our
existence cannot be answered by reference to a sensory perception
of the isolated form, which remains unessential, but only by refer-
ence to something that can serve as the subject of the particular
structural moment (in this case the moment of rising and falling),
and this may well be, in its sensory aspect, an alien,
subject external
subject. It is, nevertheless, I who remain the primary subject of
that which rises and falls. The truth value and much of the effect
on us of the presentation of the existential subject in myth, reli-
gion, and poetry is based on these correct ontological insights.
Despairing unto death and, in his despair, enraged with himself,
Morike's Painter Nolten, "very unexpectedly was shamingly re-
proached by one whom he dearly respected." At this he suddenly
experienced "the most cruel shock" that a person can experience.
Reaching this point, the writer breaks off the direct description
of his hero's mental state and turns directly to the reader, who then
hears himself addressed in the following way: "[In such a state] it
is deathly still within you, you see your own pain like a boldly
soaring bird of prey stricken by a thunderbolt and now slowly fall-

ing from the sky and sinking, half-dead, at your feet." Here the
poet speaks, rather than language as such, though at the same time
he is drawing upon an essential tendency in language falHng in — —
the same way that he is "being used" by correspondingly essential
tendencies of human existence. It is just for this reason that the
[226]
Dream and Existence
simile instantly "reaches" the reader and affects him so that he no

longer notices it as a simile, but, rather, straight away pricks up his
ear convinced that: "It is I who am involved, it is I who am [or,

what comes to the same thing, I who could be] the mortally
stricken bird of prey."
Here, now, we find ourselves at t he source of drearn s. Indeed,
all that we have said up to this point applies word for word to the
dream that, for its part, is nothing other than a particular mode of ,
human existence in general. ^

In the above simile, my own pain — that is, something in me, a
"part" of me —has become a wounded bird of prey. With this there
begins the dramatizing personification that we know also as the
dream's principle means of representation. Now "I" no longer fall
from the clouds as an individual alone in my pain. It is, rather, my

pain itself that falls at my feet as a second dramatis persona. This is
a most outspoken expression of my ability, under certain circum-

stances, to keep my "physical" feet on the ground even as I fall and
introspectively observe my own falling.
It is true of both ancient and modern literature, and true of
dreams and myths of all periods and peoples: again and again the
eagle or the falcon, the kite or the hawk, personify our existence as
rising or longing to rise and as falling.This merely indicates how
essential to human it is to determine itself as rising or fall-
existence
ing. This tendency is, of course, not to be confused with
essential
the conscious, purposeful wish to rise, or the conscious fear of fall-
ing. These are already mirrorings or reflections in consciousness of
that basic tendency. It is precisely this unreflected, or in psycho- —
analytic language —unconscious factor that, in the soaring existence
of the bird of prey, strikes such a sympathetic note within us.
Innate in each of us
Is that rising in the heart
When the lark, lost in skyey space above us,
Gives forth his pealing song;

When above the jagged trees
The eagle hovers, his wings outspread.
And when above the flatness of the earth and seas
The crane compels himself toward home.
[227]
[Doch ist es jedem eingeboren

Dass sein Gefiihl hinauf und vorwarts dringt,
Wenn iiber uns, im blauen Raum verloren,
Ihr schmettemd Lied die Lerche singt;
Wenn iiber schroff en Fichtenhohen

Der Adler ausgebreitet schwebt,
Und iiber Flachen, iiber Seen
Der ELranich nach der Heimat strebt.]
Because of this "innateness," all similes involving eagles and

birds —like all existential expressions —are not merely formally,
but substantially illuminating. In another example from poetry,
Morike uses the image of an eagle to represent the happiness of love
— unreflective, soaring, and fearful of falling:
Deep in the boundless blue the eagle eyes

The sunshine's molten gold with level sight,
Nor is he fool enough to curb his flight
Because he fears his head may hit the sides.
So, like the eagle, should not Love be bold?

But yet she fears, and finds her happiness
In hazards ever new and ever sweet.
[trans, by Cruickshank and Cunninghaml
It is well-known that in dreams flying and falling often are

manifested by the hovering and sinking of our own
bodies. These
dreams of flying and falling are sometimes thought to be connected
with the physical condition, especially breathing, in which case we
are dealing with so-called body-stimuli dreams, sometimes with
erotic moods or purely sexual wishes. Both are possible and we do
not wish to dispute either assumption, since in our case it is a matter
of uncovering an a priori structure of which the body-stimuU (and
body schema in general) as well as the erotic-sexual themes are spe-
cial,secondary contents. In these rvvo instances, it is necessary to
find certain motives in the manifest and inner Ufe history of the
patient in order to understand why at this particular moment this
particular "content" comes to be expressed —
why, for example, the
dreamer at this particular time pays attention to his breathing or
why, at this particular time, he is disposed to erotic wishes or fears,
etc. Only then can such a dream be understood psychologically. If
[228]
Dream and Existence
the wish or fear further clothesitself in a second and third person
(or becomes a drama among animals), then a psychological under-

standing demands, funher, the most minute efforts to translate
these figures back into their individual psychic urges. I should
like here merely to cite a dream that is relatively simple, but
thoroughly uniform in its representation of thoughts of death and
love. It was dreamed by one of my patients during her menstrual
period.
Right before my eyes a bird of prey attacked a white pigeon,

wounded it in the head and carried it off into the air. I pursued the
creature with shouts and clapping of the hands. After a long chase
I succeeded in chasing the bird of prey from the pigeon. I lifted
it from the ground and to my great sorrow found it was already

dead.
In the example taken from Morike's Fainter Nolten, existential

rising and faUing found its pictorial content in the image of a bird
of prey struck by a bolt of lightning. What we have here, on the
other hand, is a struggle between two creatures in which one rep-
resents the aspect of victorious soaring and the other of defeated
falling. And, as in the Nolten example, the person stricken —
by the pains of a shocking disappointment — sees the pigeon lying
dead upon the ground. In interpreting the dream it makes abso-
lutely no difference whether the drama being played in the deadly
silence of the soul is acted by the dreamer's own person or by any
combination of the dreamer's own person and derivative personae.
Thetheme evinced in sl eepby the Dasein—-that is, the "content"
of jhe^drama —
is the important and decisive factor. Disappointment
and Ufe in descent is quite often expressed by the image of a bird of

prey transformed, after its death, into some worthless thing, or
plucked clean and cast away. The following two dreams of Gott-
fried Keller illustrate this:
First dream:
January lo, 1948
Last night I found myself in Glattfelden. The Glatt flowed shim-
meringly and joyously by the house, but I saw it flowing in the
distance as it really does. We stood by an open window, looking
out upon the meadows. There, a mighty eagle flew back and forth
through the ravine. As it flew toward the slope and settled upon a
[229]
jagged pine, my heart began to pound strangely. I think I was

moved by joy at seeing for the first time an eagle in free flight.
Then it flew close by our window and we made a point of no-
ticing that it bore a crown upon its head and that its pinions and
feathers were sharply and marvelously scalloped, as they are upon
—
coats of arms. We sprang my Oheim and I to our rifles on the —
wall and posted ourselves behind the door. The giant bird came
right in through the window and nearly filled the whole room
with the breadth of his wings. We fired and upon the floor lay
not an eagle, but pieces of black paper piled up in a heap. This
vexed us considerably.
Second dream:
December 3
Last night I dreamed of a kite. I was looking from the windows of
a house; out front were the neighbors with their children. There,
coming toward us, flew an enormous, wondrously beautiful kite.
Actually, it merely glided, for its wings were tightly closed and
it seemed sick and emaciated by hunger, in that it sank lower and
lower and could raise itself only with great effort —but never as
high as was before it began

it to sink. The neighbors and their
children shouted, made a lot of noise, and impatiently began hurl-
it away. It saw me and
ing their caps at the bird in order to chase
seemed — in upward and downward movements to want to
its —
come near me. At that I hastened to the kitchen to get some food
for it. I finally found some and came hurrying back to the win-
dow. It was already lying dead upon the ground and was in the
hands of a vicious little boy who ripped the magnificent feathers
from the wings and threw them aside, and finally, tired of this,
hurled the bird upon a dungheap. The neighbors, who had felled
the bird with a stone, had, in the meantime, dispersed and gone
about their business.
This dream made me very sad.
If we —
dreams which, in any case, their
feel ourselves into these
aesthetic charm —
do it is possible for us to sense the
invites us to
pulse of existence, its systole and diastole, its expansion and depres-
sion, its ascension and sinldng. Each of these phases seems to pre-
sent a dual expression: the image and the emotional response to the
[230]
Dream and Existence
image; the image of the eagle in its soaring freedom and the joy in
contemplating it; the image of the pieces of black paper and the dis-
tress thatgoes with it; the dead, plucked kite and the accompanying
sadness. But basically, the joyous image and the enjoyment of it,
the sad image and the accompanying sadness are one namely, an —
expression of one and the same ascending or descending cychcal
phase. In this respect, toofwhat is decisive is the theme supplied by
the Dasein in each such pnase. Whether the Dasein experiences it-
self more strongly in the emotive content of the image itself or in

the apparent reactive affect is, we shall see, of secondary (i.e.,
as
clinical-diagnostic) significance. By steepin g oneself in the manifest
content o f the dream —which, since Freud's epoch-making postu-
lateconcerning the reconstruction of latent dream thoughts, has
receded all too far into the background one learns^ the proper —
evalua tion of t he primal and strict interdependence of feeling and
image, of mood [Gestimmtsein] and pictorial realization. And
what is true of the brief cycles whose thematic reflection we can
observe in the image and mood of the dreamer, is, of course, also
true of the larger and deeper rhythms of normal and pathologically
exalted and depressive "discords.'^ -v
We may, however, point out in passing that the happy upward |
cycles of life can be realized other than in images of rising, and that
the same holds true mutatis mutandis for the unhappy downward 1
cycles of life. Two examples will make this clear. -^
Gottfried Keller's second dream has an especially charming

and, for us, interesting continuation. After the words, "This dream
made me very sad," he continues:
. . . however I was very pleased when a young maiden came and

offered to sell me a large wreath of carnations. It rather puzzled
me that carnations were still to be found in December and I began
bargaining with her. She wanted three shillings. But I had only
two shillings in my pockets and was greatly embarrassed. I asked
her to give me two shillings' worth, or as many as my champagne
glass — in which I usually kept flowers —would hold. Then she
said, "Look, they do fit," and carefully put one carnation after
the other into the slender, shining glass. I watched and began to
feel that sense of well-being which always comes when we watch

someone perform delicate work with ease and grace. But as she
[231]
put the last carnation in place I grew anxious again. The girl then
looked sweetly and subtly at me and said, "Well, look! There
weren'tas many as I thought and they cost only two shillings."
They were not quite real, these carnations they were — of a flam-
ing red hue and their scent was extraordinarily pleasant and intense.
Thus, after the "wondrously beautiful kite" is shorn of its

plumage by the "vicious little boy," and after the rude crowds have
heedlessly left the dead bird lying upon a dungheap, there burgeons
forth a new wave bearing no longer the image of rising, but the
image of intensely colored and fragrant flowers, a sweet, delight-
fully roguish girl, a brilliant, slender champagne glass all themati- —
cally linked to a happy scene that, despite threats of embarrassment
and anxiety, continues to be happy to the end. Here the wave of
ascension manifests itself through an orchestration of strongly sen-
suous and erotic stimuh and, at the same time, through the emo-
tions that correspond to the theme of the scenic image.
At other times the sudden change of a victoriously happy vital
current into one that is fraught with anxiety is expressed by the
fading or disappearance of brilliantly lit colors and by the obscur-
ing of light and vision in general —
as is so .well illustrated by
Goethe's dream of pheasants in The Italian Journey
Since I now feel somewhat oppressed by an overwhelming flood

of good and desirable thoughts, I cannot help reminding my
friends of a dream which I had about a year ago, which appeared
to me to be highly significant. I dreamed that I had been sailing
about in a little boat and had landed on a fertile and richly culti-
vated island, which I knew bred the most beautiful pheasants in

the world. I immediately started bargaining with the people of
the island for some of these birds, and they killed and brought
them to me in great numbers. They were pheasants indeed, but
since in dreams all things are generally changed and modified,
they seemed to have long, richly colored tails, like the loveliest
birds of paradise, and with eyes like those of the peacock. Bring-
ing them to me by scores, they arranged them in the boat so skill-
fully with the head inward, the long variegated feathers of the
tail hanging outward, as to form in the bright sunshine the most
glorious array conceivable, and so large as scarcely to leave room
enough in the bow and the stern for the rower and the steersman.
[232]
Dream and Existence
As made its way through the tranquil waters with this

the boat
load, named to myself the friends among whom I should like to
I
distribute these variegated treasures. At last, arriving in a spacious

harbor, I was almost lost among great and many-masted vessels,
so I mounted deck after deck in order to discover a place where
I might safely run my little boat ashore.
Such dreamy visions have a charm, for while they spring from
our inner self, they possess more or less of an analogy with the
rest of our lives and fortunes.
This dream took place and was written down about a year be-
fore Goethe set off for Italy. Its persistence and recurrence in the
dreamer's memory affords the psychologist a clear picture of the
lability and even the threat involved in Goethe's existence at the
time — a danger that, with a sure instinct, he overcame by fleeing to
new life of heart and mind.

Italy, to the south, to colors, sun, to
Let however, turn back to dreams of flying and floating. I

us,
should like to illustrate by means of an example that it is often

not starkly pictorial dreams that inspire psychiatric concern, but,
rather, those dreams whose pictorial content and dynamics retreat
before the presence of pure emotion. It is a sign of psychic health
when one's wishes and fears are predominantly objectified by the
use of dramatic images, out of which, as we have seen, emotional
content may then appear to arise. In the following "cosmic"
dream of one of our is so dominant that
patients, emotional content
even the exceedingly strong objectification, the image of the
cosmos or universe, no longer suffices to bind it pictorially. Here
the patient is not a bystander of the drama, detached from his own
body, nor can he completely immerse himself in the drama:
I found myself in a wondrously different world, in a great ocean

where I floated formlessly. From afar I saw the earth and all the
stars and I felt tremendously free and light, together with an ex-
traordinary sense of power.
The patient himself characterized this dream as a dream of dy-

ing. This hovering without a form, this complete dissolution of his
own bodily structure (form), is not diagnostically propitious. And
the contrast between the tremendous sense of power and the per-
sonal formlessness indicates that a deeper disturbance exists in the
[233I
patient's psychic make-upMt is no longer part of the dream but

part of the patient's psychosis when he speaks of the dream as a
turning point in his hfe and finds its emotional content so fascinat-
ing that he reverts to it in his daydreams to the extent that he actu-
ally tries to remove himself from lifeT^What Jeremias Gotthelf
—
once said of his dream "I felt the healing power of night envelop
me," and "Are not dreams also benign gifts of God and must we
not apply them to our spiritual growth?" cannot be related to —
our dreamer. How different in style and structure is a dream such
as that of our patient from this — also cosmic— dream of flying by
Jean Paul:
Sometimes it would happen that, blessedly happy and exalted in

mind and body, I would fly straight up into the deep blue starry
skies and sing to the vaulted heavens as I rose.
How different, too, are the wonderful, if somewhat stylized,

dreams of his homeland found in the fourth volume of Gottfried
Keller's Griinen Heinrich. Here the dreamer seems to float above a
multitude of wondrous natural forms so that what is below him
appears to be a subterranean sky, "save that it was a green sky with
stars of every possible color." Compared to this, our patient's ab-
stract cosmic phantasy can only make us shudder. And whereas
Keller anxiously saw his dreams as harbingers of a serious illness
and tried in every wayremove himself from their thrall, our pa-
to
tient lets himself become more and more captivated by the purely
subjective, aesthetic allure of his dream. In the dissolution into the
deep subjectivity of the dream's pure mood content, the meaning
of Ufe is our patient, something that he himself admits: "We
lost to
are in the world in order to discover the meaning of life. But life
has no meaning and therefore I seek to free myself from life so that
I may return to the primal force. I do not believe in a personal life
after death, but in a dissolving into the primal force." A complete
despair about the meaning of life has the same significance as man's
losing himself in pure subjectivity; indeed, the one is the reverse
side of the other, for the meaning of life is ever something trans-
subjective, something universal, "objective," and impersonal. But
we must add that, strictly speaking, as long as man is man there can
never be such a thing as a complete dissolution into pure subjectiv-
ity. Our patient's longing to return to the primal force also points
[^4]
Dream and Existence
to the desire for an objective grounding and stance. It is only that

in this case the striving is, to use a distinction of Bcrtholet's,
fulfilled purely dynamically, or even cosmic-dynamically, rather
than, say, theistic-personalistically. A thorough study of our pa-
tient's outer and inner life-history shows that this return to the
primal, cosmic force corresponds to a strongly erotic oedipal long-
ing, namely the anaclitic need to lean upon a beloved mother
(something that was clearly shown in the patient's youth and acted
out in reality). Here, then, a strongly subjective personalism
emerges from behind an apparently purely objective dynamism, a
personalism that again and again jeopardizes the patient's foothold
in the objective and impersonal.
II
The image of a bird of prey attacking a dove or some other animal

in order to tear at it or destroy it is an image known to us from
ancient times.(Modern man, however, must build his own personal
world, after making himself lord and master of his own life and
death; and the external world, ruled by material, economic, and
technical powers, can no longer offer him a foothold. Ancient
man, on the other hand, neither awake nor in dreams, knew of that
primal cosmic loneliness that we have just seen exemplified in our
young dreameipAncient man would not yet have understood the
profoundly wise saying of Jeremias Gotthelf: "Think how dark
the world would become if man sought to be his own sun!" The
man of antiquity lived in a cosmos that determined even his most
private, secret choices, awake or in dreams. For "what, in the mo-
ment of decision, appear to us as motives are, for the initiated, acts
of the gods. In them, and not in man's bottomless emotions, is to be
found the depth and primary ground of everything of great sig-
nificance which transpires in man." ^ It is not that we seek today to
take over for our own the completed forms of ancient Greece. But
we can, as does modern humanism, realize that the cultural history
of the Greeks involves the erection of a world of forms "in which
the natural laws of human nature unfold in all directions," and that
in penetrating this world, of forms what happens is not less than
"the self-understanding and self-development of spiritual man in
[235]
the basic structure of his being." ^ From this perspective we wish,

now, to pursue our particular problem.
When, in Penelope's dream (Odyssey 19), an eagle swoops
down upon the geese and breaks their necks with his crooked beak,
killing them all, neither poet nor reader thinks of this as represent-
ing subjective processes in the dreamer's psyche. The dream signi-
fies an external event, namely, Odysseus' slaying of the suitors.
(The same is true of a similar dream by Hecuba in Euripides' trag-
edy: a dream of a wolf attacking the hinds). These dreams, to be
sure, are artistic creations. But with the insight we have gained
from psychoanalysis, we can follow^ the famous example of Cicero
who, in writing of the prophecies of his brother Quintus (which
are constantly exempLi£ed by fictional dreams), puts these words
into his mouth: "Haec, etiam si ficta sunt a poeta, non absunt tamen
a consuetudine somnorium." [These things, even if they have been
made by the poet, are nevertheless not uncharacteristic of the usual
form of dreams."]
More often than in the dream itself, however, we find the im-
age of eagle and dove, eagle and goose, falcon and eagle, etc., used
to betoken the propitious or unfavorable answer given by an oracle
or seer about the prophetic meaning of a dream. Here, too, the
image refers to an external event, in accordance with the basic
Greek conviction that events of the world are coordinated and
predetermined in detail by Moira and the gods. (Cf. Heraclitus'
pithy saying: "Sun will not overstep his measures; otherwise the
Erinyes, ministers of Justice, will find him out.") In The Persians
of Aeschylus we find an example of just such an oracular pro-
nouncement consequent upon a dream. After Xerxes has departed
with intent to lay waste to the land of the lonians, Atossa, his
mother, dreams of two women, one dressed in Persian garb and
the other in Dorian attire. They fall to feuding, and Xerxes yokes
them both to his chariot. The one bears herself proudly, the other
struggles and rends asunder the harness of the car. Xerxes is hurled
to the ground and his father Darius stands by his side commiserat-
ing him. But Xerxes, when he beholds Darius, rends his garments
about his limbs. Deeply disturbed by this and similar dreams,
Atossa draws nigh unto an altar with incense in her hand, intending
to make oblation of a sacrificial cake unto the divinities that avert
evil.
[236]
Dream and Existence
But I saw an eagle fleeing for safety to the altar of Phoebus — and
from terror, my friends, I stood reft of speech. And thereupon I
spied a falcon rushing at full speed with outstretched pinions and

with his talons plucking at the eagle's head; while it did naught but
cower and yield its body to his foe.
[Smyth translation, V. 191 -196.]
This image is not viewed as an image stemming either from a

dream or the external world. This indicates the extent to which the
Greek mind effaced the boundarie s between the various spaces of
e xperience, external world, and cult. This is due to the fact that for
the Greeks the subject-source of the dream image, the subject of
cosmic events, and the subject of the cultist pronouncement are
one and the same: the godhead, Zeus, or his direct charges. Here,
then, dream image (the image of the two women harnessed to the
chariot, their quarrelling, and Xerxes' fall), the external event (fal-
con and eagle), and cultist significance form an inseparable unity.
Where do we hear any talk of an individual subject and where,
then, is the possibility of the ontological grounding of that individ-
ual? And who
can say here whether truth is to be sought in the in-
wardness of subjectivity or in the outwardness of objectivity? For
here all "inner" is "outer," just as all outer is inner. It is thus of no
consequence whether an oracular event follo'ws upon a dream or
—
bears no connection with it just as often a dream alone, without
the oracular, can express the will of the godhead.
In The Odyssey, we find two omens of similar form occurring
without being preceded by dreams:
Even as he [Telemachus] spoke, a bird flew by on the right, an

eagle, bearing in his talons a great white goose, a tame fowl from
the yard, and men and women followed shouting. But the eagle
drew near to them, and darted off to the right in front of the
horses; and they were glad as they saw it, and the hearts in the
breasts of all were cheered.
From this omen Helen interprets the future to Telemachus: even

as this eagle snatched up the goose that was bred in the house, even
so shall Odysseus return to his home and take vengeance.
In the same book (XV) of The Odyssey, we find an image
quite similar to that which occurred in the dream cited previously:
1^37]
Even as he [Telemachus] spoke, a bird flew upon the right, a
hawk, the swift messenger of Apollo. In his talons he held a dove,

and was plucking her and shedding the feathers down on the
ground midway between the ship and Telemachus himself.
[Murray translation]
This bird, too, flying forth upon the right, is sent by the gods to
signify good fortune.
We thus find no mention of rising and falling in the sense of the
life-flow of a particular individual. It is, rather, the kind, the fam-
IL ily, linked as they;âre by a common, ^redetennined fate, that as-
cendsjn_p^ros£erity orîTIs^n misery. The individual, the species,

fateand the godHead are intertwined in one common space: x. It
is, therefore, even more significant and instructive that we find in
this existential space —

which difl"ers so markedly from our own
so clear a manifestation of the ontological structural element of
rising and f alHng.
In place of the Neoplatonic, Christian, and Romantic contrast
between inner and outer, we find in the early Greeks the opposi-
tion of night and day, darkness and light, earth and sun. Dreams
belong to the sphere of night and earth; they are themselves
demons, occupying their own particular region {Dei7tos in
Homer), and forming their own tribe (Phylon in Hesiod). Their
mother is night (Hesiod), who is also the mother of death and
sleep. Thus, the close connection between the demons of dreams
and the souls of the departed who imploringly or lamentingly ap-
—
pear in sleep a 7>iotif that appears in Aeschylus {Eimienides) and
—
Euripides {Hecuba), as well as in Homer acquires, in the hands
of these poets, a superb artistic form and a deep psychological and
aesthetic efl"ectiveness.
It is most dreams themselves belong com-
significant that while
pletely to the aspect of night in Greek existence, the cultist inter-
pretation of dreams, the oracle, was gradually withdrawn from the
sphere of influence of Gaia, the old godhead of earth (and closely
related to Night), and was ursurped by the new god, Phoebus
Apollo. The dream of Atossa and the omen of falcon and eagle are
not distinguished according to inner and outer, or subjective and
objective events, but, rather, with regard to the close at hand, con-
strictive, dark, damp, and obscure realm of night, and the realm of
[238]
Dream and Existence
the most awake of gods, the sun-god Apollo, who sees and aims so
accurately from afar.
We know, however, that along with this grandly uniform reli-
gious world-view of the Greeks there was also a place for sober,
empirical observation and for the scientific theory that rested upon
it. But above all, we know, too, of their philosophical, metaphysical
conception of the world as an organic structure of cosmic events
linked together from the most universal down to the most individ-
ual and apparently accidental. In his polemic against prophetic
dreams, Cicero cites these three conceptions as possibilities for ex-
plaining prophetic signs in dreams, and then proceeds to attack all
three possibilities and, with them, the whole notion of dream

—
prophecy with which we, today, concur. He cites (De divinat.
II, 60, 124) the possibility of inspiration by divine powers (divina
vis quaedam), by "conventia et conjunctio naturae, "quam vocant

(o-uîrd^fiai')," and by enduring and persistent observation {qua-
edam observatio constans atque diuturna) of the coincidence of

dream experiences with later actual events. The new element with
which he acquaints us is the doctrine of sympathy. This, however,
is a doctrine that we also find in Heraclitus, the Stoics (particularly
Poseidonius), and later, in a different form, in Plotinus, and again
in the important dream book of Synesius. It is the famous philo-
sophical doctrine of the One, which, wherever we may later en-
counter it, is bound to recall to us the spirit of ancient Greece.
There are various sub-forms of this doctrine: In Heraclitus (fol-
lowing K. Reinhardt's Kos7nos und Sympathie) what is involved is
a oneness of Being (in the sense of iv xai iraj*) and its parts, dis-
cord and harmony, or, as Poseidonius later formulates it, of "mat-
ter and spirit, nature and God, the accidental and the predestined."
From this we have to distinguish again the All-one or oneness (in
the sense of tv to vav)^ the magical union of the forces of draw-
ing- and calling-towards, of the open and the hidden, the cultist
and philosophical evocation, of the "flow from phenomenon to

phenomenon," such as we find even today in superstitition, and
particularly in dream superstitions of all societies. Whereas the reli-
gion and philosophy of the early Greeks recognized only a har-

monious order of cosmos and world, we find already in Poseido-
nius a purely dynamistic world- view: in place of the notion of order
we find the notion "of an explicative" (erkldrlich), natural, and yet
[239]
secret and mysterious force," a notion that is still reflected in much

of present-day scientific and philosophical theory. Among the
Greeks and the Romans, all this was mirrored in the interpretation
of dreams until, upon the coUapse of the old world, and as an un-
mistakable sign of that collapse, Petronius, the fine and free-spirited
confidante of Nero, scornfully explained that it was not the instit-
tutions and commands of the gods that sent man dreams from
above, but that every man made them himself: "Somnia quae
mentes Indent volitantibus umbris, non delubra deum, nee ab
aethere numina mittunt, sed sibi quisque facit." (Anth. lat. 65 1 R.)
Just as Lucretius (De Rerum Natura IV, 962-1029) before
him presented a highly realistic account of the relation between
dream experiences and daily activities, fears, wishes, and sexual de-
sires, so Petronius put his finger on the most important aspect of
modem dream theory: "sed sibi quisque facit! " Here, not only the
history of the problem of dreams, but history itself reveals the
caesura between the ancient and the modem: the hybris of individ-
uation, the all-powerful and godlike human individual rears his
head. Within_the context of this unnatural e l evatio n of man in con-
trast_tojdbe^l/ oltheJGreek-world_o£fora^ which the nat-
ural laws of man unfold in all directions"), we sho uld glanceâgain
at our£arriciilaiLproblem^:-<keam and existence.
Ill
Who isQuisque of Petronius? Can we really lay our hands on

this
dream or even simply on the act of dreaming?

the subject of the
The proponents of the Quisque-thtory of subjectivity forget that
they have grasped only half the truth. They forget that man steers
his carriage"where he wishes, but beneath the wheels there turns,
unnoticed, the globe upon which he moves." This holds as true for
the purely scientific-genetic conception of dreams as it does with
regard to the ethical significance of the dreams, the problem of
man's moral responsibiUty for his dreams. Freud's distinction be-
tween the Ego and the Id, Haberlin's distinction between the Ego
and the "universum," Jung's distinction between the individual and
the collective unconscious, Schleicrmachcr's distinction between
the individual's consciousness and that of the species, Augustine's
distinction between that which merely takes place in us and that
[240I
Dream and Existence
which takes place through us — all these are expressions of the dis-
tinction between the carriage and the globe upon which it moves.
There is, however, still another such distinction an important —
one — that has played a considerable role in the history of philoso-
phy, and has done so without anyone's recalling that it was origi-
nally connected with the distinction between dreaming and awake-

ness. I refer to the distinction between, on the one hand, image,
feeling, subjective opinion, "doxic form" (Plato, Husserl) in gen-
eral, and, on the other hand, mind, objectivity, and truth. It is this
distinction, again, that is the one drawn between the Quisque, the
individual, the isolated, the Hekastos of the Greeks, and the human-
divine community conceived of as mediated by Logos and mutual
understanding. But while for Petronius and in every epoch of en-
lightenment the Quisque stands as a completely indeterminate X
behind the dream he makes, here man
something more than sim-
is
ply a Quisque (though he is that, too, to the extent that he pro-

ceeds into the world of dreams, images, and feelings). Here, the
individual ceases to be a structure in a naive realistic metaphysics,
and individuality becomes a mode of human being, a type and way
—
of being human the mode, namely, of nonspiritual human exist-
ence. One associates this doctrine with the names to cite only a —
—
few of Heraclitus, Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger.
According to Hegel, the begirming of philosophy is to be dated
from the time of Heraclitus, the first in whom "the philosophical
idea is to be met in its speculative form." His great idea was the
shift from being to becoming, his great insight was that being and
nonbeing are false abstractions and that only becoming has truth.
Heraclitus thereby points to the immanence of the moment of
negativity that is, at the same time, the principle of vitality. Hegel
and Heraclitus also agree in their deprecation and even contempt
for everything individual and isolated, and for all interest in it. To
this extent, both find it "senseless" "to take conscious individuality
as a singular phenomenon of existence," for "what is contradictory
therein is that its essence is the universality of mind." (Hegel,
Phenom. of Mind)
In Part I, we have already explored individuality (the individ-
ual dreamer) with reference to the universal (though, to be sure,
only within a small existential segment), with reference, namely,
to the picture of the happy or unhappy, harmonious or unharmoni-
[241I
ous individual life and the dream image of the bird rising or falling
from the sky. The universal that concerned us there, the transin-
dividual image content, is not created by each individual, yet each
individual sees it in his dreams and is eitherdrawn to it or repelled
by it. The individual's images, his feelings, his mood belong to him
alone, he lives completely in his own world; and being completely
alone means, psychologicaly speaking, dreaming —whether or not
there is, at the time, a physiological state of sleep. This, indeed,
was Heraclitus' criterion for distinguishing dreaming from awaken-
"
ness. "Those," he says, who are awake have one and the âme
world in common ('^va xal Koivbv Koafiov)-^ in sleep each (TTekastos,
Singularis) returns to his own (world) (els Uiov airoaTpkcpeadaL),
Much haFbeenwritten concerning Heraclitus' contrast between
the communal (the Koinon or Xynon) and the singular, particu-
lar,and private (the Idion). Especially instructive, however, is the
relationship, in this regard, to Hegel especially in his History of —
Philosophy. After Anaxagoras, the expression for world, "cos-
mos," which was used by Heraclitus, signified not the (objective)
world, but the (subjective) state of unification (Xolvos) and dis-
persion ('iSios). For Heraclitus, what defines this unification or
dispersion is the "Logos," a word that sometimes must be trans-
lated as "word" or "discourse" and sometimes as "thought," "the-
ory," "deduction," "rational, lawful relation," etc. It thus refers
as much to understanding as it does, so Hegel says, to making
oneself understood (communication). Common to both is under-
standing in the sense of reflective thought (t6 ppoveeiî) .*Although
there therefore exists something in which all might find some-
thing in common and communicable, namely the Logos, yet the
many live as though they were sanctioned in having their own un-
derstanding or their own private thoughts (Fr. 92). This, how-
ever, regardless of the physiological state, is dreaming. The dream-
ers fail to notice what they do after they awaken, just as they for-
get what they do when For Heraclitus, genuine
asleep (Fr. i).
awakencss is, negatively put, the awakening from private opinion

(doxa) and subjective belief. Put positively, it is life (and not just
the life of the mind) that accords with the laws of the universal,
• Concerning the main significance of ppovelv and pp6vr)aLs in Greek philosophy
and what they meant for Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, see Werner Jaeger,
Aristotle.
[242 ]
Dream and Existence
whether this universal be called logos, cos7)ws, sophia, or whether

it is considered as a combination of all of them in the sense of a ra-
tional insight into their unitary, lawful interrelation and in the
sense of action according to this insight. Hegel presents this
Heraclitean doctrine by saying that here Reason, Logos, becomes

the judge of Truth, — not, however, of truth that is second best,
but, rather, of divine, universal truth: "this measure, this rhythm
which penetrates through to the essence of the AH" (an echo of
the ancient (jvnirddtia).
Only insofar as we live in awareness of this interconnection
whether we call it understanding, wisdom, or reflection are we —
awake. "This is the form of sensibility [ V erstdndigkeit] which we
call awakenness." "If we do not stand in relation to the whole, then
we are merely dreaming." Separated (from the whole), under-

standing loses, according to Heraclitus, the power of consciousness
that it had previously, and loses, according to Hegel, the spirit as

an individuation of objectivity: it is not singular in its universality.
To the extent that we participate in the divine understanding we
participate in the Truth, but to the extent that we are particular
and special, we are deceived:
Nothing truer or more unprejudiced can be said about Truth.

(jDnly consciousness of the universal is consciousness of truth; but
consciousness of particularity and particular action, originality
which results in idiosyncracy of content or form, is untrue and
evil. Error, therefore, consists solely in the particularization of
thought — evil and error consist in the divorce from the universal.
Most men think that their conceptions should be something spe-
cial and original; this is illusionT)
According to Hegel, "the knowledge of something of which

only I am aware" is dreaming, and the same is true of imagination
(in the sense of phantasy) and emotion, 'the mode, namely, in

which something is only for me, in which I have something in me
qua this subject; no matter how exalted these emotions may appear,
they are nevertheless still in me and not something separable from
me." Just as the object can be nonimaginary, not merely the prod-
uct ofmy imagination, only if I recognize it as freely existing, so,
too,emotion participates "in the Truth" only when I to speak —
—
with Spinoza have knowledge of it sub spaecia aetemitatis.
[M3]
Though this may sound too abstract, it is actually quite close to

home; for in every serious mental activity, particularly in psycho-
analysis, there come moments when a man must decide whether,
in pride and defiance, to cling to his private opinion his private —
theater, as one patient put it —
or whether to place himself in the
hands of a physician, viewed as the wise mediator between the pri-
vate and the communal world, between deception and truth. He
must, that is, decide whether he wishes to awaken from his dream
and participate in the life of the universal, the koinds c6s?nos. It
would be rather unfortunate if our patients had to understand
Heraclitus or Hegel in order to get well; but none can attain to
genuine health unless the physician succeeds in awakening in him
that spark of mind that must be awake in order for the person to
feel the slightest breath of that koinds costhos. Goethe expressed
this better, perhaps, than any of our modern psychotherapists:
Go into thyself! Shouldst thou there dispense

With infinity in mind and sense
There's nought to help thee!
It is not that with the awakening of a sense for infinity as the coun-
ter to the hmitedness of particularity the individual will be relieved
of his images and feehngs, his wishes and hopes. These, however,
will simply be removed from the context of uneasiness, restlessness,
and despair, the context of falling, sinking, descending hfe, to the
context —not of utter, deathlike peacefulness —but ascending, tire-
lessly soaring Ufe. This is exemplified in a dream one of my pa-
had after a therapy session, which shows that the spirit, once
tients
awakened, can even kindle the dream into at least an image of the
universal life.
Tired and tormented by a powerful inner unrest and uneasiness,

I finally dropped off^ to sleep. In my dream I was walking along
an endless beach where the constantly pounding surf and its never-
ending restlessness brought me to despair. I longed to be able to
bring the ocean to a standstill and enforce a calm upon it. Then
I saw a tall man wearing a slouch hat coming toward me on the
dunes. He wore a broad cape and carried a stick and a large net in
One eye was hidden behind a large curl of hair which

his hand.
hung upon his forehead. As the man came before me, he spread
out the net, captured the sea in it, and laid it before me. Startled,
[244]
Dream and Existence
I looked through the meshing and discovered that the sea was
slowly dying. An uncanny
calm came over me and the seaweed,
the animals, and the fish which were caught in the net slowly
turned a ghostly brown. In tears, I threw myself at the man's feet
and begged him to let the sea go free again I knew now that un- —
rest meant life and calm was death. Then the man tore open the
net and freed the sea and within me there arose a jubilant happi-
ness as I again heard the pounding and breaking of the waves. Then
I awoke!
This is a most interesting dream in many ways. Notice the

trichotomy of thesis (dreaming, tormented life in isolation), antith-
esis (death by total dissolution of individual life following total
surrender to the overpowering objective principle of "otherness"),
and synthesis (by "reclaiming objectivity in subjectivity"). The
dream thus pictorially mirrors the psychoanalytic process as a pro-
gression from the individual's defiant persistence in his isolation, to
the humble subjection to the (impersonal) "authority" of the doc-
tor ("transference phase"), to the "resolution of the transference."
That such a loosening of the transference bond (about which so
much has been and is being written) can come about only as a
genuine inspiration, an even more lucid wakeness in the sense as-
cribed to it by Heraclitus and Hegel —otherwise it is a fraud and
a self-conceit — is overlooked in interpretations that are either one-
sidedly biological or that misguidedly view the spirit as an enemy
of life. As psychotherapists, however, we must go beyond Hegel,
for we are not dealing with objective truth, with the congruence
between our own thinking and the reality of objects as objects,
but with "subjective truth," as Kierkegaard would say. We a re
dealing_with the^îi^^ passion" by virtue of which subjec-
ti vity mu st work itselfjchrough objectivity (the objectivity of
c ommunication, conse nsus, submission to a superpersonal norm)
and out of it again (as the third phase of our dream disclosed).
Only ontRe basis of such an insight can the psychiatrist himself
turn from a dreaming to a waking spirit, so that what Kierkegaard
says of Lessing might be said of him: "In neither attempting an un-
free devotion nor recognizing an unfree limitation, he — himself
free —enables everyone who approaches him to enter into free rap-
port with him."
[M5]
All these problems are dormant in Freud's doctrine of trans-

ference and particularly in his theories about the resolution of
the transference. And they remain dormant there because no one
has yet succeeded and no one will ever succeed in deriving the
liuman_spirit fromjnstincts (Trie be). These two concepts are,
oy their very nature, incommensurable, and it is their incommen-
surability that justifies the existence of both concepts, each within
its own proper sphere, A deeper penetration is achieved, in this re-
spect, by Jung's doctrine of individuation as the liberation of the
self from the "false veils of the persona on the one hand, and the
suggestive force of unconscious images on the other." But however
deep the insights may
be that Jung gains by seeing individuation
as a "process of psychological development," here, too, the funda-
mental problem of individuation is concealed by the fact that the
contrast between dreaming and waking, suspension in one's pri-
vate world and in the common world, is not understood for what it
is: the contrast between image and feeling (which always belong
together) on the one hand, intellect on the other. Since, however,
this contrast is there, it cannot wholly escape an explorer such as
Jung. The attempt to derive this contrastfrom the compensatory
function of the conscious and the subconsious is unsatisfactory in
that the main problem becomes lost in detailed speculations and
theory. This is especially true with respect to the notion of the
"collective unconscious," which is both a kind of eidetic "race con-
sciousness" in Schleirermacher's sense, and an ethical reference to
a universal, to "the world" or "the object." It is clear that in this
"collective unconscious" the contrast continues unmitigated. The
same holds true for Jung's concept of the self, in which conscious
and unconscious "complement" each other to form a whole. The
unconscious processes compensating the conscious Ego are sup-
posed to contain within themselves all those elements necessary
for a self-regulation of the total psyche. It must be borne in mind,
however, that the fundamental ethical agent, the conscious, which
is hidden in that compensation, sets the entire functional dynamism
in motion, and that the total psyche is not, on the contrary, regu-
lated by the compensation mechanism; the problem is not fur-
thered either by shifting it from the whole to its parts. Jung's theory
draws successfully from Eastern sources, from India and China,
and makes good use of knowledge of primitive mentaUty. We, on
[246I
Dream and Existence
the other hand, with all due respect to these sources, do not think
it justified to step —
backwards in psychology, psychoanalysis, and
psychiatry — from the point reached by the Greeks in their under-
standing of existence.
now return to our point of departure. When a bitter disap-
We
pointment causes the ground beneath my feet to give way, then
later, after I have "pulled myself together again," I express what
happened by saying, "I didn't know what hit me." Here, as

Heidegger tells us, theJDaseinjs brought before its own Being — I
insofar, that is, as something happens to it and the Dasein knows

nejrherjrh g "how" nor t he "what" of the happening. This is the
basic ontological element of all dreaming and its relatedness to anx-
iety.* To dream means: I don't know what is happening to me.
From the I and the Me there emerges, to be sure, the individual,
the Quisque and Hekastos; in no way, however, does the individual
emerge as he who makes the dream, but rather as the one for
whom — "he knows not how" —the dream is made. And this in-
dividual is, none other than "the selfsame" in the sense of

here,
"personal numerical identity" (Kant) purely formal, without sub-
:
stance, it is the plaything of rising and falling life, the roar of the
sea and the stillness of death, the brilliance of sun-bathed color and
shadowy night, the subhme form of the eagle in flight and the
chaotic heap of paper upon the floor, the splendor of a young
maiden, the scent of seaweed, the corpse of a fallen bird, the power-
ful, terrible bird of prey, and the gentle dove. An individual turns
from mere and the dreamer awakens in
self-identity to selfhood,
that unfathomable moment when he decides not only to seek to
know "what hit him," but seeks also to strike into and take hold
of the dynamics in these events, "himself" —the moment, that is,
when he resolves to bring continuity or consistency into a life that
rises and falls, falls and rises. Only then does he make something.
That which he makes, however, is not Ufe this the individual can- —
— —
not make but history. Dreaming, man to use a distinction I have
—
drawn elsewhere is "life-function"; waking, he creates "life-
history." What he actually makes is the history of his own life, his
inner life-history, and we must not confuse this with participation

or nonparticipation in outer or world-history, which by no means
• We view anxiety dreams as the prototype of the Dasein's (as such) primal
existential anxiety. See Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?
[247]
Selected Papers of Ludwig Benswânger
lies completely within his power. It is not possible —no matter how
often the attempt is made — to reduce both parts of the disjunction
between life-function and life-history to a common denominator,
because life considere d as fun cflpn is nn o:hg_same js life co nsidered
as history.^ndy&rrôth do have a common base: existence.
Our^goalliere has been to indicate^he place of dreaming with-
in the context of this common base. But even apart from this we
may point out that dreaming and awakeness have something else
in common. Just as the "transition" from one to the other is a
gradual one (which is not affected by "the leap-character of the
individual life-historical decision), so the beginning of life-function
(and, with it, of dreaming) and the end of inner life-history
(awakeness) lie in infinity. For just as "we do not know where life
and the dream begin, so we are, in the course of our Uves, ever
again reminded that it Hes beyond man's powers "to be 'the individ-
ual' in the highest sense."
Notes
Walter F. Otto, Die Gotter Griechenlands (Bonn: Verlag Cohen).
Werner Jaeger, Die geistige Gegevfwart der Antike (Berlin: Verlag de
Gruyter)
[248I
Introduction to Schizophrenic
The four studies in this volume are attempts to gain insight into the
structural and dynamic order of human existence that is designated
in the psychiatric clinic as schizophrenia. The mode of selecring
these case studies was in no way based on any special anticipated
"outcome." Indeed, the state of the daseinsanalytic understanding
of schizophrenia was at that time such that no particular result
could have been foreseen. In consequence, everything hinged on
the capacity to learn and be guided by an unbiased consideration
of the unique aspects of each individual case. In the very nature of
things, such instruction could proceed only very slowly, step by
step.
Nevertheless, the selection of these case histories had to meet
certain conditions. The first and most important was that sufficient
material from the life-history and course of illness be available,
particularly as much self-description as possible. Otherwise, a
daseinsanalytic interpretation of the course of schizophrenia would
not have been possible. The second condition was that prime con-
cern not be directed to the so-called end-states in the sense of
schizophrenic deterioration. That is, attention was first and fore-
most to be directed to the existential process, seen both retrospec-
tively and, as much as possible, as represented by the on-going
process itself. The third condition consisted of the assumption
which proved to be correct — that the understanding of schizo-
phrenic existence could be facilitated and furthered if "cases" were
selected in which the outbreak of the schizophrenic psychosis was,

for shorter or longer periods, preceded by certain types of "ab-
[249]
normal behavior." By this is meant types of behavior that on the

one hand fit into the Hfe-historical pattern of the patient, but that,
on the other hand, already seem to foreshadow the psychosis. With
that came, fourthly, the expectation that it would certainly be ad-
vantageous to select as many different kinds of cases as possible so
that the results would not be bound merely to "one class." If it
now appears that three of our five cases concern acute or chronic
fears of persecution (Use, Lola Voss, and Suzanne Urban), it
means, quite apart from the fulfillment of the previously cited pre-
conditions, that for me the problem of schizophrenia seems to cul-
minate in delusion [Wahn] and particularly, delusions of persecu-
tion.
So much for the principles that guided the selection of our
cases. We turn now to the basic constitutive concepts of our in-
vestigations. Here, as elsewhere, the most important of these con-
cepts is the principle of order, the question, namely, as to how a
certain order is to be wrought from the sheer, dazzling, multitudi-
nous plenum of historical, psychological, psychopathological, and
biological data that we bring together clinically under the term
"case." The cUnician, of course, also seeks an order in these cases,
an order, however, based on purely chnical concepts and modes
of thought that, based as they are on a naturalist-reductionist dia-
lectic, transform all such data into symptoins of illness. The order
that we strive for in daseinsanalyticcommunication with the pa-
tient is of quite a difi"erent sort. It Ues on this side of the concepts of
healthy and sick, normal and abnormal, and is only attainable by
the kind of interpretation that sees all these data as distinct modes
of existence, of existential process and determination. We speak,
therefore, quite generally of a daseinsanalytic order; it is of a
purely phenomenological nature. But such an order would not be
ascertainable if the Dasein as such did not exhibit a definite onto-
logical structure. We have Martin Heidegger to thank for reveal-
ing to us the a priori of this ontological structure of the Dasein.
Only since Heidegger is it possible to speak of a dis-order in the
ontological structure of the Dasein and to show of what it can con-
sist, to show, that is, which elements are to be made responsible
for the fact that a particular structural order, so to say, "denies,"
that it exhibits gaps and that these gaps are filled again by the
Dasein.
[250]
With this we are closer to what is daseinsanalytically the central

problem of schizophrenia and its solution. For with the designation
of the denying elements in the structural order of the Dasein to-
gether with the modes of its disposition, not only are we in a
position to bring daseinsanalytic order to the dazzling, superabun-
dant plenum of a clinical case, but we are also in a position daseins-
analytically to compare this "plenum" with the quite different
kinds of "plenum" in other cases. While clinical psychiatry strives
to make such comparison possible on the grounds of the similarity
or dissimilarity of symptoms and syndromes, Daseinsanalyse pro-
vides us with a different kind of systematic comparison —one
based, namely, on certain existential processes and determinations.
Instead of a disease unit consisting of a small and perhaps also clini-
cally and symptomatically rather varied class, we have here a unity
of definite existential structures and processes.
Just as the most important constitutive concept of our investi-
gation was that of the general structural order of the Dasein, so

we entered upon a genuine investigation of schizophrenia only
when we sought insights into the specific ontological structure of
our cases. That was possible, as we have said, only by approaching
them without preconceptions and by allowing ourselves to be
guided and instructed by them alone. However, since it cannot
be the task of this introduction to recapitulate the progress of our
work on the individual cases, let us rather pursue the issues as to
constitutive categories or basic concepts that, in the course of in-
vestigation, yielded us the perspective from which to speak of a
unity of the existential processes that were studied. I shall refer
the reader to particular cases only insofar as they illustrate these

categories.
Since the first from our investiga-
basic concept that emerges
tions is that of the inconsistency of experience, a few remarks
about the consistency of ("natural") experience must serve as
preface. Natural experience is that in which our existence moves
not only unreflectively, but also unproblematically and unobtru-
sively, as smoothly as a natural chain of events.^ This quality of the
unproblematic is related, above all, to objectivity. Even when
something is unknown to us, this something does not fall out of the
self-evident context that is natural experience. The chain of events
in experience can therefore be "natural" only insofar as it is in-
[251]
herently consistent, that is, in our sense of being in harmony with

things and circumstances, with others (whom we meet
in our ev-
eryday intercourse with circumstances and things), and with our-
selves: having, in a word, the sense of residing [Aufenthalt Hei- —
degger]. The immediateness of this residing among "things" or
"circumstances" is manifested in our letting beings — all beings be
as they are in themselves. This letting-be is, however, in no way a
self-evident or easy activity, but, rather — as our case studies all
too convincingly and lamentably show —something highly positive

and active.
A. The basic concept used in understanding what is called the

schizophrenic existential pattern proves to be the notion of a break-
down in the consistency of natural experience, its inconsistency.
Inconsistency implies precisely that inability to "let things be" in
the immediate encounter with them, the inability, in other words,
to reside serenely among things. The case of Ellen West presents
us with a clear example of such incapacity. We see Ellen West
despotically disposing of "things" about her, as though dictating
to them how they should be: the body must not grow too fat, but
—
must remain thin indeed, she herself must not be as she is, but
must become completely different (cf. "Creator, create me a . . .
second time, and create me better!"). Human society must not be

as it is, but must change. This example shows that when we speak
of "letting things be" we are not speaking of the quietist who, as a
nonparticipant, leaves everything in the world untouched.
On the contrary, a revolutionary spirit who seeks to over-
throw the things of the world actually resides in undisturbed im-
mediacy among them; otherwise he could not overthrow them,
could not subjugate them. The situation is quite different with
Ellen West and our other patients. They persist in suffering be-
cause things are not the way they would like them to be and per-
sist in merely dictating the way they should be; which is to say,
their mode of behavior is mere wishing and chasing after
that of
an ideal. Jiirg Ziind is an example of an even more drastic inability
to reside undisturbedly among the things of this world. His entire
comportment, conduct, and interest in others is "inappropriate."
Equally grotesque is the distorting and linguistic fractioning of
things that is effected by Lola Voss's language oracle. Nor does
Suzanne Urban's excessive concern for her parents represent an

untroubled residing among things and people. This arbitrary dis-
position of things is accompanied by the weakening of every ma-
terially consistent existential order. Everywhere experience reveals
its gaps, and nowhere can it make peace with itself or unfold
freely.
What makes the lives of our patients such a torment is that they
are not able to come to terms with the inconsistency and disorder
of their experience, but, rather, constantly seek for a ivay out so
that order can be re-established. Everywhere we encounter this
unquenchable longing to re-establish the disturbed order, to fill the

gaps in experience with ever new ideas, activities, undertakings,
distractions, obligations, and ideals —
the longing, in fine, for "peace
and harmony" and "home" (Ellen West), or, indeed, for "death as
the sole happiness in life" (Ellen West), for Nirvana (Jurg Ziind)
in the sense of a final ad acta laying aside of things and, in a "defi-
nitely final effort," the laying aside of one's self.
This longing for an "end" originates in there being 770 way
out of existence and the inconsistency of experience that accom-
panies it. Ellen West's "simile of the stage" * is a particularly dra-
matic and tragic representation of this state of having no way out.
But before this end appears, be withdrawal from ac-

it as suicide,
tive life, or as insanity, we see the Dasein in fact tormenting itself

in the search for ever new ways out, ways that cannot be effective
because of the patient's particular life-situation. The last way out
manifests itself without exception in the formation of Extrava-
gant [verstiegene] ideals that masquerade as a life-stance, and in

the hopeless struggle to pursue and maintain these ideals.
But even when it comes to an energetic deed as a way out of
the unendurably entangled life-situation — as was the case with
Use — its futility is easily seen in its inappropriateness to the life-
and its inappropriateness must be understood as

situation. Use's act
necessarily foredoomed and as preparatory to another way out that
takes the form of (acute) psychosis. The inappropriateness of Use's
action to the particular situation shows that here the consistency
•See "The Case of Ellen West," Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F.
in
Ellenberger, (eds.), Existence York, 1958), pp. 237-364. Binswanger's book
(New
Schizophrenie consists of five case studies: "Use," "Ellen West," "Jiirg Ziind,"
"Lola Voss," and "Suzanne Urban." Translations of the first two are to be found
in Existence. The present book contains the fourth, "The Case of Lola Voss."]
[253]
of experience, though not yet ruptured, already seems to be threat-

ened. For the Dasein, as it were, "grabs blindly and falsely" in its
choice of means, overruns itself in a single experimental possibility

that, regardless of its own inner consistency, has all the earmarks
of the larger inconsistency. This is what we mean when we speak
of "inappropriateness to the hfe-situation." It is manifested not only
in the "practical" unsuitability of the means she chooses, but more
basically in that the "means" itself bear the signs of experiential
inconsistency. The burning of the hand and arm is neither a pur-
poseful action in the technical sense, nor a "proof of love" that is
consonant with the "emotional situation." It runs counter to the

authentic "logic of emotion" — if we may use such an expression
—in that what is involved is not at all an act or gift of love that the
other can receive as such, but, rather, an exhibition of martyred
suffering "out of love." As a result, this suffering can forge no
bonds, no "bonds of love," and can open no exits from the unen-
durable life-situation.
B. Even at the time of her act of burning her arm. Use's be-
havior was already being ruled by a particular set of alternatives
the alternatives of either power, victory, and deUverance, or defeat
and powerlessness. We thus come to the second constitutive con-
cept of our research: the splitting off of experiential consistency
into alternatives, into a rigid either-or. This factor is of highest
importance for understanding the course taken by that form of
existence designated as schizophrenia. The inconsistency of experi-
ence now undergoes an apparently new ordering, the apparent
taking of a stance amid the disorder of experiential inconsistency.
We thus come back to what we have come to recognize in all our
patients as the formation of Extravagant ideals. The Dasein now
stakes everything on "maintaining" this stance, on — in other words
—pursuing this ideal "through thick and thin." The ideal is Extrava-
gant in that it is completely inappropriate to the total Hfe-situation
and does not, therefore, represent a genuine means. On the con-

trary, it sets up an insurmountable and impenetrable wall in the
path of existence. The Dasein can no longer find its way back out
of this Extravagance and instead becomes more and more deeply
enmeshed in it. The even more catastrophic in that
effect of this is
the formation of Extravagant ideals represents only one aspect of
[M4]
the alternative, wliile the other embraces everything that contra-

dicts this ideal.
Compared to the severe existential pull exerted by both of
these alternatives, the inconsistency of experience was relatively
harmless. For now the Dasein is torn by the struggle between both
aspects of the alternative into which it is split. Now it becomes a
matter of either being able to pursue the Extravagant ideal or of

giving it up entirely. But neither the one nor the other is now pos-
sible — as we see especially clearly in the case of Ellen West and
Jiirg Ziind. For Lola Voss and Suzaftne Urban the either-or is even
more rigid and insurmountable. There can no longer be any talk
of Lola's being in a position to give up the Extravagant ideal of
absolute safety afforded her by her language oracle because here,
as everywhere, giving up the Extravagant ideal means the bottom-
less anxiety of succumbing to the other side of the alternative. Nor,
similarly, can Suzanne Urban under any circumstances renounce
her overwhelming concern for her family. In both cases a loss of
the hold on the Extravagant ideal means that the Dasein becomes
anxious —the anxiety of being persecuted (delusions of persecu-
tion). Instead of a free unfolding of experience we find — in all our
cases —an "imprisonment" or "bondage" in the "net" or "fetters"
of the rigid alternative (Ellen West). The Dasein can come to rest
on neither side of the alternative and is driven from one to the
other. And the higher the particular ideal becomes, the more pow-
erful and explosive is the threat posed by the other side of the al-
ternative.
To understand the actual existential meaning of a given pa-
tient's alternatives it suffice, however, to have them be-
does not
fore us in the which they appear to the patient himself
form in
and in which they communicated to us. These communications
must be subjected to daseinsanalytic interpretation. In this regard,
let us glance briefly at the alternatives between which the exist-
ence of Ellen West is suspended, and those similarly confronting

Jiirg Ziind. In the former case, we see the alternatives of fat and
thin, and in the latter, the alternative is between proletarian and
aristocrat.
Ellen West herself speaks of her conflict, of the "eternal friction
between the wish to be thin and the inability to control my eating,"
of the struggle between her "nature" or her "fate" that she must
[255]
be fat and vigorous, and her "will to be slender and delicate." Even
her first psychoanalyst was not satisfied with this formulation and
sought to improve it with the equation: slender =
higher, intellec-
tual-spiritual type; fat = Jewish-bourgeois. What this equation
says is that Ellen West's bodily existence is not the primary or de-
cisive thing. DaseinsaTialyse cannot rest content with such equa-
tions, nor with the notion of psychogenesis, nor the dubious con-
cepts of psychosomatics. Daseinsanalyse, too, is convinced that it
is not the purely bodily alternative between being slender or fat
that is destroying this life; but it goes further in that it points to the
perverse^ and therefore completely unsuitable role with which bod-
—
ihness is burdened in this Dasein ^the role, namely, of overcom-
ing the basic experiential split between the alternatives of Hfe and
death, ideal and reality, "nature" or "fate" and self-will, alterna-
tives that are completely existential. Added to this is the imperative
that the consistency of experience, the "mental" and "harmoniously
attuned" order of life be thereby restored. Only because of the
perversity of this imperative could the building up of ideals "go so
far" [sich versteigen] . In other words, only because of this im-
perative could the ideal of being slender assume such inexorable,
implacable power over this Dasein. This power does not stem from
an equation, nor from some kind of symbolization, but, rather,
from the wish to pick up again the lost thread of experiential con-
sistency, a thread that, however,, is already irreparably broken.
While the thread of experiential consistency can, in fact, be pur-
sued only by accepting Being and leaving things and facts to
themselves —the body, nature, fate, and hfe among them — in the
case of Ellen West these things are not left to themselves, but are,
rather, "hunted down," "subjugated," indeed negated.
Whereas for Ellen West the traplike existential alternative ex-
tended to the bodily sphere, in the case of Jiirg Ziind it was so-
cially expressed in, as we have already mentioned, the alternative
between the ideal of the noble, aristocratic grand-seigneur and the
proletarian actuality. Though both sets of alternatives (the bodily
and the social) may seem to have little in common, they become
quite comparable when we trace them to their existential bases.
The role played by physique in Ellen West's existence takes the
form here of "belonging," of being-with in commerce or inter-
[256]
course with others, or, as I have termed it, the mitweltlich grasping
and being-grasped by something.* For Jiirg Ziind, "belonging" or
social existence is burdened with the role of overcoming the expe-
riential split between the existential alternatives of life and death,
ideal and reality, nature (or fate) and will. The imperative, in fact,
requires not only that the split be overcome, but also restoration
of psychic and emotional order.
When, with reference to Ellen West and Jiirg Ziind, we speak
of existential alternatives and of the carrying over of these alterna-
tives to the bodily and social spheres, it is important to bear in
mind that what we are thereby dealing with are deficient existen-
tial modes. This deficiency arises out of the inconsistency of expe-
rience and the experiential splitting off into the particular alterna-
tives. Now, the complete submersion of the Dasein in the particular
pair of alternatives also means that the existence can, in general,
temporalize itself only in the mode of "deficiency" — in the mode,

namely, that we have come to know as fallenness to the world, or,
in short, as '^mundanization" [ Veriveltlichung] . This is manifested
most clearly "concealment" involved in the phenomenon of
in the
"protecting" shame* (modesty, pudeur, Schojn) by means of the
deficient mode of public shame (stemming from one's own reflec-
tion thrown upon others Schande, la home). But the same thing
(mundanization) is also manifested in the deficiency of those modes
in which we encounter conscience, regret, genuine humor and,
above all, love in our patients. We almost always find that the au-
thentic dual existential mode of the Dasein is present in the mode
of deficiency. Together with this we find —even in the case of
Ellen West, and in spite of everything we may say about her ripe-
ness for death —the impossibility of an authentic being-toward-
death [Sein zum Tode] in the sense of the Dasein being ahead of
itself in resolve, and also in the sense of the ability of the Dasein
to be a whole, a totality. If Ellen West's suicide points to the fact
that she "made an end" to her life, what is thereby implied is not
an authentic "dying," but, rather, that her "life stopped." " All this
serves the more clearly to indicate what it is which differentiates
experiential inconsistency and its split into a rigid either-or, i.e.
the ontological structure of existence as schizophrenic, from exis-
tential process in the sense of experiential consistency.
[257]
C. A further constitutive concept for our investigations was

the concept of covering. By this we mean the sisyphusUke effort to
conceal that side of the alternative that is unbearable to the Dasein
so that the Extravagant ideal might thereby be buttressed. Jiirg Ziind
is the classic example of this, and his case provides us with a stand-
point from which to understand manneredness and also, to a cer-
tain extent, artistic mannerism.^ What the cloak of elegant manners

(which petrified into manneredness) was for Jiirg Ziind, the con-
stant efforts to stay thin and the laxatives were for Ellen West, the
covering over of anxiety and the buttressing of the ideal of hid-
denness by means of the syllable oracle and its "decisions" were
for Lola Voss, and the concealment of the horrors of anxiety by
means of the hypochondriacally overwhelming concern for the wel-
fare of her family was for Suzanne Urban.
D. In this regard, we made use of a further concept: that of

the existence's being worn away (as though by friction), the cul-
mination of the antinomic tensions involved in no longer being
able to find a way out or in, a culmination that is a resignation or a
renunciation of the whole antinomic problem as such, and that
takes the form of an existential retreat. In this context, a closer
look at the particular cases is in order,
1. I have just spoken of Ellen West's retreat from lije. Her
renunciation of was the most energetic, decisive and self-
life
willed form of retreat from an existence in which the antinomic

tension and no longer being able to find a way in or out was
pitched at its highest. Here, of all our cases, we have the freest de-
cision of which the Dasein has been able to avail itself: the decision
to make an end to the hopelessness of experience by annulling en-
tanglement and ensnarement in general.
2. But as soon as we come to the case of Jiirg Ziind we can
no longer characterize the retreat as completely free. To be sure,

he struggles, as he puts it, for one "last effort" that would bring to
a final end the torment of the insoluble problem of his existence. In
the end, however, he exhausts his strength in these efforts so that
he sees himself as "forced" to make an end to this terrible game
with what is hterally a last effort. He likens his struggles to find a
way out from an existence from which there is no exit with efforts
of his intention to "dispose" or "take care" of the individual Ror-
[258]
schach cards ad acta. But with each such "laying aside" of the cards,
Jiirg Ziind is always taking care of himself, seeking to "close the
file"[ad acta zu legen] of his own existence in order, ultimately, to
have himself forever "taken care of" in an institution. Here, too,
—
we are faced with a "retreat from life" life, however, no longer
as vita, but, rather, the life of activity, "social" life, in which Jiirg
Ziind for so long and so hopelessly has been tossed to and fro. We
see in both cases that it is just that existential problem whose anti-
nomic tensions have worn away the Dasein that also determines
the mode and form it. This is true of Ellen West,
of the retreat from
whose whole life from childhood on was "overshadowed" by the
problem of life and death, and it is true of Jiirg Ziind, whose
whole life was similarly permeated by the problem of human so-
ciety.
3. Wecome now to the retreat from existence in the com-
pletely unfree mode of insanity, a mode in which the Dasein of
its own free will renounces neither life nor social life. What, rather,
is renounced is life as independent, autonomous selfhood. The
Dasein thus surrenders itself over to existential powers alien to it-
self. What we have here is a particularly radical capitulation of the

Dasein. Neither Ellen West nor Jiirg Ziind had given up or sur-
rendered themselves, their Selves; what they did, rather, was to
withdraw themselves from Hfe as such or from communal life.
Now, however, the Dasein removes itself from the autonomy of
its own life context. We are forced to say of such a person that he
is a victim, a plaything, or a prisoner in the hands of alien pow-
ers. Compared to this, both Ellen West and Jiirg Ziind, though the
prisoners of their own problems, were at the same time their own
liberators from those problems.
In this context, we may refer to the case of Use. Our point of
departure must be her act of burning her hand. Here the Dasein
"exhibits itself" as a martyr to other human beings. In insanity this
self-exhibition becomes a being exhibited. Such a turnabout from
"active" doing to "passive" suffering is something we encounter
again and again in insanity. And this is indicative of the fact that
activity and passivity, in this case the spontaneity of making an im-
pression and influencing and the receptivity of being impressed
and influenced, are existentially not opposite, but, rather, insep-
arably bound up with each other.
[M9]
We may say that, as a martyr, the Dasein was still to a degree

capable of self-rule, or that, to put it another way, the Dasein still
proceeded (though in a mode inappropriate to the situation) within

—
an experiential consistency so that, as it were, what was in-
volved was a "leap," rather than a sundering from the world. But
in the passage from martyrdom to insanity, from self-sacrifice to
being sacrificed at the hands of others, the Dasein progressively

loses regency over itself. This first manifests itself in the appearance
of "crazy thoughts," in the threat, in other words, to the consist-
ency of experience and, with it, to the continuity of "world." Be-
fore the act (of burning the hand), the Dasein had no way out, no
exit from the alternatives of victory and defeat, of a "hghtning-
like" solution to the life situation and its unendurable continuation.
In these circumstances, the act of burning the hand, the sacrifice
of the hand, offered itself as one possible 'ivay out, as a possibiUty,
namely, of the patient herself being set at ease by means of a force-
ful presentation to her father of his "injustice." This way of coping
with the situation was so inappropriate that it was bound to fail.
The Dasein was at a loss as to which way to turn and was faced
for the first time with the total impossibility of allowing the fur-
ther consistent unfolding of experience. The consistency of experi-
ence breaks apart from one of its existential directions, leaving, as
it were, a vacuum. This vacuum is filled again: but filled by a mode
of experience that, though to a degree related to the experience

preceding it, is nevertheless completely inconsistent with it, namely,
that mode of experience that we describe as the patient's becom-
ing a victim at the hands of others. The inconsistency shows itself
in that the Dasein is now frozen by a 7nodel in accordance with

which all newly emerging experiences are shaped as references —
to self, as wrongs perpetrated upon the patient, as torments, as
persecutions, and also as persecutions in the sense of being forced to
love. All thisbecomes clearer as soon as we approach the case of
Lola Voss, and even more so in the case of Suzanne Urban.
4. Just as the case of Use was of special interest in that it pre-
sented us with a transitional stage between health and psychosis in
theform of a single event and act, so the case of Lola Voss presents
an even more instructive example of a transitional stage in the
form of a near-psychotic superstitious language-oracle. This
"game" allowed Lola Voss, clinging to her ideal of being hidden,
[260]
a while in which to find a foothold. However tenuous this foothold

might appear to an outsider, it provided a bridge between her anxi-
ety before the unspeakable Uncanny and Horrid and her surrender-
ing of herself to the secret conspiracy of personalized enemies
the bridge, that is, to the Dasein's renunciation of its particular
autonomy. What is involved here is neither a solution or, more

accurately, setting aside of the antinomic tension of existence by
means of the withdrawal of life in the form of suicide, nor by
means of the withdrawal of life from society in the form of a "deep
concern," but, rather a withdrawal of life from its own decisional
context by making all decisions dependent upon another. The Da-
sein's antinomic tension, the awareness that there is no longer a
way out or a way in, culminates here in the Dasein's yielding its
power to choose in the face of the decisions of enemies. This is the

context in which we may very instructively view Lola's language
oracle as a transitional stage.
What it shows us is, in the first place, that Lola has renounced
her own particular power to decide and lets herself be advised
only by the "things," which, for their part, are not objects or
things as they are in themselves, but, rather, things as linguistically
modelled and created by her. Production and reproduction, spon-
taneity and receptivity here engage in a most remarkable union in
which spontaneity nevertheless still prevails. To the extent that
Lola Voss relies on what the things (which she has, for the most
part, herself constituted) "say" to her, everything depends on her
attending properly to what they say, or, in other words, her cor-
rect understanding or interpretation of the language of things. In
this regard it is important to note that the language of things lim-
its itself to commanding or forbidding and that the patient her-
self sees her whole "salvation" in the strictest obedience to the
prohibitions or commands of these products of her own phantasy.
Lola Voss's persecution complex is from mere
to be differenriated
superstition when bound no longer by
she begins to feel herself
the decisions of her self-created oracle, but by the decisions of
her self-created enemies, as is the case with Use and Suzanne Urban
We need, finally, to note the displacement that consists in the fact
that the blind obedience to the commands and prohibitions of the
oracle seems, in her psychosis, srill to leave room for a freedom
either to obey or run away from the demands of her enemies. This
[261]
freedom, however, is purchased at the price of a complete depend-

ence on the enemies, at the price of a persecution psychosis.
What is common, now, with regard to both the oracle and the
psychosis is the necessity to guess or interpret the words of the
enemies, which, indeed, she herself has them say. While with re-
spect to the oracle we might still have spoken of a certain active-
ness on her part, here there reigns a total and complete passivity.
For, in the psychosis, whatever activeness emerges is activity only
ivithin passivity, within the complete self-surrender of the Dasein
to alien forces, within, in other words, the Dasein's complete sur-
render of itself. Where, however, we thus surrender ourselves,
there we become the victim or sacrifice at the hands of others. The
retreat from the problems of existence, the Dasein's resignation
from its own particular problem, is manifested here in the form of
the passivity of victimization and sacrifice.
5. In the case of Suzanne Urban we sought to understand her
persecution psychosis by a phenomenological study of the Power
of the Terrible (which broke out of the koino7iia of existential
events), and in the life-historical unfolding of that power. Here we
draw the consequences with respect to the concept of resigna-
tion, the retreat of the Dasein from the antinomic tension, the Da-
sein's inability any longer to find a way in or out. With Suzanne
Urban information supplied by relatives allows us to determine
precisely the culmination point of this resignation. It is the moment
where, totally exhausted by the efforts at covering that were to
support her idealized concern for her relatives and, ultimately, her
husband — totally exhausted, she breaks down completely and, in-
stead of dictatorially including the domestic personnel with this
concern (as she had done previously), she becomes the victim
or sacrifice at the hands of these same domestic servants. Now she
is spiedupon and betrayed by others.
The case of Suzanne Urban is our crassest example of the cul-
mination of the Dasein's renunciation of its antinomic problem
in the form of a retreat into insanity or, in other words, the com-
plete relinquishing of self to that aspect of the alternative that had
hitherto been suppressed "with all possible force," an alternative
in which the Dasein had long since found itself divided. With this
renunciation everything turns into that which was its previously

suppressed (or, in Freud's terms, repressed) terrible opposite.
[262]
Whereas Suzanne Urban was, like Ellen West, from childhood on a
self-willed, obstinate and inconsiderate person who could never

subordinate herself to the opinions of others, who never formed
real friendships, who had, in general, little trust in her fellow
man, and who always sought to rule over her environment,
she now, on the other hand, allows herself to be ruled by others,
is compelled to subordinate herself to them, suffers now from that
same lack of trust in her fellow man and sees herself as completely
surrounded by enemies. But the most essential thing in this reversal
in insanity is the following. Freud has made us aware that excessive
concern for others, like every such excess, is a sign of the repres-
sion of a painful force that the act of repression attempts to alleviate.

At the same time, such excess is always a sign or indication of that
which is repressed. The excessive "hypochondriacal" concern for
the "idolized" mother is also a kind of wish to master and rule. If,
now, we recall the "sadistic orgies" that the Dasein in its persecu-
tion psychosis, engages in, then we need not hesitate in speaking,
with Freud, of outspoken "sadistic components" in the case of
Suzanne Urban. Here, from the point of view of Daseinsanalyse,
is the basis for the inconsistency of experience and its splitting off
into a fixed either-or; here is the real basis for the antinomic ten-
sion of the Dasein, and the particular content that the Dasein im-
poses after the reversal and the victory of the hitherto suppressed
aspect of the alternative. Here, in a word, lies the basis of the
"psychotic content."
But in all this we not yet understood the daseinsana-
have still
lytic significance of psychosis in general and persecution psychosis

in particular. What it signifies, as we have seen in the case of Use
and, especially, in the case of Lola Voss, is one of the forms of ex-
istential resignation with respect to the Dasein's antinomic tensions,

a resignation that takes the form of a retreat from Dasein's own
decision, the complete renunciation of the Dasein's own ability to
decide and, with this, the complete je/f -surrender to the power of
others. That, in this case, it is other people to whom the Dasein
surrenders and not, say, to demonic forces, is related to the
itself,
basic sadism that is dominant in this Dasein —

and sadism is, at root,
a modeof being in the Mitêlt. In this je/f -surrender to the will of
others, however, we also find the reason why the others must be-
come enemies^ must, that is, become those "upon whose will I am
[263]
dependent, who can do with me as they wish" în other words, —

"whose victim I am." If, now, the Dasein "senses the enemy" every-
where, if in every event and act it not only suspects, but sees hostile
intentions, the reason lies not in an alteration of the Dasein's sense
of reality or meaning, its perception or psychic functioning, nor
does the reason lie in a "physiognomic" alteration of the world
and "sympathetic relationships" in Erwin Straus's sense. All these
alterations are, rather, secondary and tertiary consequences of the
resignation of the Dasein in the form of its self-withdrawal from
its own decisional frame of reference.
It should be clear now that the content of the psychosis (in this
case the sadistic orgies of the enemies) also represents nothing pri-
mary. It merely indicates to us the mode in which the Dasein fills
"with phantasy" the experiential gaps or vacua that its retreat
from the antinomic tension has left. The purely positivistic judg-
ment that psychosis in general has to do with "mere phantasy" and
"phantasms," and that in it "nothing is real," but only "psychoti-
cally imagined": none of this furthers the understanding of psy-
chosis. The decisive element lies, as has been said, in the particu-
lar, individual nature of the resignation or final capitulation of the
Dasein, culminating in the withdrawal from the Dasein's decisional
frame of reference — in other words, the Dasein's surrendering of
itself to the will of "alien" forces or "alien" persons. In the place of
an antinomic tension (arising from the inconsistency of experience)
between two irreconcilable alternatives, what emerges now is a
more "one-sided" and thus more consistent, "incorrigible," "un-
problematic" experience in the sense of a psychotic experiential
model according to which all new experience is fashioned.
Notes
See W. "Die Erfahrungsgrundlage der Daseinsanalyse Binswangers,"
Szilasi,
Schiveiz. Archiv.f. Neur. u. Psych., Vol. 67 (1951).
See Binswanger, Drei Forfnen Missgliickten Daseins, Chapter 2.

See Binswanger, Grundfonncn, Das mitweltliche N
ehmen-bei-etwas, pp. 300-
375-
SeeRoUo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenbcrger (eds.), Existence
(New York, 1958), pp. 331-341.]
[264]
5. See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 247.

6. See Binswanger, Drei Formen, Chapter 3.
7. See Freud, "Psychoanalytische Bermerkungen iiber einen autobiographisch
beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia (Dementia paranoides)," GesaTttmelte Schriften
VIII.
[265]
The Case of Lola Voss
[The reader should note that, in Dr. Angel's translation of this study, the term
Dasein is generally rendered as "existence."]
First published in Das Schiveizer Archiv fur Neurologic und Psychiatrie, Vol-
ume 63, Ziirich, 1949.
TRANSLATED BY Emest Angel
Report
Heredity / Lola's father is a blue-eyed Germanic type, very

somewhat stiff and formal but friendly and simple. The
quiet,
mother, offspring of a German father and a native Spanish-South
American mother (and therefore considered a half-caste) is "nerv-
ous," always excited, easily frightened, but enjoys life; she likes
company, loves to talk and laugh, and displays a Southern tem-
perament. Her thyroid condition is obvious. A brother, one year
Lola's junior, is gay, cheerful, and thoroughly "normal."
Unfortunately, further data are missing from Lola's case his-
tory.
Anamnesis / Information received from the father: Lola is now

[at the time of Lola's admission to Dr. Binswanger's sanatorium
in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland] twenty-four years of age.
L266]
Breast-fed in infancy, she was always healthy during childhood

and had no problems in her early development. She was an ex-
tremely spoiled child, used to doing or not doing whatever pleased
her at a given moment. When her father told her to do something,
she would be excused by the mother; when an order came from
her mother, was Grandma who offered her refuge. "There was
it
always someone who offered her a haven," remarks the father.

At the age of twelve, she suffered from a serious attack of ty-
phoid fever with high temperatures and had to spend fifty-two
days in bed. During that period the first indications of an anxiety
state occurred. She would, for instance, refuse to sleep at home
because "it was not safe enough" and stayed overnight in Grand-
ma's house.
At thirteen, Lola —who
was bom in South America was —
Germany, where she behaved in a
placed in a boarding school in
markedly boyish manner, denied that she was a girl, was domi-
neering and quarrelsome and could not get along with her peers.
At fourteen, she returned to South America. During those first
years she was completely inconspicuous and pleasure-seeking,

still
liked to dance and to attend dances. She did needlework, occupied

herselfwith painting and reading and, in general, was rather ac-
But a certain tendency to be by herself and lock herself up in
tive.
her room was observable. She was quite religious; under the in-
fluence of Catholic friends, she turned against her Protestant father.
At twenty, she met a Spanish doctor at a dance. He fell in love
with her and made his serious intentions known to her family,
although he had not yet attained a solid position and did not have
the means to support a family. He was described as a very serious,
reasonable, quiet, if somewhat calculating man. Her father's hesi-
tant and rejecting attitude toward this suitor caused Lola to be-
come somewhat rebellious: she began to fast frequently, appeared
joyless and depressed, and announced her intention to marry or —
take the veil. During this entire period, the mother sided with
Lola against the father.
At twenty-two, Lola accompanied her mother on a trip to a
German spa. Shortly before the departure she refused to go aboard

the boat unless a certain dress was removed from the luggage. Only
after her wish was fulfilled did she join her mother on the boat.
Subsequently, the Spanish doctor came to Germany to see his
[267]
fiancee. During their two-weeks' meeting she was cahn and re-
strained and appeared somewhat more interested in her wardrobe,
which she had previously neglected. She showed more pleasure in
entertainment, theatres, etc., and altogether made a different and
much more cheerful impression. The correspondence between
Lola and the doctor continued. In May of the following year he
wrote that now he had a secure position but could not yet think of
marrying Lola; he had to take care of his sick mother and his situ-
ation would not yet permit him to marry. At that point Lola
"collapsed."
She became melancholic and peculiarly superstitious: she wôuld
look for four-leafed clovers and display an irresistible aver-
sion to a variety of objects, particularly umbrellas and rubber
shoes, which, she said, brought her bad luck. When she noticed
that her chambermaid in the hotel was a hunchback, she immedi-
ately left the place. Hunchbacked men she considered lucky, how-
ever, and even tried to touch them.
Most of the year before entering the sanatorium Lola had
spent with her elderly aunts in Germany. These women had al-
legedly turned her against her mother, who meanwhile had left for
home. So intense did Lola's resentment against her mother grow
that upon the latter's retuim Lola would not enter her room any
more. Anything connected with her mother she considered "be-
witched," and everything coming from her mother had to be de-
stroyed: clothes, underwear, toothbrushes. She discarded them by
hiding them, giving them away, or packing them in small bundles
that she later "lost" or sold in the streets. She even refused to wear
garments that had come from the laundry along with her mother's
underwear. She threw away a pen and ink that had been used by
her mother; she would not even write a letter at the same table at
which her mother had written. Repeatedly she cut up her own
clothes.
During the preceding year a great many physicians had been
consulted, all of whom observed certain peculiarities, and recom-
mended marriage. Lola received injections of various sorts, such
as ovarial substance and thyroid extract. Subsequently, an endo-
crinologist found the thyroid gland in perfect order and recom-
mended a speciaUst for nervous diseases. When this specialist (who
[268I
was not introduced to her as such) touched upon her superstitious

ideas, she refused to have anything further to do with him.
A trip to Switzerland was agreed to by Lola without any diffi-
culty since she thought she was going there to meet her fiance,
who had started to write her again and had suggested a meeting
in Europe.
The essentials of the father's report were confirmed by infor-
mation supplied by the mother. She added that Lola had always
impressed people as being tired; even as a child she had reminded
them of an old woman. Photographs disclosed that Lola's face had
changed a good deal over the last few years; it had become
coarser.
Observations during Lola's Stay at the Sanatorium / Lola

Voss is a pretty girl of medium size, in her twenty-fifth year,
with an animated facial expression, but somewhat stiff in her ges-
tures. Her manner is vivacious and open, but her speech is la-
bored and foreign. The shape of her face is regular and oval, the
shape of the skull slightly pyknic rather than leptosome. The total
constitution is slightly asthenic*
The patient did not bring with her any underwear, not even a
nightgown. She does not seem to resent her father's placing her in
a sanatorium, even though this was contrary to what he had told
her was the purpose of the trip. Although she does not consider
herself sick, she accepted the nurse without demur.
Psychological Reporti Lola has a good mind and is verbally

astute; she is also a master of the art of lying. She twists every-
thing to her own advantage; cunningly and slyly she arranges her
complaints and requests to suit her own purposes. While it was
easy for the physician to establish rapport with her, she would
at meals —not word to her fellow pa-
utter a single spontaneous
tients and, when spoken
would respond merely with "yes" or
to,
"no" or "don't know," accompanied by a vacant smile.
[•translator's note: The latter observations show the influence of Kret-

schmer's anthropometric theories typical of the pre-World War II period in
Europe.]
t No systematic analysis of the case was contemplated at the time of this report.
[269]
The impression she makes is that of a rather stiff and affectless
person who is extremely careless and indifferent, has no interests,
and finds no satisfaction in work. She is very spoiled and shows a

childish stubbornness, symptoms of a general disproportion be-
tween her age and mental development. In all her behavior she is
unpredictable: e.g., she would promise to attend an evening party

and would leave to dress, but suddenly decide to go to bed because
she was tired. On the other hand, she would stay for hours on
end without tiring if she liked a party. Or she would take a med-
ication once or twice and then refuse it, explaining that it had done
her harm, or taken her breath away, etc.
On the very first day she ran away to her father's hotel and
had to be brought back against her vigorous resistance. She stayed
four weeks in the closed ward before she could be retransferred
to the open ward. During the first few weeks she was afraid she
would be hypnotized. To the nurse she said, "Don't look at me
this way, you are trying to hypnotize me." Again and again, she
had to be reassured. After a few days she was more at ease.

Hypnosis was not mentioned any more, and when someone
brought up the topic, she asked, "Do you know how to hypno-
tize? I would like to be hypnotized." All she knew about hypnosis
was had once read about it and had seen a movie showing
that she
a hypnotic scene. Sleep and nourishment were satisfactory so that
the patient gained i î pounds within the first lo days.
Lola always wears the same dress, has only one pair of shoes,
and no hat. But she refuses to do any shopping: she does not want
to retain anything that might remind her later of her stay in
Kreuzlingen. Her superstition breaks through constantly although
she tries hard to cover it up: e.g., after a movie in which supersti-
tion is ridiculed she manages to join in the laughter. Otherwise, she
is irritable, and suspicious.
reticent, lacking in affect, resentful,
With tremendous stubbornness she continuously opposes treat-
ment by way of passive resistance. Over and over again, she has to
be urged to do some gardening. She likes to be by herself, paints a
little, reads novels, but excludesany serious literature as too diffi-
cult. In view of her growing opposition to her physician she —
falsely —
accused him of having lied to her a new physician took
over at the end of the year.*
• Lola's attitude toward the new doctor (this writer) is much friendlier and
[ 270]
Furthermore, she said she had experienced something else,

something so terrible that she could not possibly talk about it. On
a day when she might mention it or even merely hear of some-
more outgoing. She now agrees to wear new dresses, gives much more of herself,
and gradually, despite great inner inhibitions, finally talks about her anxieties. She
confesses to having been superstitious for the past six years. Her superstitions
started while she was staying with her grandmother and other relatives in New
York. At that time, an aunt of hers died unexpectedly after an illness of nine days.
Previously, a fortuneteller had predicted to Lola that something unexpected was
about to happen. After her aunt's death, Lola told her relatives that she had known
her aunt was bound to die. This event reinforced her belief in such phenomena.
Her superstition regarding male and female hunchbacks also began in New York.
While there, she saw a woman hunchback just prior to receiving a letter from her
friend reproaching her for not writing to him. This was not the only instance
when something unpleasant had happened to her after she had seen a hunchback.
Her stay in New York also marked the beginning of her superstition regarding
clothes. She became afraid that something might happen to her friend if she wrote
to him while wearing a particular dress. This fear prevented her from writing to
him at all for a long period of time. It took a great deal of effort to induce Lola
to disclose this information, meager as it was. She constantly found new excuses,
such as, that it would take her too long to explain things, the doctor would laugh
at her, etc. At the same time, however, she added that these experiences had, in-
deed, been hard to bear.
Subsequently, she reported that her obsessive ideas had grown worse after she
had seen her fiance. She became utterly exhausted by the effort involved in con-
—
cealing her compulsions all of which were associated with fear that bad luck
—
might befall him from her fiance. Bit by bit, her superstition extended to a multi-
tude of situations. For instance, if she happened to see four pigeons, she inter-
preted this as a sign that she could receive a letter, since the number four {cuatro
in Spanish) contains the letters c-a-r-t (as in carta —
letter). She loved her fiance
but was afraid he would not marry her if he knew the state she was in. On the
other hand, she felt she should not be with him at all, so as not to be overwhelmed
by her obsessive ideas. She explained that it was the compulsion to "read" some-
thing into everything that made her so exhausted, and the more so, the more she
was among people. Reluctantly, and with an embarrassed laugh, she reported that,
among other things, canes with rubber ends had a special significance for her. She
would always turn back when she saw a gentleman with such a cane, since she
"read" into it the following: "cane" in Spanish = hasten; "on" in reverse = no;
"rubber" in Spanish = goma; the first two letters in English = "go." When put to-
which stands for, "Don't go on! Turn back!" When-
gether, this equals "no go,"
ever she had not obeyed this portent, something had happend to her. When she
was very anxious inside and saw someone supporting his face with his hand, she
felt reassured. Why? "Hand" in Spanish = wano (second syllable no)\ "face" in
Spanish = cara,which reminded her of the English word, "care." From this, she
arrived at: "no care," i.e., no reason to worry or, in Spanish, 720 cuidado. Any
word beginning with "car" in Spanish or German {cara, carta, Kartoffel) and con-
nected with something that means "no" signifies luck. Anything containing the
syllables "si" or "ja" implies "yes" to an inner questioning: e.g., nar-iz (nose)
"is" is "si" in reverse; ore-ja (ear); si-lla (chair); go-Id stands for "go," etc.
[271]
thing connected with it, she could not wear anything new because
she was afraid the memories of that experience would contaminate

what was new and bring her bad luck. After many weeks of prep-
arations and protestations on her part we finally succeeded in
bringing the facts to %ht. By way of mere guessing, as in a social
game, we found that the experience in question centered around
an umbrella (she herself avoided uttering the word). Umbrella
[Schirm] contained si, an affirmation. When her father had bought
a new umbrella two years ago, she met a woman hunchback on
the street. She had been afraid of hunchbacks before; but now all
the bad luck emanating from that hunchback was displaced onto
the umbrella. "It was in the umbrella" because the bad luck was
confirmed through the meaning of the si. Shortly thereafter, her
mother had touched the umbrella. From that moment on, she was
set against her mother and against traveling with her to France
where she was supposed to meet her fiance. Why? Because her
mother would transfer the bad luck from herself and the umbrella
to her boy friend. On that same day she had had still another "ter-
rible experience" of which she really could not talk. She saw an
old man who was not exactly a hunchback but nevertheless some-
how crippled; she categorically refused to talk more about this
experience.
After eight months, Lola's situation became more complicated
when her anxiety focused upon a certain nurse (Emmy), a par-
ticularly pretty and dehcate girl. Lola provided the following in-
formation: The nurse (whose name Lola never used in speaking or
writing —she just called her "she," or "that one") owned an um-
brella similar to her father's. It had been lying about in various
places, all of which now made her feel very frightened, and was
the cause of her feeling so much sicker. While disclosing this,
Lola was very upset. She got worse in the course of the following
weeks and looked more worried and tortured. She was particularly
fearful of everything that could possibly be connected with the
closet inwhich she had seen Emmy's umbrella. She asked people
to swear that this or that had not touched anything that was in
that closet. She refused to use the towels because they could have
been close to a brush that might possibly have been in contact
with the umbrella and, to be on the safe side, she called for her
towels at the office herself. She abstained from drinking water be-
[27^]
cause the glass might have been in the closet. The cleaning brush
might have been left lying on the sink, so she cleaned her sink
herself. Again she wanted to give away her clothes, refused to
change her dress, and wore soiled underwear. When she learned
that "that one" was on duty on her floor, she got so upset that
she had to be transferred to another building at once. She insisted
she would "go crazy" if she were to meet "that one" again.
Lola found ostensible relief when she got permission to de-
scribe her fears in writing to the physician. Ten months after her
*
arrival, she expressed her feelings as follows:
I realize that you didn't understand me. But what I have suf-
fered here I don't want to suffer again, I would like to make it
more clearly understandable to you, but I can't, and this is the

saddest thing on earth. Everything I gather from the signs always
happens —so I believe in this superstition. What I went through in
the closed ward I shall never forget, and later in Villa Roberta the
most terrible because I thought if I didn't say anything I would
get out sooner, but because of that it got worse, that superstition.
When I think of my father who touched that, this is the saddest
thing on earth, and then I imaginedhow it would feel to see him
again, therefore I don't even want to think of going home. Be-
cause of all this, and not because of anything that happened to
me, my life is in complete desperation. Now, after I have struggled
so much to get away from these thoughts and after I left in Villa
Roberta what reminded me of them, I feel better the first time

since all that happened. But the great fear never leaves me, that
she could come here, if only in passing by, and even if I wouldn't
see her, the mere idea makes me despair. I believe that the moment
she would enter the house she would bring the worst bad luck with
her, where she steps she leaves bad luck, and I cannot help this
idea, and I see that it is very difficult and think that it would be
better to leave here before such a thing could happen. I am very
sorry to tell you this, but with the terror I am in day after day I
cannot possibly change.

And all this is only because I love him more than anything and
want to forget it above everything, to see if I can be different, be-
[
• translator's note: Lola's letters are written in a foreign and more or less
confused style. Wherever feasible, some of the original touch has been preserved. J
[273]
cause I feel that without it, maybe, I am almost healthy —the only
thing is this.
Some weeks later, she wrote to her physician that again "some-
thing terrible" had happened to her, and that she could not possi-
bly stay. While she was resting on the terrace, "she" had passed.
Lola could not stand the fear any more, didn't know what to do,
how to protect herself, and she was afraid the bad luck would
catch up with her. She felt that she had something frightful in
herself.
Lola refused to go out because she could never be sure where
"she" had gone. She stopped taking books from the library since
"that one" may have read the same book. She wanted to return a
new had worn it when she had seen the nurse
dress because she
downstairs. Two
months later, Lola again got into a state of ex-
citement, at one time because she was afraid she had seen the nurse
from a distance, at another because she had seen another nurse
bringing Emmy's bicycle into the kitchen wing. She planned to go
on a hunger strike because the bicycle had infected all the food.
Finally, she merely refused to eat butter, which she beheved was
most strongly infected (without reveaUng her reasons). Another
time, she objected to using a blanket any longer because a lady had
touched it with a dress that in some way seemed to be related to
the nurse. In the early morning she sent a letter to a matron asking
her to call her immediately on the phone and to tell her whether
she was right yesterday when she believed she had seen the nurse.
Actually, that day she had run after an elderly woman whom she
had mistaken for the nurse. When she had lost sight of the woman,
she started to brood over the question of whether the woman
really had been the nurse. The
grew untenable, so much
situation
so that the physician threatened Lola that he would bring the
nurse into her room himself if she continued in this way. There-
upon Lola became very upset, turned furiously against the doctor,
screaming loudly. Nevertheless, she put up with having the clothes,
of which she was so afraid, returned to her room. She also put on
a new dress.*
• On I would break the "terror" of such "compulsive" patients
other cases, too,
by whenever there was no other way out. The precondition is,
a counter-terror,
of course, something of a relationship of trust between patient and doctor.
[274]
On the day the bicycle incident occurred, Lola wrote her

doctor about it and reported a new experience:
I was lying downstairs on the deckchair, and saw two figures in
the corridor who watched me; when I turned toward them, they
ran away, so I stayed downstairs. But it was very uncanny. Then
the girlfriend of . . . you know who . . . returned, took the
bicycle out, and took it to "that one."
About the same time, Lola took an overnight trip to Zurich

with another nurse to replenish her wardrobe. The day before, she
had asked the nurse to have a young gardener work in front of her
window on the morning of the day they were to leave. She
wanted to guarantee a lucky day by arranging to see a young
man first thing in the morning. Naturally, this request was not
complied with. When the nurse called for her, she first had to put
her hat on the table: the hat, said Lola, was a warning that some-
thing might happen, and one had to be on guard. On the way to
the station and while changing trains she covered her eyes and ears
with her hands. Shortly before they arrived in Zurich, she became
alarmed and explained she couldn't buy anything today because
she had "seen something." Since the day was "lost" anyway she
felt happy and at ease as long as nobody spoke to her about shop-
ping, or pointed out stores where she should shop tomorrow, or

took her to streets in which she was to walk tomorrow; otherwise,
stores and streets would be "lost" again tomorrow. She would not
enter any hotel but a cheap one, and never one with a doorman.
If everything else seemed to click, she would then "see" a "no."
Eventually a suitable hotel was found. In the evening Lola stood

happily by the window and listened to the unwonted noises of
the street. Next morning she visited a cheap department store with
her eyes closed, guided by the nurse. She actually purchased a
dress, but ran out in horror when she noticed that the saleslady
was squint-eyed. In another store, books were exhibited in the
entrance; on the cover of one of the books Lola saw the picture of
a nun; the effect was that this store was "lost" for her, too.
There was no other department store left, so she finally agreed
to visit a regular store but everything had to be cheap and should
not be pretty. She would tolerate only female sales personnel, and
not the slightest bit of red on a dress, because her last summer
[275]
Selected Papers of LtrowiG Benswanger
dress had been red. Shoes she could not buy because men would
wait on her in ladies' shoe stores. On their return trip, Lola insisted
on carrying all her packages herself and on the way home avoided
meeting anybody. Back in her room, she made the nurse put all
her old things on the table before she permitted her to hang up the
new ones.
When Lola refused to let the nurse dust her room, the girl re-
plied, "What do you think the doctor would say?" Whereupon
Lola remarked, "The doctor knows about it anyway; I know it is
just superstition." On the other hand, in her many written com-
plaintsand descriptions, often scribbled on scraps of paper, she
told the physician again and again of her "indescribable fear," of
the "most horrible possibility" that in years to come she would
have to remember "all that," which was too frightening ever to
name:
It is worse than what you said —that I think something could hap-
pen to me —such a thing would perhaps only last a moment, but
this is such a horrible feeling that it will never be finished as long
as the thing is present.
All over again, she tried to explain her situation to the doctor,
time and again she promised to do everything he advised, in the
hope that he would help her "to find a solution." Later events
proved that she did have confidence in her physician. One day she
implored him not to mention the word "nurse" any more: "The
mere sound of the word hurts me because it will always be the
saddest of all my memories."
Another time she wrote:
I feel such a sadness in me and wonder if it means that something
even worse could come, and therefore I cannot rest and am asking
you, please, to tell me whether it could come from "her." ... I
don't want to write it down. . . . For I see in the signs con-

stantly that I should be cautious, and so many things, so that I
don't know what may happen.
That Lola is by no means as empty of emotions and affectless

as she appeared to the first physician is illustrated by the following
lines:
[276I
In order to you everything quite frankly I shall explain to you

tell
how it reallyand was, so you will understand me, I hope. What

is
had happened was something so horrible beyond all description

that it is now for me the saddest thing on earth, because after this,
I am now lost forever to my fiance. I love him so much that I got
sick only for that reason. Since I met him first I haven't forgotten
him for one single second and what makes me most sad is that I
feel that he always thinks of me.
Unfortunately, I know of only one of Lola's dreams. Here it is in
her words:
The dream was that my grandmother had sent her bed here. And
suddenly — comes and lies down on that bed, and then on mine
which was next to it. It was terrible. I was so afraid when I
thought that my grandmother would lie down there that I had
to go and see you to tell you about it, and you said you had an-
other one for my grandmother. I felt very reassured by this.
Later the dream continued with something else. But this is what
disturbs me most because I see it in the bed because it is also called
"cama" and the sound "cam" in English, and because all this was
together, I don't know if it means something bad.
Lola had been in Bellevue a little longer than fourteen months

when an aunt called for her and explained that Lola's family was
now ready to permit her to marry the Spanish physician, and that
a meeting with him in Paris was planned.
Lola was overjoyed and immediately joined her aunt in her
hotel without even letting her enter the sanatorium and without
ever entering it again herself.
Catamnesis / The material for this chapter consists primarily

of letters from Lola to her physician, to whom she still turned
for advice and help; of letters by her relatives who time and again
asked him to exercise his influence with the patient, and of a report
from her doctor in Paris. This material extends over a period of
four years.
Eight days after her departure, Lola reported that the trip to
Paris had gone well and that she was returning her passport be-
[277I
cause the photograph reminded her too much of "everything un-

pleasant" she had experienced here. After another two days, Lola
was feeling wonderful. She enjoyed her reunion with her grand-
mother and cousin, did a lot of shopping, and everything went
very well. She even went to a hairdresser's. "Imagine, a hunchback
cut my hair." She asked that her cordial regards be given to all
those to whom she had not said good-bye.

October 17: She had attended a theatre and a movie, still felt
much better but could not forget "the things the doctor knew
about. . She often dreamed of them, and felt somewhat re-
.
."
Ueved on awakening, when she reaUzed she had been dreaming

and that she was "so far away." She felt nostalgic when thinking
of the sanatorium, but a great number of diversions were help-
ing her to get over it. "You must have wondered at my sending
you my passport, I got so upset at the idea of arriving in Paris vAth
it since 'she' had touched it so often and I thought that everything
else could get infected by it, so I don't want to have it any more."
October 29: "I feel fine. On the surface I seem of joy, only
full
because I have no such fears as I had in the sanatorium and there-

fore feel reHeved, but the only thing which worries me is that I
feel I am infected, mainly with what you know." She asked the
doctor for advice because she felt that it was wrong not yet to
have informed her fiance of her move to Paris. It was so difficult
for her to write. She was certain that the doctor would advise her
to do the right thing "so as to know better what he (the fiance)
would answer." But the doctor should write his answer personally,
because "I am afraid that 'her' girlfriend might do it." (The secre-
tary who was a friend of the nurse in question.)
November 2: She did not want to write the letter to her
fiance herself but wanted it to be done by her aunt or cousin, but,
in any case, would like to know what her fiance thought of her. "I
know that I can't think of marrying, and that I would become
*
different in that I won't have to feel infected, I find it difficult."
She tries "to forget herself in diversions," attends the theatre often,
finds everything wonderful, but afterwards feels infected and fears
the future. Maybe, the only thing left was to take the veil, but she
would like to let "him" know ahead of time. "All this I have in me
and I don't know how to go about it."
[•translator's note: Confusion is in the original.]
[278]
December 7: She felt the same way, not quite all right, a little
tired. Should she go to a Sanatorium? Preferably one known to

the physician. "I remember everybody at Kreuzlingen."
December 24: Christmas and New Year wishes. The doctor's
letter had brought her joy and reassurance. She had had a look at
the sanatorium he recommended; its park had reminded her of
Bellevue's. She Uked the doctor there; was looking forward to
going there in the beginning of the new year, being "very much
inneed of rest."
February 3: Lola's entrance into the sanatorium had been post-
poned for external reasons. This letter was her first in Spanish,
obviously written hastily and with many corrections. She wrote of
her great anxiety, emphasized her confidence in the physician and
asked him to write her again. She wrote in Spanish, she told him,
because of an obsession: her fiance, whom she loved so much and
who was the object of so many of her obsessions, had been in
Paris and had learned that she, too, was there, but had not known
that she was staying in an institution. . . . Terrible fear that he
would ask to see her. Since she was still "contagious," she had
asked her doctor to ask her fiance to leave Paris that very day. To
be quite sure that he would actually do him know
it, she had let
that she was doing everything to be cured and would see him in
a month. "But this is impossible and I am so afraid he might come
to the sanatorium." Should she stay there?
February 14: She seemed to have forgotten her previous letter,
since she reports as news her entrance into the sanatorium. The
building in which she was placed reminded her of the closed ward
at Bellevue. Her nurse in the new place* had told her that she
knew the Bellevue ward. But that girl was French so it didn't mat-
ter too much. She had soon moved to another building and liked it
a great deal. But although the doctor was sympatisch, she could
not "tell him anything," as she did not believe she could change.
Should she stay any longer?
May I Her doctor had left for some weeks, and a strange doc-
:
tor had arrived who was "sent by her relatives." She did not see
him because she did not like him. Would I write to her aunt asking
her to leave her alone and not send "that other one" any more.
[•translator's note: The German word for "nurse" is abbreviated from

Schywester to schwes.]
[^79]
Selected Papers of Ltniwic Binswanger
On June 2 her aunt wrote that her niece's ailment had deteri-
orated lamentably. She appeared to be hallucinating. For a month
she had been in the ward for the most agitated patients. Her beg-
ging to be transferred could not be complied with as she was in a
state of terrific anxiety.The doctors had little hope for her re-
covery. Lola's relatives' only hope had been Professor Janet; he
had diagnosed her case as serious but assmred them that Lola was
not irremediablement perdue [incurably lost] But after Dr. Jan- .
et'ssecond visit, she had stubbornly refused to receive him, giving

as her reason that she knew he was "sent by her relatives." Since
her entrance into the French sanatorium she had developed an
animosity against her entire family, and the fact that someone or
something came from them sufficed to make her not receive him,
or accept it. Professor Janet had recommended another sanato-
rium; would I —her first
—please
doctor endorse this advice? She
would not leave the present place because I had recommended it;
she acted only on my orders.
On
June 15 Lola, too, mentioned Professor Janet; she believed
that I knew him, he was said to be "very good," but she could
never have him as her doctor (no explanation). She was some-
what better, having "less of the earlier idea," and having "nothing
new for three months either."
But my relatives cannot believe it and think that I have not im-
proved here; because they think one can be cured faster, and all
this upsets me so much.
The first doctor, who was sympatisch, had not yet returned.
Should she stay there or go to some other place?
December 8: She often wanted to write, but it was impossible
for her. She had had an unpleasant time from September to No-
vember. She wanted to leave, go to the country; but the nice doc-
tor had advised her to do something else, at the request of her
family, because she did not want The doctor
to live with them.
had prevented them from knew "that I
visiting her because he
would manage to get away without them." She was now in an-
other sanatorium but wanted to go back to the first one since she
beheved that the nice doctor could cure her, "because he under-
stands me as well as you do."
Five weeks later, she wrote from the original place that she
[280]
was doing better. Three months later, her doctor wrote: "EUe
ne va pas mieux; la manie du doute, les phobies, les idees supersti-
tieuses persistent, aggravees par des hallucinations, des idees d'in-
fluence, et un veritable delire de persecution. Cette psychasthenie
delirante menace d'evoluer vers la chronicite, ce que je n'ai pas
cache a la famille."
Enclosed was aletter from Lola. Her fiance had written he
would have to know within eight days what her intentions were
or else he would have to make other plans. It seemed to her that
all this was put into his mouth by her family. She was very upset
when she learned that her family had written to him. Her fiance
must not write to her family either. I should write him that she
felt even better than last year and would be able to see him "in a
few months." If he agreed and promised not to write to her fam-
ily, she would recover sooner.
October 25: Her handwriting is much better and larger.

Constant upsets "caused by her family." In June, her mother ar-
rived unannounced although Lola had said that she could not see
any member of the family because of her ideas.
One should never surprise me with something unexpected because

I get a certain idea from it which stays forever.
Her fiance had come to Paris, too. She was very angry for he
knew she did not want to see him. If she, herself, had wanted him
to come, the situation would have been different. She had made
him leave immediately and did not even feel hke writing him yet.
She asked for advice, and inquired elaborately about the nurse
who had been in Zurich with her.
Several days later, her aunt reported that there was no change
in her niece's condition; she Hved a secluded life in her room, did
not want to see any member of the family, and was "full of
manias." She inquired about Professor Wagner von Jauregg, who
had been recommended to the family.
The next letter came four months later, still from Paris. Lola
seemed to have left the sanatorium. She deplored the death of her
nice doctor who had understood her so well. For the first time
she, herself, wrote about her ideas of reference and persecution
(in a tremorous, unsteady handwriting)
[281]
Selected Papers of Lxn)wiG Binswanger
Unfortunately, I haven't written you sooner to tell you what hor-

rible people were after me and spread all kinds of bad things about
me. I knew that they came into m.y room and watched me from
outside with greedy curiosity.* I don't know them. I shall tell you
about them. They are South Americans,t and most of them are
not admitted there; they are so false and, as I observed, only out
to kill. I feel so sad to be seen and watched for so long a time by
these strangers. My family is influenced t by them to believe that
I am sick. Perhaps I can tell you more about it some other time. I
would never have believed the things I have discovered about
these people. I am only writing you to explain everything I have
gone through, and without being able to talk to anybody; they
are always listening and planning evil things, so I have to be very
cautious. I planned to go to . . . for some time, or do you think
it would be better to go directiy to South America from here? I
have had no diversions for such a long time. Please give your wife
my regards and many thanks for her card. I was not able to write
her. Please tell her that as soon as I am freed from these people I
shall write to her, and hoping that all are well, many regards to all
and to you, Yours sincerely.
The last letter, dated nine months later, came from the patient's
home town in South America. Its content and style reveal still
more of her delusional system than the preceding one:
. . . that my parents are under the influence of all the doctors

who arrange to have me treated with such insolence and watch
me [neugieren mich] in the house and make everybody believe
that I am sick. It is like having made an invention to heal the sick
and to find out who is right. I am writing you this letter because
I received a signal from other persons that I may write, and be-
cause I want to be free of all that, so I thought of asking you to

help me to get away from here. Maybe I could say that there is a
cheaper sanatorium you could free me from here with-
in Z., or if
out my going into a sanatorium, this is what I want. Furthermore,

if these doctors have other interests to watch me and find out
[
• translator's NOTE: neugierten —a neologism as a verb, derived from the noun
Neugier.]
t Lola's original letter shows names of her fellow countrymen.
[X translator's note: suggestioniert, another neoiogisHL]
[282]
whom I write to and whether I tellwhat terrible crimes they have

directed, after they let me talk to you in this letter. For three years
they are after me and have been so successful that I wasn't able at
all to get rid of them. When they kept me in . . . like a prisoner
before I came here, because I had noticed that the president's son
while being very ill was murdered by a governess — I would say
this aloud during the rime I stayed there to see whether someone
would hear me and help me to get away from there. Some days
later it was in the papers that Mrs. Wilson of North America was
murdered. I was informed of it several days before through cer-

tain words of the nurses. Everything I said which was similar to
these words they murdered her with, and let me know it before
through signs that it would happen. After all I am saying, and
even after I have said it and they know that I did, about their
crimes, they calmly act as if they hadn't done anything, and this
way they get away with it. Because they are so evil, I try again
and again to tell somebody what they did, as I'm afraid that fur-
ther crimes could happen. These doctors in . . . are their friends,

as I wrote you, and the service is dispatched from there in order
to kill, they are used to doing it. Already in the sanatorium in
Paris they watched me and had me treated quite unfairly when
they saw that I was in a good mood. It was terrible how they had
them treat me, this was at the time when they wanted me to for-
get what I had discovered about them in London —about all those
who went so far as to pursue me on the streets.
October 8:
I wrote this some days ago because I have difficulties with writing
letters and going out; for my relatives have become like sick peo-
ple through these guys or doctors who say that they are from . . .
and who want make them believe that I am crazy. Because of

to
all this I have made up my mind to get away from here as a maid
and would only like you to help me to get away from here, or
else there would be further crimes. I noticed that they planned to
feed something to me or to give me an injection, something which

makes one sick or makes people believe that one is sick. When I
recently wanted to mail a letter at the post office I noticed that
they made me notice . . . because there was a very good doctor
here, his name was H., and a car ran against him and killed him.
[283]
After they let me see from signs that this meant the same, his
nephew who is also a doctor passed me and greeted me in a

strange way as if this should happen to me, too; and with all this
they want to make me sick with my nerves. I am still very sad

about something that happened recently, and I am sure that they
are behind it. It is that accident of the pilots. On October 3, they
had someone take something from me which I needed legally, and
you should know that they are the only ones who can take it
away and do something evil, also one of the pilots came here,
and I overheard him say something about something evil that was
going to happen . . . that was a message. And when I asked my
brother several times to take me out, he told me that the car was
out of order, and it was they who did it, and they put it in the
newspaper as a caricature so that he did not know where it came
from. I think you will understand that for some time I shall not
be able to stay with my relatives. With cordial regards, Yours
sincerely . . .
Existential Analysis
In the case of Lola, we could observe in an extreme degree the

phenomenon of what we call mundanization [Verweltlichung],
a process in which the Dasein is abandoning itself in its actual, free
potentiality of being-itself, and is giving itself over to a specific
world-design. In all these cases, the Dasein can no longer freely
allow the world to be, but is, rather, increasingly surrendered over
to one particular world-design, possessed by it, overwhelmed by
it. The
technical term for this state of being surrendered over is:
"thrownness" [Geivorfenheit].
I have shown the important part played by the formation of
an ideal in the process of being increasingly overwhelmed by a
specific world-design. Far from widening or deepening the abil-
ity of being-oneself, the Extravagant [verstiegene] ideal restricts
the possibilities of being-oneself, so much so that the existence is
only able to be itself within quite specific, ever narrower Hmits;

outside these limits it becomes more and more dependent and
bonded, that is, squeezed in the vise of a single world-design or
world-model. This is what we called "thrownness," absorption of
[284]
the existence by "world." * What all such cases have in common

is that, to express everyday language, they are not able to
it in
harmonize ideal and reality; or, in terms of psychopathology,
they represent schizoid types. Their schizophrenic states have then
to be seen only as a more advanced stage of this process of thrown-
ness as the existence gets more and more overwhelmed by one
single world-design. Becoming overwhelmed in this sense finds its
extreme expression in the phenomenon of delusion.
In contrast to earHer cases, Lola does not verbalize her ideal.
Nevertheless, it can be easily recognized. Her ideal is being alone,
and being left alone by the world. From the very beginning, she
preferred being by herself. She Hked to lock herself up in her room
and with the idea of taking the veil.
flirted could also say that We
her ideal was to let no one and nothing come close to her. This
calls for a world-design in which beings in general and, particu-
larly, the coexistors \ Mitdaseinenden] are accessible only by way
of a predesign of unfamiliarity, of the Uncanny, or — alternatively
—of the expectation of the Threatening. Just as Ellen West pur-
sued the ideal of slenderness, of having an ethereal body, Jiirg
Ziind, that of societal security, so Lola was after the ideal of se-
curity of existence in general. And as Ellen foundered ("went to
the bottom spiritually") due to the overwhelming "claims" of her
body or those of her environment, so Lola foundered through the
"claims" of the disturbing world at large. While Ellen sought
cover against getting fat by fasting, Nadja againstbecoming "con-
spicuous" by hiding, and Jurg tried to be "inconspicuous" by
wearing a protective overcoat, appearing harmless, and mixing
with upper-class company, so Lola sought cover from the world,
which disturbed her security and peace of mind, by the continuous
interrogation of "fate." Thus, everything unfamiliar or threaten-
This falling-to and being-thrown was analyzed by Heidegger in Sein und

•
7.eitprimarily with regard to the "they," (i.e., to gossip, curiosity, and ambiguity),
in other words, to the everyday being-in-the-world. These analyses were extended
in Heidegger's review of the second part of Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of the
Symbolic Forms: Das mythische Denken (Deutsche Literaturzeitung, Neue Folge,
5. Jahrgang, 21, 1928, pp. 1000-1012). What makes this extension significant for the
case of Lola is the replacement of the being overpowered in the sense of being
thrown into the "they," by being overpowered (mana) in the sense of the "thrown-
ness" of the mythical existence.
[285]
ing was to be kept away or removed. All these are attempts to

maintain and defend the thoroughly unfree (because once and for
all determined) "ideal" self against anything contradictory. What
is new in the case of Lola is, therefore, not the process of mundan-
ization as such, that is, the ever increasing being-given-over to the
overwhelming power of a specific world-design and the being-
possessed by it, but the fact that Lola feels threatened by an exist-
ence becoming uncanny [ Verunheimlichung]
Lola's entire being is, as we have seen, used up by attempts
to protect herself from anything that could disturb her existence
and call it in question. She is only reassured if she can protect her-
from the Uncanny by means of certain rituals, just as Ellen
self
West was reassured only when she thought herself protected

through the practices of fasting and purgation, Jiirg Ziind through
his overcoats or his ostensible harmlessness.^ Where the person fails
in controlling that ever-lurking fear, that tightrope walk over the

abyss of existence, there existence plunges into the abyss, and panic
and anxiety attacks follow. In this case, the Dasein is steeped in
anxiety, but not in intrinsic or existential anxiety, which consists
in being submerged in nothingness as the source and ultimate test
of existential maturation, but in an extrinsic, derived anxiety, fear
of something definite, of a specific catastrophe.* And yet we must
recognize that already the formation of the ideal as such stemmed
from a secret existential anxiety, from that of having to accept the
existence as being such and such. And so, because the ideal had
already originated in anxiety, the threat to it had necessarily to
lead to the anxiety attack. This we must always keep in mind.
Kierkegaard has pointed out that willing not-to-be-oneself (or,
better, not-to-be-myself) while at the same time clinging stub-
bornly to wiHing to-be-myself in the sense of mere personal
identity, already impHcs despair in the sense of anxiety. (It should
be remembered that in all these cases love, the dual mode, had al-
ready been abdicated earlier as an important mode of being.) In

Lola's case, however, despair is not only, as in the other cases,
despair at having to be in the world in a particular way and no
other; it is despair at being-in-the- world at all!
Before we turn to the existential analysis of Lola's case, we

• I shall point out later in what way we can still speak of existential anxiety in
the superstitious stage.
[286]
must focus more closely on the conflict between the ideal and the
resistance from the dull world ("reality"). This conflict is most
clearly and simply expressed in the case of Ellen West; there the
ideal was slendemess and the resistance appeared in the form of
hunger. Thus the ideal was contradicted by a vital need, an irre-
sistible force arising from the bodily sphere. The more the need
was suppressed for the sake of the ideal, the more voracious it
grew. More and more the ethereal world became a grave world,
a world of the hole. This overgrowth and hypertrophy of the
hunger-theme proves in itself that the Dasein must originally
have felt threatened from the direction of the vital sphere, that of
the body, and that already the ideal (of slenderness) must have
represented a dam, a defense against the threat. Where the dam
was not quite "tight" or had "gaps" (acute feeling of hunger at
the sight of tempting food), anxiety poured freely through, and
an anxiety attack occurred. Fasting and purging were attempts to
close the gaps. But eventually the entire dam threatened to col-
lapse, and existence threatened to be reduced to voracious greed;
Ellen West escaped this peril by way of suicide.
were not so simple.
In another case, that of Jiirg Ziind, things
Itwas said before that objections to the ideal and resistance to it
were offered by the world of fellowmen. Against this, it could be
argued that Jiirg Ziind's fellowmen had done no harm to him, and
that their "resistance," their scorn, their criticism existed largely
"in his imagination." But not only had Jiirg Ziind actually suf-
fered in his childhood from the scorn of "the street," and not
only had this suffêring become "fixated" in him, but also and—
—
more important the world of one's fellowmen is, in itself, a
power that every existence comes to feel, in whatever way it may
come to terms with it: by suffering from it, or even breaking
down under it, by defying it, ignoring it, or scoffing at it. This is
the power to which —
in the case of Jiirg Ziind —
anxiety is pre-
dominantly tied. Here the ideal of social elevation is the dam, the
safeguard against existential anxiety focused upon the world of
fellowmen. The more closely the dam encircles the existence, the
more intensely anxiety breaks through its gaps. Here, too, attempts
at covering up are attempts to fill in the gaps all over again. But
eventually here, too, the dam proves insufficient. Existence escapes
anxiety into inactivity, the mental death. Jiirg Ziind can no longer
[287]
come to terms with life and wastes himself in ever-new "last

efforts." Again, the idea has to capitulate to reality, to the an-
thropological fact that existence does not exist in isolation but
shares its which is always co-
existence with others. Existence,
existence, conquers the Extravagant wish not to be bothered by
one's fellowmen and to be absorbed only by one's own existence.
Anticipating the argument that the Dasein eventually does pre-
vail in its singular, isolated, "autistic" form, the answer is that it is
erroneous to consider the extremely autistic existence as a solip-

sistic one; in complete autism, the Dasein does not exist any more
as solus ipse at all; it does any more as a
not exist self.* When it
retreats from the world of fellowmen, from its coexistors, the

Dasein also forgoes itself, or rather forgoes itself as a self. This
only applies to complete schizophrenic autism. Where man merely
shuts himself off from the world, where he just retreats in grudge
and anger, suspicion or scorn, he stUl exists — as a grudging, laugh-
ing, distrustful, or scornful self.
It is precisely this kind of thinking that lets us see in schizo-
phrenic autism not simply a higher degree of a psychological pe-
culiarity (e.g., of introversion), but helps us to understand it
Daseinsanalytically as a mode of being that is essentially different

from any psychological category. Where Dasein no longer tem-
poralizes and spatializes, where it has ceased to be a self and to
communicate with others, it no longer has a "here" (da). For it
has its "here" only in the transcendence [Vberstieg] of Care
[Sorge] —not to speak of the exaltation [Vberschwang] of Love
— or, in other words, in its accessibility [Erschlossenheit], which
isonly a comprehensive term for temporalization, spatialization,
being a self, etc. This also explains why we do not experience an
extremely autistic schizophrenic as being "the like of us," but as
an automaton. We do not consider him a fellowman who is re-
sponsible for his behavior toward us and from whom we gen-
erally expect a meaningful [sinnvolle] answer, but an irresponsi-
ble, nonrcsponsive "mere creature."
(This, of course, does not
touch upon the purely humane medical attitude toward the pa-
tient, which still "sees" the fellowman in the "creature.") All
• For this reason the term autiwi (autos-sclf) is far too "psychologistic" and,
in any case, misleading in regard to the final autistic states.
[288]
this is illustrated by the case of Lola Voss, whose autism, though

not complete, surpasses that of all the other cases.
The Uncanniness of the Dreadful / As in earlier cases, the

report on Lola Voss points at the outset to existential anxiety.
Her initial childish obstinacy obviously is not an expression of ex-
istential richness but of existential weakness, of fear of being over-
whelmed by "the others." At the age of twelve, Lola developed a
serious case of typhoid fever; it was then that she first felt inse-
cure in her own home and fled to tlie house of her grandmother.
In her twenty-second year, Lola felt anxious about a dress and
refused to wear it when going aboard ship. Gradually, her phobia
of clothes developed into her predominant symptom. But while
psychopathology is concerned with the genesis of this phobia,
existential analysis is concerned with the "world-design" of such
an existence, which always means nvith the mode of its being.
Hence, we immediately focus upon the "world" in which Lola
presents herself to us already as a very sick person; we do this
without bothering in the least about the purposive biological judg-

ment that pronounces Lola as "sick."
When Lola entered the sanatorium she was already completely
obsessed by the superstitious delusion (or delusional superstition)
that "something dreadful" might happen to her, something against
which she had to protect herself by purely superstitious practices.
Already her existence was at the point where it could only
move by balancing on a swaying rope across an abyss. Any
"wrong step" was bound to cause the plunge into the "dreadful
chasm," or, as Jiirg Ziind called it, into catastrophe. Superstition is
always an expression of fear of the demonic power of fate. The
"civilized Westerner," who publicly touches the table or wall, or
just exclaims "touch wood" when someone mentions his good
health or success in business, thus hopes to entreat fate to remain
good to him.
Such conjuring of fate springs from the fear of having chal-
lenged fate by the mere verbal affirmation of prosperity. Hence
this act represents at the same time an apology for the affirmation.
The act of conjuring or the "touch wood" formula contains an
appeal to fate not to consider that affirmation as hybris, as an
[289]
Selected Papers of Litowig Binswanger
overconfident presumption [ Vbermut] The person who uses the

.
"touch-wood" formula feels the power of fate to be present, and

at the same time beHeves that he can influence it in his favor. Such
belief in one's dependency upon a fate that is at once blind and yet
can be influenced or conjured, betrays the "primitivity" of "civil-
ized" modern man or, in Daseinsanalytic terms, the "gap" in his
"structure," * his existential weakness. By existential weakness we
mean that a person does not stand autonomously in his world,
that he blocks himself off from the ground of his existence, that he
does not take his existence upon himself but trusts himself to alien
powers, that he makes aUen powers "responsible" for his fate in-
stead of himself. All this appUes in an extreme degree to the case
of Lola Voss.
Earher we compared Lola's mode of existence to walking on a
swaying rope. We may be forgiven for using still another meta-
phor: Lola's existence can be likened to walking on the thin ice-
cover of a lake; she knows that at every step the ice may break,
and she catches desperately at every "straw" that offers itself.
Such metaphors are more telling than any abstract description.
They clarify more precisely the fundamental meaning of a phrase
to which we often refer: to stand with both feet firmly on the
ground. It signifies the mode of a secure existence, confident of
itself and the world, no need of any aid or props "from the
in
outside." t Only where existence moves on a swaying rope or a
thin ice-cover does it need such props. We call them props of
superstition, regardless of whether the entire existence moves on
thin ice (as in the case of Lola), or whether it gets onto thin ice
only now and then, as with most people. Standing on the ground
means indisputable protection of existence from falhng, sinking,
breaking through into its abyss. Walking on the thin cover of ice
means suspension in constant fear of such falling, plunging, sink-
[
• translator's NOTE: Bildung, which has the double meaning of education and
structure.]
t Hence, the phrase "to stand with both feet firmly on the ground" denotes
more than the phrase "to stand with both feet in reality," since the first also ex-
presses confidence in the existence as being firmly grounded in the earth. What we
call "reality" in everyday language as well as in psychology and psychopathology
should not be used an absolute sense, for that reality is but a particular world-
in
design, that of practice, of the practical intercourse with people and things, and of
the confidence on which it rests.
[ 290]
ing. In Ellen West, the "walking on ice" is expressed by the fear

of submersion in animalistic voracity; in Jiirg Ziind, by the fear
of a demotion to a proletarian level and falling into social disre-
pute; in the case of Lola, we deal with a fear of immersion in the
Dreadful per se, in what we have called "the naked horror." ^ He
who rests with both on the ground does not need
his feet firmly
any crutches or any external support, but he who walks on thin

ice exists mainly in seeking some protection. Such an existence
appears strange, or iindeed ridiculous, to the one who stands on
secure ground; he cannot understand it and tries to explain it to
himself, on the basis of a "weak will," or of sickness. We, how-
ever, intend to understand such an existence anthropologically,
that is, in its existential structure.
It is self-evident and follows from the total mode of existence
Lola Voss, her existence had deserted itself and
that, in the case of
had succumbed to an alien power in a much higher degree than in

any of the earlier cases. It does not maintain itself any more in
designing its own authentic potentiahties, but is constantly sucked
into the whirl of inauthentic possibilities of being, that is, such as
have not been chosen by it but imposed upon it by a power alien
to the self. In other words, it exists only as something "thrown,"
or in the state of thrownness. But thrownness is still part of exist-
ence. Hence the "alien power," although alien to the self, cannot
be considered as alien to existence, as something outside or above
it. Thrownness means, rather, the seduction and temporary reas-
surance, the alienation and entanglement of existence in general. It
is, in our case, from thrownness in the

definitely distinguished
sense of constant addiction, an addiction to the everyday power
of the "they," of being possessed by it. While Jiirg Ziind's exist-
ence was completely possessed by the coexistence of the others, by
the preponderance of public opinion and judgment, Lola's exist-
ence is possessed by and exposed to a very different, still more
anonymous, still less tangible superpower that seduces existence
time and again, reassures it temporarily, alienates it more and
more from itself, and completely prevails upon it. Existence in
this case is "tossed around" in a way quite different from the way
it is tossed around by the "they." Here it is not immersed in
"public gossip," in the curiosity and ambiguity of mere opinion.

True, it is interested in getting reassurance, but this time it is not
[291]
the seeming reassurance to be found in the bottomlessness of the

"they," but the seeming reassurance to be found in the bottom-
lessness of bargaining with "fate." Here the others do not play the
same decisive part as in being "they"; the decisive part is played
by a superior, uncanny, even dreadful it, confronted with which
the Dasein feels completely forlorn, abandoned by the others (and
even more so by the thou), and left to its own devices.
Here the existence of the others is only the main occasion for
the disturbance, for the existence turning uncanny, with the physi-
cian representing the one and only exception. He is, at least to
some degree, the post to which existence chngs while adrift in the
whirlpool, from whom it expects aid and protection as a sign that
some interhuman relationship is still possible.
Since existence in this case has totally surrendered to the Un-
canny and the Dreadful, it can no longer be aware of the fact that
the Dreadful emerges from itself, out of its very own ground.
Hence there is no escape from such fear; man stares fear-stricken
at the inescapable, and all his happiness and pain now depend
solely upon the possibihty of conjuring the Dreadful. His one and
only remaining desire is to become as familiar as possible with the
Dreadful, the Horrible, the Uncanny, and to make himself at
home with it. He sees two alternatives: the first is to "capture"
the Dreadful and anticipate its "intentions" with the help of
words and playing on wofds; the second, which interferes more
seriously with living and life, is to put spatial distance between
himself and the persons and objects struck by the Dreadful's curse.
The Word-Flay Oracle Lola's first type of defense

strikes us immediately as extremely playful. It impresses us as a
very thin net* with which Lola tries to protect herself against the
onslaught of the Dreadful and by which she seeks to guess its
intentions. In the oracle of syllables, Lola looks for indicators of

what to do and what not to do; hence both are no longer subject
to her decision but depend on constellations in the outside world,
• Owing to this "thinness," however, Lola is in a position to receive an answer
from fate in any event, be it positive or negative. We can say about this net what
Freud said in reference to one of his phobic patients (and which, incidentally,
holds true of any phobic system) "The net of conditions was far enough extended
:
to catch the prey in any case; it was, then, up to her whether she wished or did
not wish to pull it in." {Totem und Tabu, Gesammelte Schriften, X, ii8.)
[292]
determined by objects and words. As Lola, in her interpretations,

resorts to various languages, compositions of syllables, and inver-
sions of letters, she reveals the basic features of all superstition:
fixation upon the most inconspicuous, unimportant, and innocent
details, and their elevation into the sphere of the decisive majesty
of fate.
The modem man who, despite his alleged culture, knocks on

the table or contents himself with exclaiming, "touch wood,"
proceeds very much as Lola does, except that he is satisfied with
one single formula of defense against the "envy" and fickleness
of "fate." In any event, his "structure" [Bildung] discloses the
same gap that we know from Lola's "structure." What is impor-
tant in and characteristic of the superstitious mode of her being-
in-the-world is, we remember, the faith in the omnipotence of
words. This proves only that in the state of superstitious thrown-
ness anything that is and is revealed in some way, has the existential
character of a superpower (of the "mana" in mythical thinking).
For, in being dependent on and delivered to the Overpower-
ing, the Dasein is "possessed" by it and hence, as Heidegger has
shown, can only experience itself as belonging to it and related to
it. Therefore, everything-that-is and has in some way been re-
vealed, has the existential character of the Overpowering. While

words constitute an area that has always and everywhere been
preferred, they are only one form of that-which-is.
The "Taboo" In the inquiries made to the oracle of

fate we are dealing with a "net of conditions" designed by the
inquirer himself that in any event guarantees an answer; but the
net becomes an imposed one as soon as persons and objects are
involved.The meshes of the net are formed by contamination of
an object through contact with, or mere spatial closeness to, a
person or thing already avoided as taboo. Spatial closeness replaces
any context of psychological motivations or objective logic. The
complex and multi-stratified context of reference to the world is
reduced to the category of the spatial-beside-each-other, which,
of course, involves that of simultaneity.
The spatial-temporal proximity forms the clue to the propaga-
tion of the mishap, of the danger, of the Dreadful, of the anxiety-
Stimulus. Sometimes contiguity or temporal contingency prevails,
[293]
as when Lola believed that something would happen to her friend

if she wrote himwhile wearing a certain dress (the spatial
a letter
togetherness of dress and writing utensils might have played a
part); or when her father had bought a new umbrella and she
subsequently" met a woman hunchback. In this case, the ^-meaning
of the word "umbrella" confirms retroactively the bad-luck mean-
ing of the hunchback. But once something is afflicted with the bad-
luck meaning, it propagates the bad luck indefinitely. To the
spatial-temporal contact added similarity, which turned the um-
is
brella of nurse Emmy into a symbol of catastrophe. All this per-

tains only to the net per se. But since it is so far flung that it can
meet almost aU conditions, we have to observe where and when
the patient closes the net to catch her prey. Considering the "boy-
ish" character of Lola, it is not surprising that she chose for prey
the prettiest and most attractive of aU the nurses! The closing of
the net is largely determined by specific motives with regard to
the world [weltliche Motive]. But this belongs in the sphere of
psychopathology. What we are interested in here is the image of
the world that underlies such a "taboo pathology" (Freud).
Since the world-design is dominated by the fact of having sur-
rendered to something overpowering, we should not be surprised
that "superficial" categories such as spatial-temporal contact and
similarity are soprominent in it, that the frequent sequence of
meeting a hunchback and "bad luck" becomes the basis of a com-
pelHng process of induction, or that even psychic facts hke memo-
ries produce a contagious effect ("enter the new things") and no
longer fade out.

We
should wonder rather that categories and conclusions are
brought into play at all, since being possessed by the over-
still
powering Dreadful signifies "a specific being-driven-about" that

is of itself open everywhere to the new and thus can be waylaid
by anything and everything, just as it can establish relations be-
tween anything and everything.
Being "delivered to," "possessed by," "having surrendered,"
"thrownness" — all these expressions imply, in terms of time, the
bare inauthentic present; "bare" insofar as this present is not tem-
poralized out of the future and the past into a genuine present.
The bare present, in contrast to the actual moment, can only mean
a nondwelling [Unverweilen], a lack of location. Where, as in the
[294]
case of Lola, existence has surrendered in so large a measure to the

Overpowering, it remains totally closed to itself. It may again and
again be at rest for a moment, only to be "driven about," dis-
turbed, harassed anew.
With this, we are touching again, as in the case of Jiirg Ziind,
upon the Urgent and the Sudden, upon the "negation of temporal
continuity." As Kierkegaard puts it:
At one moment it is present, at the next one it is gone, and as it is
gone, it is again totally and completely present. It can neither be

worked into a continuity nor worked through to one.
In Heidegger's words, it is an "expression of non-freedom," of

being at the mercy of the world," or, as we call it, of "mundaniza-
tion" of existence. To quote Kierkegaard again:
In superstition, objectivity is granted Medusa's power to petrify
subjectivity and unfreedom does not want this magic to be dis-
turbed.^
Inasmuch as tantamount to freedom, to existence, or

continuity is
to formation of an authentic self [Selbstigung] and hence also

tantamount to communication (without which authentic existence
is not possible), negation of continuity means unfreedom, being-
possessed by the overpowering Sudden and, at the same time, lack

of independence and of communication. Indeed, existence as it is
"thrown" into uncanniness is destined to be isolated. That Lola
was still capable of opening herself to the second physician to the
degree she did, and that she lovingly clung to her fiance for so
long a time, only go to show that in her state of existence she was
not yet completely lacking in "self" [entselbstet], had not yet
completely surrendered to the Uncanny and Dreadful. Authentic
communication, however, was no longer possible. "Walls" of ta-
boolike fears and prohibitions, produced by the Overpowering,
constantly slid between her and the physician and, even more, be-
tween her and her fiance.
The spatialization of Lola's "world" is, as is customary, deter-
mined by temporalization. To the assault of the sudden, to the
restlessness and locationlessness, corresponds the discontinuous,
jerky, changing character of spatialization and its dependence on
the respective source of "contamination." The boundaries of the
[^95]
space within which the Dasein moves are extremely shiftable.

They are determined neither by the "oriented," nor by the geo-
graphical, nor by attuned [gestimmten] space,* but conform
merely to a space which is determined by the respective carriers
of Alana, the Dreadful. More specifically, this space is fixed on the
basis of visual distance and tactual closeness. It can be artificially
extended by closing the eyes (avoidance of sight). But here, too,
the process is one of increasing narrowing of the hfe space, leading
to the occupation of all exits of the life stage by "armed guards"
(Ellen West), and to anxious groping about in a vault. Here, too,
less and less moves, and nothing new happens any more. Everything
rotates —
around the old, well-known and yet so unknown Un- —
canny that, a priori, makes every situation into an anxiety-provoking
one, and pre-empts the possibility of entering and seizing it in ac-
cordance with its own meaning. The statement "Nothing moves any
more" is only another expression for the phenomenon that whatever
has once made its appearance does not leave the existence any more
— —
but having existential anxiety as its source remains fixated, which
is the reason why there is nothing more dreadful than being bur-
dened with "memories." Thus, Lola's environment, world of fellow

men, and personal world [ Umivelt, Mitivelt, Eigenivelt] are equally
ruled by Alana so that the distinction among them has lost its mean-
ing: their meaning is Mana! And since there is no longer a distinction
between the memory of an object and the object itself, the bur-
den of memories is just as narrowing and oppressive as the prox-
imity of the respective objects themselves. The memories block
the road into the future, future here meaning the being-ahead-of-
oneseif, just as the respective objects block the "space." Instead of
mastering the memories, of being able to shake them off, or to
work them through existentially for the sake of regaining free-
dom, the afflicted objects, as such, have to disappear (must be sold,
given away, burned or remitted). The place of existential progress
or maturation, of achieving the self [Selbstgeivimiung] has long
since been taken by a mundane [iveltliche] restitution whereby
existence was veriveltlicht. Lola's mode of existence, as can easily
be seen, is much more deeply and completely delivered to "the
world" than that of Ellen West or Jiirg Ziind. Nowhere do we

notice any trace of such existential phenomena as shame, guilt,
conscience, and an.victy stemming from conscience; inner-world
[296]
and defensive measures against them prevail

threats, oppressions,
throughout. What
might be a matter of existence has become a
matter of mundane care. This will be illustrated again in connec-
tion with an analysis of the superstitious questioning of the
oracle and compliance with its answers as though they were the
answers of fate. ^
In Lola's "fate" theme, primal existential anxiety [Urangst]
combines with the Uncanny and with superstition. Kierkegaard in
his ground-breaking investigations of the meaning of anxiety rec-
ognized fate as "the nought of anxiety" that later assumed a cen-
tral position in Heidegger's ontology. There the nought of anxiety
is interpreted with deep insight as being-in-the-world per se: "The
'of- what' of anxiety is being-in-the-world per se." (Sein und Xek,

p. 1 86.) In anxiety, the world is reduced to insignificance so that
existence cannot find anything through which to understand itself,
"it reaches into the nought of world; but, encountering world,
understanding through anxiety becomes aware of being-in-the-
world per se; the 'of-what' (ivovor) of anxiety is simultaneously
its 'what for' {ivorum)." "Anxiety is concerned with the bare
*
Dasein as existence thrown into uncanniness."
But whereas anxiety also reveals the possibility of an authentic
or existential being-able-to-be (how it does so is irrelevant in this
context), Lola remains thrown into anxiety without any possibil-
ity of regaining herself, or even of becoming aware of herself. In-
stead, she stares at the nought as if it were an uncanny objective

power; but she never manages to focus upon or come to grips
with it, however painstakingly she tries to "read" its intentions
"into things." It is the "compulsion to read something into every-
thing" that prevents her from coming to rest and that drains her
strength.
This reading of meaning into objects, as we have noticed, is
tied in with their verbal symbols and with their accidental con-
stellations in space and time. It is not the "four pigeons" that spell
good luck for her, but the word cuatro, in which she finds the let-
ters c-a-r-t; since carta stands for "letter," she reads in it that she
will receive a letter from her fiance. It is not the walking sticks
• It should be mentioned here again that existential anxiety is possible only

where love —the dual mode that "eternalizes" the existence as home and shelter
shines not yet, or not any more.
[297]
with their rubber bases that alarm her, but the syllables "no" (read
in reverse —
from haston ^stick) and go-ma (rubber) that convey
to her"nogo!"="donotgoon!"
From such "signs" she "reads" that she "ought to be cautious,"
for, "I never know what may happen. . .
." Lola consults "fate,"
just as the Greeks consulted the Oracle, obeying it "blindly,"
even though she recognizes its ambiguity. But while the Greeks
accepted their system of signs as an inherited tradition, Lola had
designed her own, but treated it as if it were objectively valid, or
the message of an objective power. Lola's attitude is reminiscent
of some people's attitude toward astrology. In neither case is there
any realization that what they are practicing is just a "fetishism
of names projected onto the skies." But again, in contrast to as-
trological superstition, which is rooted in tradition, Lola's super-
stition is a purely private one. What is common to both is the
clinging to an alleged, blindly operating, power and evasion of the
opportunity to retrieve oneself from thrownness and return to be-
ing one's real self or to accept genuine religious faith.
The compulsion to "read" significance into things by means of
a system of verbal symbols, which results in and certain Do's
Don't's, is closely related to the compulsion to evade, and even
flee, from the ominous things themselves and from anyone who
has been in contact with them. The connection with the verbal
expression is mostly very clearly indicated, as in the case of the
ominous meaning of the umbrella that originated from the letters
s-i and the temporal coincidence of this s-'i with Lola's meeting
the woman hunchback. The hunchback herself but only the —

—
female hunchback draws her ominous portent (just as does
the squinting salesgirl) from the "abnormahty" of these life-
phenomena, an abnormality in the sense of a "descending life"
("The Case of Ellen West"), namely, of deformation, crippling,
disfigurement. These forms of "descending life" figure so promi-
nently in all from the
superstition because superstition "springs"
anxiety of bcing-in-the-world per se,naked existence
of the
thrown into uncanniness. These symbols of descending life can
have an uncanny cfiêct only for one reason: because the existence
that persists in uncanniness is in itself descending life! Or, diff^cr-
ently expressed: being continuously suspended in existential anxi-
ety and staring at its uncanny nothingness makes existence "clear-
[298]
sighted" with respect to all those phenomena that deviate from the
"reassuring" existential norm and indicate its frailty.
—
That contact tactual as well as associative, in the sense of
association by proximity and similarity becomes — so important
here can be understood when we consider the leveling down of
the world-design from a highly complicated interrelated whole
reference-context to a merely spatial beside-each-other and sensory
or abstract with-each-other.
We see in operation here a tremendous simplification and im-
poverishment of the "world," which naturally is an expression of the
simplificationand impoverishment of existence. As existence be-
comes simpler and poorer, so does the "world" which, at the
same time, grows more overpowering in its simplification; for "be-
hind" it stands, and through it stares the Medusa head of the
"nothingness of anxiety." It is anxiety that makes the world appear
ever more insignificant, ever more simple, because it "petrifies"
existence, narrows its openness, its "here," down to ever smaller
and smaller circles, forces it into ever more difficult and ever
rarer possibilities. What is true of spatialization, is even more true
of the temporalization and historization [GeschichtUchung] of ex-
istence. Genuine historization —an authentic history in existential
terms — is replaced by a mere "coincidence" of circumstances and
events, an indication not of having a genuine fate, but only of
worldly "objective" happenings.*
It is a symptom of such mundanization [Veriveltlichung] or
extemalization of fate, that the place of fears and memories is
taken by the actual objects and persons with whom the former
were connected. But the memories not only become connected
with objects and persons, they "enter them." Hence, "a terrifying
feehng never ends as long as the thing is present." Thus the world-
spatial distance from the things replaces the existential (truly life-
• See this distinction G. Simmel, Lebensanschauung, p. 127: "That someone's

in
father is murdered and mother marries the murderer would certainly be
that his
an ovei^vhelming occurrence for anybodv; but that it becomes Hamlet's jate is
determined by Hamlet's character, and not by the fact that this occurrence has hit
him as "someone." The single "fates" are essentially determined by external events,
that is, the objective factor appears to outweigh all others; but their totality, "the
fate" of each person, is determined by his character. If one only steps back far
enough, one sees in it a unity that does not stem from single causes, but whose
center lies rather in the a priori forming power of the individual life."
[299]
historical) overcoming of the terrifying feeling that has entered

them. We
can recognize here a universal human trait the "push- —
ing away," locking up, hiding away of things connected with
unpleasant or sad memories; in Lola's case, however, a feature of
convenience, cowardice, or "self-protection" turns into a need, a
"must." In psychological terms one could say that, in this instance,
the place of intentional acts or of psychic phenomena (in the sense
of Brentano) is taken by the "intended objects." But this is only
a different formulation of what in existential-analytic terms we
have described as mundanization. What we are deaUng with here
is a transformation of Ufe-historical spatiality into mundane space
and its orientation-potential of closeness and distance. That which
can no longer be treated in existence-historical terms has now to
take place in "world-space." Thereby existence escapes its actual
task and its actual meaning, but it does not escape anxiety. What
it gains through mundanization — displacement of own respon- its
sibility and guilt onto an outside "fate"— has to be paid for with
the loss of freedom and compulsive entanglement in the net of
external circumstances and occurrences.
But why do just garments — clothes, underwear, shoes, hats
play so prominent a role in Lola's case? To answer this question
we would have conduct a biographical investigation. Unfor-
to
tunately, we do not have any historical points of reference at our
disposal. But the question. of how it is possible that garments can
play so prominent a part is, indeed, a problem for existential
analysis.
While certain utensils, like umbrellas or canes, assume their
unlucky connotations via verbal symbols, others, like soap, glasses,
towels, food, through accidental contact with an inanimate or
human "source of contamination" garments become actual rep-—
resentatives of persons, and particularly of the mother. Lola's own
garments, too, attain a commanding fatal meaning; we remember
that she could not go abroad unless certain garments were re-
moved, that she was afraid to write to her fiance when wearing
certain clothes lest something happen to him; that she cut up her
clothes, continuously wore the same old dress, hated her under-
wear, and used all means to resist the purchase and wear-
possible
ing of new clothes. From what we know about Lola, it would
[300!
seem that her garments became invaded by memories. For Lola,

clothes and underwear seem to play a role similar to that played
by fat for Ellen, and by all the physical and psychic clothes in the
case of Jiirg Ziind. In all these cases, the focus is on some sort of
hated garment, on an unbearable covering. But while Jiirg Ziind
tried to hide or to fortify himself behind some other cover (over-
coat, higher social milieu) and EUlen West tried to avoid the ac-
quisition of a "fat" layer in all possible ways, Lola's problem is
much less difficult since it deals only with the cover provided by
clothes, so she discards them, cuts them up, removes them, and
contents herself for a long time with one and the same "old rag."
But all these cases have one feature in common: the mundanization
of the total existence and the transformation of existential anxiety
into the horrible fear of a "worldly" shell. Furthermore, all these
garments and shells are experienced as threats and restrictions,
either coming from the world of fellow men (Jiirg Ziind), or
from the world of one's own body (Ellen West) or, as in Lola's
case, from the world of garments. And, in each case, the pseudo-
existential ideal is contradicted by the respective shell. Lola's mode
of existence impresses us as even stranger than that of the other
"cases." What we feel to be "our world" consists predominantly
of our physical and psychic world as well as the world of our
fellow men, whereas we assign much less significance to the world
of our garments. In Lola's case, however, it is the latter world
that assumes prime importance. This is reason enough to make
Lola appear "sicker" than the other patients.
The world of garments, as such, seems to be "part" of the
"outside world," but the "as such" cannot be understood here in a
philosophical sense but in a very unphilosophic-rationalistic or, if
one prefers, a positivistic sense. For, just as the body is not only
"part" of the outside world but, at the same time, "part" of the
inner world; so, the clothes are not just things but, also, personal
shells. "Clothes make the man" expresses their significance within
the world of fellow men.* But one can also say that clothes make
us because their anthropological significance is based on more than
our belief that we attract attention and are judged by our clothes.
• See Roland Kuha, Vber Maskendeutungen im Rorschach' schen Vermch, pp.
27 f.: "Qothes cover . . . clothes give away clothes disguise."
. . .
[301I
We experience them not only as something that exposes us to the

eyes of others and, at the same time,* protects and hides us from
them, but also something that belongs to us, that lends us a
as
feeling of elation and well-being, or of discomfort and depression;
something that is not only "carried" by us but that also carries us,
helps or hinders us (in our own eyes and in the eyes of others),
extends or restricts us, and shrouds and conceals from us our own
body.
Small wonder that the worid of clothes can also represent our-
selves to others. And because this is so, a "curse" with which we
are afflicted can be felt as directly adhering to our clothes. How
much more can this be expected in a worid in which everything is
regulated by nearness and distance, as is Lola's wôrid! For what,
except our skin, is "nearer" to us than our clothes? And how
gladly would Ellen and Jiirg give away, dispense with, cut up sell,
their bodies if this were only humanly possible! Instead, they beg
fate to let them be born again with another body or another soul
—while all Lola needs is to discard a dress that she does not Uke,
or to put a distance between herself and it. And while the other
patients implore fate to save them from their tortuous or trite
existence, Lola beHeves that she is able to "read" fate's intentions.
What does this mean? It means, in the last analysis, that she
succeeds in wresting from the intangible, uncanny Dreadful a
personlike character, namely the personification of a fate that pro-
ceeds according to predictable intentions, that warns or encour-
ages her and thus saves her from being totally deUvered to the
Dreadful in its naked uncanniness.
This is shown not only by Lola's casting a large net about
fate that she believes will enable her to interpret its intention and
escape the Dreadful, but also by her behavior toward the actual
• Nowhere, except maybe in the Rorschach test, does this "expressive" signifi-
cance of clothes play a greater role than in dreams. There they are the most fre-
quent and most explicit exponents of our experience of self-evaluation. One has
only to think of the torn, worn out, ill-fitting, sloppily carried, or badly matched
"dream" clothes on the one hand, and of the elegant, conspicuous, or neat ones, of
the officers' and diplomats' uniforms on the other. One also remembers dreams of
being half-dressed or dressed in inappropriate garments. But such "mistakes" occur
in wakefulness, too. I myself appeared once at an academic anniversary celebration
in black tuxedo trousers and a tuxedo vest, but in a yellow pajama jacket. There
the motive was not self-depreciation, but depreciation of someone else; I had only
reluctantly attended and felt a definite "resistance" against the person to be honored.
[302]
carriers of the Dreadful, the clothes. When Lola wears the same
dress for a long time, enters the sanatorium without underwear,
and surrounds the buying and wearing of a new dress with a net-
work of safeguards against the breakthrough of the Dreadful, we
gather that she has to "guess" the intentions of "fate" in order to
ward off her fate. The fewer garments she wears, the less "con-
tact" she has with the Dreadful; the longer she can do with her
worn-out dress, the less she feels endangered by a new "horrible"
catastrophe, implicit in the However, the new as such,
new dress.
newness per se, is, as we know, the Sudden as such. Suddenness
per se. Definitely thrown into uncanniness, Lola lives in anxiety
lest the Sudden break through, the Sudden against which she tries
to protect herself in every possible way. (See her remark: "One

should never give me something unexpectedly because that gives
me an idea that stays forever.") Since the Sudden is the negation
of continuity, indeed, the "complete withdrawal of continuity
from the Preceding and the Succeeding" (Compare the fear of
catastrophe in the case of Jiirg Ziind), we again see that Lola has
neither a genuine future nor a genuine past but lives from one
Now mere (inauthentic) present. Her existence,
to the next, in the
too, no longer extends steadily and continuously, i.e., unfolding
in the three "ecstasies of temporality," but has shrunk to the mere
present, the mere being-at-something. Existential continuity, the
authentic becoming in the sense of authentic historicity, is re-
placed by the uncannily sudden jump from one "now-point" to
the next. It is not difficult to see now that the wearing of the
same dress, the external mundane continuity, replaces the missing
inner or existential continuity and preserves existence from total
dissolution.
That the new dress is not permitted to be pretty or expensive
betrays the ascetic trait in Lola's existence —an atoning quality that,
however, is not "lived" as atonement but merely as a precaution, so
as not to provoke the dreaded power by anything conspicuous
(Lola isby no means stingy by nature). But it would also mean
—
such provocation if she were to accept the dress the carrier, par
excellence, of the Dreadful —
from the hands of a squinting and,
therefore,"ominous" saleslady. And when the new dress must not
be red because last summer's dress was red, then this, too, proves
the mundanization of her existence; for while genuine existential
[303]
continuity rests precisely on repetition,* we are dealing here with

the worldly category of recurrence of sameness. At this Lola also
shudders. To be sure, she would prefer no changebut if at all;
she has to accept something new, then ought to be different from
it
the old. We
must remember that to Lola "things" mean memories,
since "memories enter things." Hence, the "horrible," "ghastly"
feeling "never ends as long as the thing is around." Things, there-
fore, are not just carriers of memories, they are the memories. We
thus perceive the most tangible sign of the process of mundaniza-
tion, of the transformation of existence, and of genuine fate into
"world" and "worldly" destiny. But even the memories and feelings
themselves are no longer mobile and dirigible; they can no longer
be wôrked through into continuity, but are congealed, impervious
to influence, fixated in a mere sham-continuity, and are overpower-
ing to existence. The memories, too, become, in some sense, clothes,
shells of existence, carriers of mishap but, in no way, past and
repeatable existence. Hence the gap between existence and such
"congealed" memories is far greater than the gap between the
thing-memory and the memory-thing. Having to retain or wear
the old dress that is not afflicted with horrible memories means
being obliged to remain in having-been-already, that is, in the state
of thrownness. To buy and to have to wear a new dress means
risking an uncanny adventure, a step into the future. But to have
to remove a "contaminated" dress or thing means, I repeat, to get
rid of the thing-memory through removal of the memory-thing.
In other words, the inabiUty to integrate the memories into the
continuity of existence is replaced by the placing of world-spatial
distance between oneself and the memory-thing.
The SURREPTITIOUSNESS OF THE EnEMIES AND THE UnCANNI-

NESs OF THE DREADFULt / The uosological system of psycho-
pathology has to maintain a clear distinction, descriptively as well
as substantively, between the symptom of compulsive superstition
• Cf. Kierkegaard's Repetition.
( t transistor's note: The play on words, Hermlichkeit der Feinde —Unheim-
lichkcit des I'urchtcrlichen, is untransferable but dispensable. What this section
deals with is the close relation — —
from the existential viewpoint between compul-
sive superstition and delusions of persecution, and how the latter evolves from the
former.]
I304]
and that of delusions of persecution. Daseinsanalyse, on the

other hand,tries to reveal precisely what is fundamental to both
these descriptive symptoms and to explain how one evolves from

the other.
Lola herself uses in both conditions of her existence one and
the same expression:
I see in the signs all the time that / ought to be cautious (since
I don't know what may happen).
I never imagined something like that, all the things I discovered

these people have done —because they always eavesdrop and plan
to do evil things, that's why / must be very cautious.
Cautiousness, in the first statement, refers to the breakthrough of

the Dreadful; in the second, to the hostility of "the people." The
uncanniness of the Dreadful has turned into the surreptitious acts
of the people: "suggesting," being curious (beneugieren) eaves- ,
dropping, betraying, treating insolently, murdering. But then, again,

the two are similar in that caution in relation to either of them is
only practicable if one has the key to, and pays accurate attention
to, a system of signs.
confidence in an
— mode
In the first
authority "fate"—
of existence, there
that provides warning
is
signs
still
whose interpreta-
tion enables the existence to protect itself against the invasion of
the Dreadful; in second mode of being, however, the existence
its
lacks the protection of a superordinate power in which it can still

believe. Being defenseless, it is now delivered to its enemies. This
finds drastic expression when Lola, in the first instance, says that
she ''ought to be cautious," in the second, that she ''Trrust be
cautious." Here the no longer warnings of a danger, but
signs are
an expression of the danger itself, of something that is present. The
last authority in which the existence was still able to believe, its
last remaining foothold (however thin, even threadbare, the net
had been in which it tried to catch the Dreadful) is now gone.

Only now has the existence completely abandoned itself and given
itself up to the world. In the first stage, Lola "reads" (interprets)
fate's commands and prohibitions by means of a superstitious sys-
tem of verbal signs that she still employs more or less "independ-
[305]
Selected Papers of Lltdwig Einswanger
ently," but in the second phase, she now feels, sees, and hears the
enemy's signs in perceivable forms that have taken on the aspect of
reality.*
From the viewpoint of existential analysis, this does not signify
an essential difference but only a difference with respect to the
form in which the Overpowering and the "being delivered to it"
are manifested. The same apphes to the distinction between the
two phases (that of the impersonal overpowering, and of the
personal overpowerer) , Already in the first stage, "fate" was a
quasi-godlike person having "intentions with regard to us" that
could be "read"; moreover, the nurse Emmy was over and be- —
yond being a carrier of bad luck already a "personal enemy" —
whose proximity made Lola expect the unspeakably Dreadful.
Hence, the nurse Emmy forms a connecting link between the
Dreadful as a fateful, uncanny power and the surreptitious acts of
the enemies. The only remaining difference is that Emmy is the
uncanny and conveyor of the Dreadful, while the "per-
carrier
secutors" are no longer conveyors of intentions and carriers of the
Dreadful, but are, themselves, dreadful persons. We are thus con-
fronted with the phenomenon of personification and, therefore, of
pluralization of an uncanny power into several, nay, many sur-
reptitious persecutors. This reminds us of the "technique of magic,"
which involves the "allotment of carefully graduated magical pow-
and things (mana)" t
ers to strange persons
Freud has devoted a very instructive study to the kinship be-
tween the Uncanny and the Secretive, based on Schelhng's defini-
tion of the Uncanny: "Anything which ought to remain in secrecy
and obscurity and has become manifest is known as uncanny."
This, however, is not the context in which to discuss Freud's
psychoanalytic elaboration of "the scope of factors which turns
anxiety into fear of the Uncanny." I prefer to return to Schell-
ing's definition, adding to it that what was supposed to remain in
secrecy and hiding is the original existential anxiety, which now
"has emerged." The feeling of uncanniness is aroused by anything
• It is well to consider that these signs arc still largely based upon verbal phe-
nomena words).
(similarities of
t Sec Freud, "Das Unhcimliche," Samtl. Schriften, X, 393. I wish to empha-
size that I don't by any means identify this pluralization with the magical in-
terpretations of the "primitives." What is common to both is merely being at the
mercy of an uncanny power that extends to persons and things.
[306]
that causes that anxiety to emerge, anything that is apt to shock us

out of our familiarity with "world and hfe," as the (unwonted)
recurrence of the similar, the Wraith [Doppelganger], as well as
all symbols of declining hunched back, squinting, madness,
life: a
and, finally, death. The more overwhelming the existential anxiety,
the weaker the confidence in world and hfe, the wider the scope
within which it may emerge. In Lola's case, a network of pre-
cautionary and defensive measures is interposed between the exis-
tential anxiety and the Uncanny, the latter being caused to emerge
by the former. This process, though more dramatic, is essentially

the same as that which occurred in the cases of Jiirg Ziind and
Ellen West. Through defensive measures, the existence tries to
protect itself against the emergence of the Uncanny. Through
them, it still finds some foothold in "care" [Sorge], worrying
[Besorgen], bargaining, being cautious, even though this caution
serves exclusively to ward Uncanny, and completely spends
off the
itself in the service of the Uncanny. Yet it is still the self that
defends itself against the "naked horror," against the break-through
of the Dreadful into the existence.
But then, in the second phase, we discover something very
pecuhar. Here, the defense measures have proved inadequate, and
the Dreadful can no longer be banned by questioning the oracle,
or be "removed" by way of spatial distance. At this point, the
Dreadful is no longer felt as naked horror, as an "indefinite"
threat to, or even, underminer of, existence; it is felt, rather, as a
"definite," concrete threat arising from the world. In losing its
uncanny character, the Dreadful turns into something secretively
threatening and, simultaneously, the real self is threatened with
annihilation. Now the self no longer stands with both feet "firmly
planted on the ground," either in practice or practical rcahty, but
has surrendered to a phantasy world and is completely under its
spell. We are dealing here with that world which is, itself, marked
by secretiveness, intangibility, and incomprehensiveness, with the
world of the others, with the historic "being-taken-by-the-othcrs,"
and with the reputative image [Rufgestalt] established in the proc-
ess.'*
The continuous feeling of being overheard and being threatened

is only a special case of the inescapable, uncanny-secretive being-
taken, being-judged, and being-condemned, of being-impeded and
[ 307]
being-attacked by the others ("the people"). Since the intentions

of "the others" are never completely transparent, there always
remains a margin of incalculable secretiveness. Those who "stand
with both feet firmly on the ground" do not worry about that
margin and even ignore, more or less justifiably and securely, the
"reputative image" that represents their existence in the eyes of
the others. On the other hand, existential anxiety, once unshackled,
can nowhere succeed with a break-through more easily than in
this "region" of our world that, in itself, is incomprehensible, un-
surveyable, inscrutable, and incalculable. The secretiveness per-
ceived in the actions of "the people," the perception of their evil
intentions through "signs," the compulsion to derive intentions
from those signs — all these point to the secret emergence of the
uncanniness of the world of fellow men. Whatever emerges quite
"openly" is no longer uncanny.*
While in the superstitious phase, "aU exits of the life-stage"
(to use Ellen West's metaphor) "were occupied by armed men,"
now, men actually converge upon her. The
in Lola's case, the
"life-stage" itself has changed. In the first phase, Lola could still,
in some way, hold at bay the Threatening that "burdened her
soul"; now she must at any moment expect to be murdered.
While before the salvation of her soul was at stake, now the threat
is to life and limb. And this leads not only to a pluralization of the
Threatening but also of the Threatened. The crimest occur every-
where, and the entire world now consists only of murderers and
the murdered. On the one side, we find the innocent victims, on
the other, the villains. The uncanny "world" has turned into a
world of secret crimes, a world in which everything has its un-
• Of coxirse, it is no counterargument against my statement that in this mode

of existence the "intentions" of the "enemies" come openly to the fore and thus
can be fought; for even behind the "openly emerging" intentions of the "persecu-
tors" lurks the uncanniness of the "puzzling" fate of being persecuted as such
of —
being treated unjustly, being incriminated, being impaired. Thus the torturing
questions of the persecuted: Why must just / suffer so much. Why was this destiny
assigned just to me. Why have to stand alone against my enemies. Why docs
do I
nobody believe my reports about my suffering, etc. All these are questions posed
to fate which are then passed on to be answered by the explanatory delusions.
What matters here is the uncanniness of the dclusionary fate felt by the patient
himself, and not by the obscrvor; for him the source of the uncanniness lies in the
relation of insanity to the "descending life."
It tkanslator's note: Krhnen —again a neologism.]
I308
canny omens f V orbedeutungen] into a world of secret meanings

[Bedeutungen].
Thus the hfe-stage has become the scene of drama, even of
tragedy. Lola, herself, has become a helpless tool of the stage
action, compelled to say what the enemies want her to say (in
order to "direct" their crimes). She is nothing but a machine
[Erfolgsapparat] that must reproduce whatever words or thoughts
are fed into it. Not only is she a helpless, but also an innocent
tool. The existential guilt is transformed into a mundane being-
held-guilty: "they" consider her bad.
In the first stage, uncanniness clung mainly to clothes. Hence,
one could have expected clothes to be of importance in the second
stage, too, as is sometimes observed in advanced cases. (We shall
return to this point in our psychopathological analysis.) It may

be due to the gaps in our material that in the case of Lola we
find almost nothing of this, apart from her plan to escape her
enemies disguised as a maid. Otherwise, the clothes motif has
undergone a change: the spatial contact with garments and with
persons clad in them is replaced by the "make-believe" disguise of
the enemies. Although their is in no
crimes are obvious, Lola
position to "grasp" her enemies, due to their "disguise" and secre-
tive practices. Earlier, she could evade the persons whom she felt
to be threatening since she knew them; now she is groping in the
dark. Earlier, the dreadfully Threatening was intangible, but its
carriers were "tangible"; now the Threatening (the persecution) is
close at hand, but its executioners are intangible. Such are the
peculiar dialectics of the Uncanny of which we psychiatrists still
know so little.*
If, in the second stage, Lola appears still "sicker," still "crazier"
than in the first, we can explain this by recognizing that the
process of mundanization has advanced, that the fear of the un-
cannily Dreadful and the superstitious questioning of fate (which
to some degree is shared by most people) has been replaced by
fear of the executers of evil and by the fight against them. This
• Thisnot offered as an explanation for the "delusions of persecution" in

is
general. We
do not even know so far how many possibilities exist. are satis- We
fied if we succeed in gaining insight into the dialectics of one case, to provide
some guidance for other cases, particularly those in which insanity occurs so rap-
idly that its stages can hardly be observed or separated from each other.
[309]
may impress us psychopathologicallv as an enormous "qualitative"

difference; but in terms of existential analysis it is but an expression
of the progressive conquest of existence by "world," of still the
same drainage of the Dasein in the sense of its being delivered to
world, of still the same process which von Gebsattel calls "dis-
becoming" [Em-^'erden], It is a manifestation of the highly com-
plex dialectic of existence that in psychopatholog}' we have simply
named autism and that we diagnose by way of clinical psycho-
pathological s\Tnptoms,
The "transition" from the superstitious mode of existence,
from the feehng of being threatened by the Uncanny, to the
certainty, the evidence of being threatened by the world of fellow
men, can be still more clearly illuminated by a discussion of: a) the
verbal mode of communication; b) the temporalization (historiza-
tion) ; c) the spatialization of both modes of existence.
Verbal Conmnmication In Lola's verbal communications

—not with the Dreadful per se, but with the communicative
authority established between her and it —she follows consistently
the mode of "taking-it-at-its-word." She takes fate at its word,
which means she communicates with it as with a person, one that
is not only responsive but also responsible, i.e., on whose response
one can rely and with whom one can conclude an oral agreement.*
Within these limits, there still exists a certain relation of con-
fidence, hence a relation of confidential closeness. In "taking-
something-at-its-word," we know something about the other that
we can hang onto, that can be grasped. In such a confidential
relationship, therefore, the one who takes the other at his word
gains a secure standpoint, a "point" where he can take a "stand" in
and from
relation to the other (in this case, in relation to fate)
which he can regulate his outi conduct. By believing that she can
take fate at its word, Lola, to some degree, makes the Uncanny
familiar to herself and, as far as possible, familiarizes herself with it.
All this is still within the "normal" limits of the anthropological
See Binswanger, Grtmdformen und Erkermmis menschlischen Daseins, pp.

•
322 361 ff. All this is only a specific variation of the dialectics of the locked-in-
ff.,
ness or, according to Kierkegaard, of the Demonic: "The demoniacal does not
shut itself up with something, but shuts itself up; and in this lies the mystery of
existence, the fact that unfreedom makes a prisoner precisely of itself." (The
Concept of Dread [Princeton, 1946], p. no.)
[3'o]
mode of taking-someone-at-his-word. But it becomes evident that

this mode is being transgressed when we see that it is the Dasein
that makes fate talk, and that it uses an artificial system of

verbal communications.! What we call mental disease comes about
when the selfis no longer able to distinguish between "inside" and
"outside," between existence and world or, more precisely, when

a need of the existence is perceived as an actual occurrence in the
world. INevertheless, or, rather, because of this, we are still dealing
here with an assertion of the self, however emptied and drained of
power that self may be. It is true the self has relinquished its
power of free resolution and decision, yet it still maintains itself
in its subjugation to the authority that it —the self itself—has vested

in fate, and in its obedience to fate's commands. Existential anxiety
is still channeled; it has not yet overflowed the dams artfully con-
structed around it.
dams have burst.

In "delusions of persecution," however, these
world of fellow men; the Dasein is
Existential anxiety floods the
threatened from everywhere, a prey to all. Intimidation and threats
are only exceptionally interrupted by permissions. All this is com-
municated through secret signs, that is, mainly through verbal
manifestations: Lola hears something being said, which "they"
have caused to be said; "they" let her know through the words of
the nurses that Mrs. Wilson has been murdered; "they" tell bad
things about her. But even her own words are overheard and used
for "evil" purposes; that is why she has to be so cautious. And
finally, murder other persons "through the words
the "others"
they put in my mouth," and "with everything I said which was
similar in words." Unfortunately, we possess no further informa-
tion on the connections between words and acts, and on the nature
and consequences of that "similarity of words." In any case, here
we observe not only the "magic omnipotence of thoughts," but
also of words. The "bad consequences of the similarity of words"
appear to apply to similarities between what Lola says and what
others say, possibly in reference to the net of verbal combinations
that she throws over the Uncanny.
However that may be, we see that Lola uses every possible
means to get her enemies to talk in order to gather their intentions,
just as she had previously got fate to talk. But while fate permitted
her to wrest from it a definite "yes" or "no" and, thus, clearly and
[311]
Selected Papers of Ludtvig Binswanger
distinctly reveal its intentions, the enemies remain, as a rule,

veiled or disguised. Only exceptionally do they betray themselves
and, expressly or surreptitiously, announce their intentions. Their
main activity consists in secret eavesdropping, veiled inquisitive-
ness, clandestine pursuit. The actual, tangible and removable gar-
ment is replaced by the intangible, no longer removable, psychic
disguise. The world of fellow men now assails the existence bodily,
with the intention of physical threat, namely murder. The place
of the indefinable, hence ineffable Dreadful (in expectations and
memories), has been taken by the definite, dreadful menace to Ufe
and limb. The "Naked horror," the dread of loss of existence, has
turned into the definite dread of the loss of bodily life. Existential
anxiety, the fear of annihilation [Nichtigung] can now only mani-
fest itself as fear of wordly destruction. Verbal manifestations no
longer warn: "You may do this, you must avoid that" (in order to
escape the Dreadful); they now bluntly state: "Your fate is de-
cided, you will be put to death." Thus, existential anxiety that, in
the superstitious phase, was still genuine anxiety, turns in the per-
secution phase to fear of something definite, of being murdered
(viz. Freud's conception of the Schreber case). By no means do
we see a healing process in the metamorphosis of the indefinite
Dreadful into a definite fear (i.e., into delusions).
In this context, we must state that the disease has progressed
enormously. Whereas, previously, the self was still able to pre-
serve some modest degree, now it is completely delivered
itself to
to the superior power of the world, and benumbed by it [benom-

men]. What previously, in some measure, could still be addressed
as a self is no longer an autonomous, free self, but only a dependent
Ego in the sense of being a mere plaything of "the others." The
threat of what existence conceals from itself, which is felt as
anxiety, is no longer seen as the authority of "fate," but is now
disguised as the superior power of the enemies. This "disguise" is
a form of Mundanization, that is, a dressing of the world with
those "clothes" with which existence had dressed itself and, find-
ing them "unbearable," * had torn them off and thrown them over
to the world of fellow men. In Lola's clothes-phobia the throwing
off was still expressed by tangible discarding of the actual clothes
[
• translator's note: In Gennan, "unbearable" and "unwearable" are the same
word.]
[3'2]
(giving them away, selling them, cutting them up) and by avoid-
ance of the persons who then wore them. In her delusions of per-
secutions, the clothes cling, as it were, to "the others" or, more
precisely, the Dreadful spreads from the discardable clothes and

their carriers to all men, to everything that is human.
Thomas made the
Carlyle, in his profound Sartor Resartus, has
"philosophy of clothes" his topic. He
show that "all
tries to
symbols are actually clothes," and he embarks upon the "long and
adventurous journey from man's external common, tangible woolen
covers through his miraculous covers of flesh and his miraculous
social clothes down to the clothes of his innermost soul, to Time
and Space." One could call the book an attempt at a "philosophy
of symbolic forms," reaching far beyond Cassirer's scope of
verbal, mythical, and knowledge forms. Like the German idealists,
Carlyle recognizes that essence or inside, and symbol or cover, are
interdependent; he believes he can recognize the essence in the
symbol and find the key to the former in the latter. But, again
following the pattern of German idealism, he neglects the dia-
lectical movement from the one to the other that corresponds to
the existential relationship between freedom and nonfreedom, non-
freedom and freedom. Hence, his book, like all philosophies of
symbolic form, while it is helpful for existential-analytic and life-
historic clarification, is sterile with regard to that dialectical move-
ment itself. But if we wish to arrive at an anthropological under-
standing of clothes, Carlyle's theories must be borne in mind.
Our discussion of the secretiveness of the enemies has carried
us to the analysis of verbal safeguards, and the latter to the analysis
of safeguards against clothes —
because all these topics rest on a
common denominator: the conjuration of the Dreadful. Through
her complicated system of verbal oracles, Lola takes the Dreadful
at its word — —
by conjuring it while through clothes and enemies
she takes it at its weak spot. By means of clothes and enemies the
Dreadful can be most safely grasped, and thus fought. But since in
the Dreadful Lola has to deal not with another person but with an
uncanny, superior, demonic power, the taking-at-its-word as well
as the taking-at-its-wcak-spot must assume the nature of conjura-
tion. Conjuration, however, means perpetual invocation, adjuring,
incessant emphasis, never-ending repetition.* Conjuration is the
• Conjuration is Ahmung as used by Leopold Ziegler (cf. Vberlieferung
[313I
expression of subjugation that has made itself a prisoner and now

desperately beats at the walls of its prison. What sort of im-
prisonment and prison we have to deal with is of secondary im-
portance. While in earUer cases we encountered only one kind of
t%vo, imprisonment by fate
imprisonment, in Lola's case there are
and imprisonment by the enemies. Since what Kierkegaard called
"the mystery of existence" — that unfreedom makes a prisoner of
itself — is vaHd for all human existence, schizophrenia merely rep-
resents a particularly intensive and peculiarly constituted variation
of that change of freedom into unfreedom or, as we express it,
of existence into world.
As stated eariier, the transition from the

Tevjporalization
mode of existence, from the vague "feeling" of being
superstitious
threatened by the Dreadful, to the certainty of the threat by fel-
low men can be illuminated by way of verbal communications, of
temporalization (historization), and of spatialization of the Dasein.
We shall now turn to the second task.
We may immediately refer to the conjurational nature of inter-
course with the Dreadful. Where we hear of perpetual invocation,
untiring conjuring, and continuous repetition, we deal with the
temporal mode of urgency (which we know so well from the
case of Jiirg Ziind) and hence with that of the sham-continuity of
the Sudden, and of the mere nonactual present. This is the mode
of temporalization that we also find in the case of Lola. Here, too,
the existence is continuously on the alert for a danger that may
suddenly break in, a danger that now no longer threatens simply
from the Dreadful, but from "people." Vague anxiety about the
Dreadful has turned into fear of the Criminals. Thus, the existence
is still farther removed from itself, still more mundanizcd [ver-
iveltlicht]. True, Lola seems to be closer to us than in the first
stage insofar as she is more "active" and beyond the stage of mere
"active passivity" (Kierkegaard) of superstition. When she de-
fends herself against the enemies and tries to avoid their ambushes,
to discover and to "sue" them, the procedure does not appear so
[Leipzig, i9}6l, pp. 23 though not in the form of pantomime but in that of the
ff.),
verbal oracle. What the bottom of all Ahrtiurij^ is the conviction that
lies at
"nature" (or "fate") can be persuaded to respond to human claims as desired.
(P. 25)
[314]
different from that of a healthy person. Again, when she seems to

"stand with both feet on the ground," to gather observations, make
plans "for the future," to look for a "way out," one might be
tempted to believe that the existence temporalizes itself [zeitigt
sich] here in a fashion no different from that which is required for

ordinary activity, for normal "acting.''
But then, it is of decisive importance to remember what tem-
poralization actually means: temporalization should not be con-
fused with world-time which is only a derivative mode of the
former. Temporalization is not merely one existential phenomenon
among others; it is existence (Dasein). In this case, the Dasein is
already mundanized to such a degree that we can no longer

speak of genuine existential temporalization, nor of historization,
nor of the self as "becoming." But where we no longer find a
genuine self behind industriousness, where the existence has be-
come the "plaything" of demonic powers, there it no longer stands
with both feet on the ground (which always implies an existential,
or "self-stand" [Selbststand] but "hangs in mid-air." Existence has,
as Kierkegaard puts it, from its (historical-temporal-
detached itself
spatial) "fundamental conditions" that, now, become its enemies.

The difference between the temporalization in the first and in
the second stage can, in accordance with Heidegger (see Sein und
Zeit, pp. 341 to 345), be interpreted as that between temporaliza-
tion of anxiety and temporalization of fear. While anxiety is con-
cerned about "the naked existence as one which is thrown into
uncanniness," fear is caused by worries [Besorge?]] concerning the
world of fellow men. But even in the first stage, anxiety "loses itself
to something worrisome" (Lola's anxiety about clothes), which
shows that here, too, fear is involved. Furthermore, although,
in the second stage, fear does have its root in worries about
the intrigues of "people," these people do not become ac-
cessible to Lola through the world design of practical action, but
through that of being subject [verfallen] to an overpowering
Dreadful. Hence, the temporality [Zeitlichkeit] of the fear cannot
be understood through the interpretation of practical activity, but
through the state of surrender, of the "being-thrown-into-the-
world." Temporalization, in this case, takes the form of being-
driven about, of the whirlpool (see my "Ober Ideenflucht"). Not
only is the existence open to the startling Extraordinary (Heideg-
[3'5]
ger); the being, as such, has assumed the character of the ever-
startling Extraordinary!
Let us keep in mind the fact that, in the second stage, the
existence has been caught in that "being-driven-about," in that
whirlpool, even more than in the first. It is true that in both stages
we are dealing with a fixation of the (dreadful) Extraordinary
dictated by existential anxiety —on a definite, worldly meaning:
danger. In the first stage, the danger could be averted through
"reading" from the objects, through a complicated system of
questioning fate for a "Yes" (you may) or a "No" (you must not)
—and thus for an indication of a possibility of escaping the danger.
In the second stage, however, this court of appealis out. Now, no
alternative is left —only

"No." Now, in all signs, one reads the
a
"No," the "Turn about!" the "Beware!" the "Trust no one!" A
still mobile structure of temporahzation, in which the future is
now open, now closed, is replaced by the unreal omnipresent

determinate evil. The only way
which the future still appears
in
is in the expectation of the worldly emergence of the ever-present
evil in the form of "crimes." But whereas, in the first stage, the
Dreadful was still of an existential nature in its threatening of the

existence, in the second stage, it has shed all of its existential
character and has become merely worldly danger to Ufe and
a
hmb. The issue is no longer "peace of mind," but Ufe itself. Where
we had formerly seen existence in its historicity, in its potentiality
of becoming and maturing, we now see only the unfolding of
threatening events "in time." Obviously, such a "world without
grace" [Gebsattel] cannot be penetrated by any ray of love. It
lacks not only existential communication, but also loving com-
munion, since the existence has long since isolated itself in anxious
seclusion and insulation.
As a result of this investigation, let us remember that along
with the transformation of the temporal mode of existential anxiety
into merely worldly fear, the uncanniness of the Dreadful has
retreated into the secretiveness of the enemies. Without knowledge
and understanding of the first stage we could not possibly under-
stand the second stage, the secretiveness of the enemies. At the
same time, we are struck by the paradox that the uncanniness of
the Dreadful could still be taken at its word as it manifested itself
openly in the "yes" and "no" of fate's voice while the uncanniness
[3'61
of the enemies expresses itself only by way of secretiveness. But

the paradox disappears as soon as we reahze that uncanniness and
secretiveness are not opposites but of one and the same order. They
both represent anxiety about demonic superpower and fear of
a
being delivered to it. The different ways in which this super-
power manifests itself (from our point of view: the ways in which
it is interpreted and deciphered) are closely related to the process
of pluralization of the ^'Thou." With fate, as personification of
the Dreadful, one can still be a "pal," one can still "take it at its
word"; but the unsurveyable many, among whom the One Dread-
ful has distributed itself, can no longer be "taken at their word,"
but can be recognized, by words and other signs, only as enemies.
Hence the delusions of persecution prove to be a further phase
in the controversy of the existence with the dreadful Overpowering
that rose from it; a "further" phase, because the Overpowering
has progressed from the uncanniness —which is closer to existence
— to the secretiveness of the enemies, which more removed from
is
the existence but so much nearer to the world. The Overpower-

ing has descended from the heaven of fate to the bustle of the
earth; it has developed from an extra-worldly demonic superpower
into a superpower of fellowmen. Anxiety about the uncanniness
of the extra-worldly superpower has turned into immediate evi-
dence of the worldly evil, into delusions of persecution.
Spatialization Our next step will be to clarify, in terms of

spatialization, the transition from the superstitious mode of exist-
ence to that of being threatened by the world of fellowmen.
Again we must refer to the existential difference between anxiety
and fear. And again we must remember that the first stage was by
no means determined only by the "dreadful" anxiety, but also, at
the same time, by the fear of actual clothes and individuals. Hence,
the clothes as environmental stuff, and the carriers of these clothes
as fellowmen, are already on the same worldly-level as the "people"
in the second stage. The differentiation we made between the
temporality of the still existential anxiety and that of the world-
fear applies equally to spatiality.
We may start with spatialization as related to anxiety. In this
state the world has sunk into insignificance. The worrying ex-
pectation [besorgendes Gewdrtigen] does not find anything to
[317]
Selected Papers of Lxhjwig Binswanger
help it understand itself: "it reaches into the nothingness of the

world." What makes this anxiety so dreadful is that it is com-
pletely "incomprehensible," since it is the "Dreadful" per se (as so
drastically demonstrated in the case of Lola) and that in the Dread-
ful both selfand world are being nullified [genichtet]. And yet,
even in anxiety there must be an "of what." As we have empha-
sized repeatedly, the "of what" of anxiety is the Dasein itself.
By perpetually asking fate for its opinion, Lola tried to let
some light (which always means some space) enter into the un-
canniness of her existence.
To shows the struggle of the existence to create space
us, this
even in the nothingness of anxiety, a space in which it can move

freely, breathe freely, act freely —
free of the unbearable burden
of the Dreadful. Even if the answer is "no," space is nevertheless
opened through that negation; and although it is a hmited, im-
prisoned space, nonetheless it is space. Hence spatialization, in this
case, bears the mark of superstition. Through superstition the exist-
ence salvages whatever remainders of "world," and thus of the
self,can be salvaged from existential anxiety. Without the foot-
hold of superstition, the existence would sink into the night of
naked horror or lose itself "head over heels" to the world, as sub-
sequently happens in the second stage. The third alternative —the
genuinely existential one — of a recall of the conscience into the
authentic being (self-being) has long been buried. No longer can
the existence perceive the call, "back to the self!"
The second alternative —losing oneself to the world —does not
contradict the hypothesis that the existence in anxiety grasps at
the nothingness of the world; because in losing itself to the world
the existence does not grasp at the world
and so finds nothingat all
through which to comprehend itself, but feigns world to itself.
This means that the existence no longer spends itself in worrying
expectation [w/ besorgevden Gewiirtige7j\, in unlocking and con-
trolHng the everlasting world situation, but that it now spends it-
self only on the present situation, which is once and for all
determined by the Dreadful — in the situation, that is, of the ever-

present danger. Delivered to that constant threat from the mun-
dani/cd Dreadful and benumbed by its superior power, the Dasein
actually no longer finds anything through which to comprehend
itself. When the Dasein is no longer able to comprehend the
[318]
world as danger, genuine free comprehension of self also ceases.

Being-in-the-world no longer involves worrying as a form of
resolute action but only in the sense of a self-abdicated dreaming
of danger (we should not forget that even in our dreams we
mean to act)
On the other hand, the fear of a danger also implies an un-
burdening on the part of the existence of its dreadful anxiety, for
while man can face or dodge danger, neither of these can be done
in the face of anxiety. It is in this C9ntext that we come to admire
Freud's profound interpretation of dream anxiety: either the dream
turns the vague ("free-floating") anxiety into a fear of something,
or else we awake from the anxiety dream, because, above all, the
existence strives to escape existential anxiety. The delusions, too,
are a mode of striving to escape this anxiety.
In relation to the "danger," the existence spatializes itself in
the first stage in a way not so different from the second. "Space"
is opened and closed not only through the answers of the oracle,
but also through the carriers of the superpower in the environment
and world of others, through the clothes and their wearers, the
"bad-luck" persons such as the hunchbacks or the squinters, the
hotel-clerks, the nuns, etc. But since the oracle does not always
negate but sometimes also affirms, we find in the young gardener
an affirming, or good-luck-promising representative of fate. Like
the oracle, these characters codetermine the spatial dimensions and
directions, and advance and retreat within them. This is possible
only because spatialization, as such, is in this case a "magic" one,
i.e., it is determined not primarily through the situation and
through comprehension, but through subjection, the surrender of

the existence to a power ahen to the self. Naturally, even "mythical
thinking," even the "delusionary" interpretation of the world is
still a form of comprehension —
is still a "View of the World"
[^'Weltansicht"] (W. von Humboldt). But both are world-designs

— the one historic-traditional, the other purely individual in the —
sense of the thrownness of the existence, not of authentic self-
being.
All that was said of spatialization in the first stage applies to it
in the second stage, too, with one exception — that the place of
certain clothes and their wearers is now taken by "the people" at
large. Almost all fellow men are "no-sayers"; rarely do we hear of
[319]
Selected Papers of Lltdwig Binswanger
an exceptional permission. The "No," the "Turn about," the "Be-

ware!" can now no longer be "read" from a reply by the oracle,
from a dress, or from a person (by way of his being infected). It
has —
become "ubiquitous," or ^to remain with the image of in-
fection
— "endemic." The widespread dissemination of the poison-
ous Dreadful is an expression of the progressive "expansion" of
bondage to the world of fellow men. This expansion is accompanied
by a shrinking of the Dreadful, which had threatened the Dasein,
and its invesonent in the "Criminals," which are now threatening
life and limb. Both the expansion and the shrinking are expressions
of the total possessedness of the existence by the Dreadful, or to

express it differently, of total existential drainage.
Hence we find that spatialization now opens up the "there" of
existence ("da" of Dasein) as a disproportionally larger hostile
space and a disproportionally smaller friendly space (the latter still
contains the "second doctor" of the first sanatorium and the

"sympathique" doctor of the second, in addition to other un-
identified persons).* This again may give the impression that Lola
"had reduced the distance between her and us." are tempted We
to say that Lola behaves exactly as the normal person does when
he faces his real enemies, namely, suspiciously, cautiously, slyly,
self-protectively, accusingly, etc. The reason is that she again seems
to be moving "in-the-world," which is more "comprehensible"
to us than the dreadful fear of the Dreadful. We can once again
"understand" her fears and defensive measures. What we tend to
forget is that this "understanding" applies only to Lola's reactions
to the enemies as such, and not to her anxiety about a world
governed by the Inimical! Thus, the impression that Lola's be-
havior is now more understandable, is deceptive. To be sure, she
is not so autistic in either stage as to prevent her from preserving
some modes of conduct from her earlier world. But these modes
of behavior lack what would make them comprehensible in the full
sense of the world, namely, continuity of the self. Because of the
self's surrender to an ahcn power and the accompanying loss of self
• We may remember from the report that the first doctor had completely re-
placed the oracle: he alone was now consulted to make for her the "yes" or "no
decisions" ("I do nothing without your advice,")- She was now inficfcd to the
doctor the way she had earlier been infiefed to the oracle.
[3^0]
in general, the total structure of being-in-the-world is so different

that psychological "empathy" is no longer possible, merely phe-
nomenological description and understanding. Thus, existential anal-
ysis still permits a methodical-scientific understanding where so-
called empathy has failed.
As to the emergence of the Criminal, we unfortunately know
too little about the prehistory of our case to account for it in life-
historical terms. In any case, Lola's anxiety, at the age of twelve,
when she felt "insecure" at home after an attack of typhoid fever,
and her subsequent flight to her grandmother's house, seem to
have been caused by fear of burglars rather than of apparitions and
could probably be traced to "infantile roots." Fear of the "crimes"
would, in this case, have to be considered an upshot of an in-
fantile anxiety and, therefore, a symptom of regression. But in this
context this is of no interest to us. What attracts our attention is
the circumstance that the world seems to have closed in upon

Lola at all times. This is indicated not only by her defiance and
quarrelsomeness, but even more so by the reports that she was
"always" inclined to be alone, that she enjoyed staying in her
locked room, thus secluding herself from the crowding world, and
that she often thought of taking the veil. I mentioned this earlier
in discussing her life-ideal, the ideal of being-left-alone, and of
security. Hence, it isassume that the fundamental feature
safe to
in Lola's existence is the same as that disclosed in other cases and
called by Kierkegaard "the mystery of existence," namely the
phenomenon that "unfreedom makes a prisoner of itself." In schiz-
ophrenic existence, thisphenomenon reveals itself much more
drastically than in ordinary life. Freedom consists in the com-
mitment of the Dasein to its thrownness as such, nonfreedom in
denying it autocratically and violating it on the basis of an
Extravagant [versteigenen] ideal. Such wrong-doing to existence
is most cruelly punished in schiziphrenic existence. We are by no
means attempting to "moralize." What we are facing here is not

a moral guilt —
which would be far more harmless but the lack —
of existence as such, due to Extravagance. Extravagance, however,
is man's ignoring of the fact that he has not himself laid the
ground of his existence, but is a finite being, whose ground is
beyond his control.^
[321]
The Materiality of the "World" / When we finally ask

in what element or material aspect the Dasein, in Lola's case,
materializes as "world" [sich iveltlicht], we are, initially, embar-
rassed for an answer because nowhere do we find a direct reference
to any of the four elements, neither to Air and Water, nor to Fire
and Earth. This is so because our closer acquaintance with Lola
dates from a time when she was already cut off from all "elemental"
existence —^when she was almost a "burned-out crater." This mode
of speaking, which obtrudes itself upon us in such cases, can
guide us toward the answer to our question. If an existence gives
us the impression of a bumed-out crater, it implies that the Ufe-
fire, the Ufe-glow, even the life-warmth have left it. Such an
existence is"ashened" and "earthened" [verascht und vererdet]
— in the sense of dead earth! In the case of Ellen West, we could
still follow earthening process step by step
this from the . . .
ethereal, bright, beaming region to that of vegetative decay and,

thence, to the swamp and the discarded husk. In Lola, we see
before us almost the end-product of the process, although under
the ashes there still glow a few sparks (of love, of confidence)
If we ask, further, on what the existential fire, the existential
—
warmth has spent itself, we must answer as we did in the cases of
—
Ellen West and Jiirg Ziind on existential anxiety. It was exis-
tential anxiety that drained this existence of its "inner warmth"
(la chaleur intime),'' that forced all its resources into the service
of the war against anxiety. It threw the existence into misery
and placed it under compulsion, the compulsion to ward off

anxiety at any cost, even at the cost of the life-fire.
This means that existential anxiety has cut off the existence
from its deepest roots, from its original "free" key (in the existen-
tial sense of the word, from the capability of being keyed). The
existence is, in this case, pressed into the perpetual unfree key of
anxiety, and of its offspring, wordly fear. With this, the existence
has started on the road to death (as we so clearly observed in the
case of Ellen West). Existential anxiety bespeaks not life-fire and
life-warmth, but an opposing principle —
and destructive
chilling
— the principle of death. To this extent, but only to this extent,
one may rightly say that any anxiety is anxiety about death. To
be sure, the Dreadful, the Unbearable in all our cases is death; but
[322]
not an "exogenous" death, not the destruction of life, but the

"nihilation" [Nichtigung] of existence in naked horror. Seen from
this angle, the subsequent mundanization of existential anxiety
the fear of hfe-destruction as it occurs in the delusions of per-
secution — is actually a "relief" for the existence. We must admit
that Lola's descriptions of "persecution" no longer impress us as
something unbearably dreadful to which existence has been de-
livered in naked horror, but rather as a threat by the world (of
fellowmen) against which one can defend oneself with worldly
means, such as precautions, tricks, accusations, etc. To be sure, the
superstitious practices and the spatial removal of clothes also
represented worldly defense measures but, mind you, not measures
with which to battle the enemy (that is, the world of fellowmen)
but with which to dodge existential anxiety! So we face again
the peculiar dialectical process that turns the unbearable anxiety of
nihilization of existence into the more easily bearable fear of a
threat to life and limb.
It is this increased ease in bearing anxiety that gives the im-
pression of a "healing process" although it should, from a bio-
logical view of health and on the contrary invoke in-

disease,
sight into the progress of the "disease." What, to the suffering
patient, means a mitigation of his suffering from and in existence,
means in medicobiological judgment an increase in a totally dif-
ferent kind of suffering, in terms of the disease.
The being-bumed-out, the loss of ^^chaleur inthne^^ helps us
mode and means by which Lola tries to penetrate
to understand the
the intentions of fate and of her enemies. If Bachelard is right in
stating that "le besoin de penetrer, d'aller a I'interieur des choses
a I'interieur des etres" is a "seduction de I'intuition de la chaleur
intime," then this temptation is, in Lola's case, no longer a "sympa-
thetic" phenomenon, no longer a phenomenon "de la sympathie
thermique," but a warding-off and defense phenomenon, and thus
a practical one,* The penetration into the "inside" of fate and of
"the others" no longer occurs by way of sympathy and antipathy,
but by means of rationally interpretable signs. Hence, it is no
more a "feeling" but, in keeping with Lola's own expression, a
• In contrast to the case of Lola, in the far less advanced and very acute case
of Use this "desire to penetrate" was still a phenomenon of warmth.
[3^1
"reading." The compulsion

to read something into all things (and
persons) no longer a temptation of the intuition de la chaleur
is
intime, but a temptation motivated by fear or, more precisely, by

the anxiety-driven compulsion to decipher and interpret supersti-
tiously, at all costs.
Fsy chopathological-Clinical Analysis

Since the available material is not sufficient for a psychoanalysis of
the case, we shall continue our report with a clinical-psychopatho-
logical analysis. We
may, however, call attention to the fact that
Lola in puberty behaved Uke a boy and asserted that she ivas a boy.
If one relates this to the undeniable predominance of the (nega-
tive) mother complex, to the "elevation" of the prett}^ nurse to an
actual carrier of bad luck, and to the fear of women hunchbacks
and nuns, one may consider a (repressed) homoerotic component
in Lola's sexual constitution. Accordingly, one would have to de-
duce — in Une with Freud's theory of paranoia — that Lola's later
enemies, too, would be of the female sex, a hypothesis that
is not
confirmed by the data. Furthermore, Lola certainly shows some

normal, heterosexual tendencies; she appears to have genuinely
loved her fiance; she regards the sight of a young gardener as a
lucky prospect for her trip, and seems to have enjoyed balls and
dances. Her narcissism showed itself clearly in her naughtiness,
stubbornness, defiance and quarrelsomeness, and later in the tend-
ency to stay alone and lock herself up. We know only one of her
dreams, the one about the nurse who lies down on the bed sent by
Lola's grandmother, as well as on Lola's bed, and about Lola's
fear lest her grandmother should also lie down on one of the beds.
Lola's special love for her grandmother is further expressed by the
child's flight to the grandmother's house, after her typhoid fever.
But these meager references by no means suffice for a psychoanaly-
sis of Lola's superstition and her delusions of persecution.
some information of psychopatho-
Lola's childhood provides
logical interest. We
remember that she was an "extremely spoiled"
child, did not tolerate any authority above her own and, like
Jiirg Ziind, used to seek and find protection with some person.
Hence, one cannot speak of any disciphncd training [Er'dchung].
Lola can be called "neglected" in terms of being prepared for adult-
[324]
hood [im pddagogischen sinne].* She neither knew nor learned

anything about the possibility of an "inner support" but only of ex-
ternal retreats and protection.As we have seen, this trend per-
vaded her and also dominated her illness. Already as a
entire life
child, Lola was "not normally developed" in a psychic sense, by
reason of both constitution and training. Her intelligence seems
to have been rather below average. In any case, the entire report
shows no signs of a well-developed intelligence.
Lola's lack of inner support intensified after the serious illness
(typhoid fever) in her twelfth year and grew into anxious insecu-
rity in her own home. Since we do not find a reference to fear of
ghosts, the feelings of "insecurity" at home might be seen as a fear
of burglars that, in turn,could be traced to concern with respect to
masturbation. On the other hand, such fear could just as well be
explained by a "post-infectious state of nervous weakness." This
could tempt us to assume that the anxiety that emerged in that state
had pathoplastically influenced the later psychosis and greatly de-
termined its "content." But I do not share this opinion. I beUeve
that, conversely, the post-infectious state of weakness merely
offered the occasion for the "insecurity" inherent in the consti-
tution to break through and to grow into acute anxiety; and that
it was Lola's constitution, perhaps aggravated by lack of moral
training, which can account for her first anxious insecurity as well
as for her later fear of fate and enemies. Since this polymorphous
form of schizophrenia usually appears at an early age we are justi-
fied in interpreting that first emergence of anxiety as an early symp-
tom of an incipient schizophrenic process.
When Lola, during her thirteenth year, stayed in a German
boardinghouse she was, according to the case report, boyish, dom-
ineering, bellicose, and quarrelsome. In immediately succeeding
years, however, she was apparently quite inconspicuous, pleasure-
loving, and fond of dancing; at the same time, she showed a tend-
ency to stay alone and lock herself in her room. This may have
coincidec^ with the onset of her morbid superstition that, by her
own testimony, emerged between the ages of seventeen and nine-
teen. All this is bound to renew the suspicion of an incipient schiz-
[• translator's note: This docs not refer to school learning. Significantly, no

English word for Erzielntng exists. Erziehung comprises parental upbringing plus
school learning.]
[325]
ophrenic process. True, Lola's defiant attitude toward her father

because of his objection to her engagement, her frequent fasting,
her joylessness and depression, and her threat to take the veil, can
still be seen as a purely "psychogenic" reaction of a schizoid psy-
chopath; but all these symptoms tend rather to reinforce the indica-
tion of incipient schizophrenia.
When Lola's case history reaches age twenty-two, we hear for
the first time of her peculiar behavior regarding clothes, apparently
her own clothes: she refuses to board a boat unless a certain dress is
removed. Here again, her will prevails. On a visit to Germany
where she met her fiance, she is reported to have become more in-
terested in clothes and to have opened up somewhat. But from
her own report we know that, already at that time, she was "most
severely" tortured by her obsessive ideas. Only during the follow-
— —
ing year her twenty -third was her illness noticed by the persons
around her. After the marriage was postponed by her fiance,
she "collapsed, became melancholic and pecuharly superstitious."
Hence, there is no doubt that Lola's so-called "compulsion neu-
rosis" was already fully developed when she was twenty-two,
perhaps even earUer, and only much later noticed by her relatives
(except for the observation of her objection to going aboard
with certain clothes). That the "compulsion neurosis" was a fur-
ther manifestation of the schizophrenic process is thus no longer
a suspicion, but a scientific con\dction. . . . Now the "aversion"
against hermother assumes such morbid forms that Lola regards as
bewitched anything that comes from her; she hides these objects,
gives them away, "loses" or sells them in the streets, wrapped in
small packages. Experience tells us that such behavior goes be-
yond the symptoms displayed in a mere compulsion neurosis.
The Superstitious Stage: The "Reading Compulsion" and

THE "Clothes Phobia" / Already in this stage we can observe,
if only on one occasion, a definitely delusional perception. During
her distraught period when Lola's anxiety about the pretty nurse
emerged, she was being watched by two men: "I was
felt that she
when I saw two figures in the cor-
lying downstairs in a deck-chair
ridor who watched me; when turned toward them, they ranI
away, so I stayed downstairs; but it felt very uncanny."

To this we must add Lola's fear of being hypnotized. Al-
[326]
though "delusions of hypnotic persecution" were not yet present,

we nevertheless see in her fear of being hypnotized, in her request
"not to look at her this way" and to promise her solemnly not to
hypnotize her an expression of "feeUngs of hypnotic influence."
But there were other sure symptoms of schizophrenia that
could be observed in the institution. Lola at first gave the impres-
sion of a stiff and affectless person, sloppy and indifferent in every
respect, very reticent, revengeful, sensitive and suspicious, ex-
tremely stubborn and even negativistic, without any interest or
joy in work, and retarded in her mental development. We must
include her unpredictable behavior and decisions, her vacillation,
and her hypochondriacal reaction to medications. Furthermore,
we must take into account her sudden change within a day —
from a definite fear of hypnosis to the avid wish to be hypnotized;
such striking ambivalence, added to all the other symptoms of in-
stability, permits us to speak of a dissociation of personality in a
schizophrenic context.
That the picture changes somewhat when Lola finds a physi-
cian who is agreeable to her, should not impress us as astonishing.
Lola is still emotionally receptive, and her need for support and
direction is by no means extinguished. She now becomes more
manageable, much more open, even trustful. Hence it is now pos-
sible to gain deeper insight into her psychic hfe. Thereby, the im-
pression of the patient's total personality grows definitely more
favorable, particularly as it now becomes obvious how intensely
she suffers.
Turning to Lola's "compulsive phenomena," we have again to
distinguish between the "reading compulsion" (compulsive inter-
rogation of fate) and the compulsive "tabooization" of her envi-
ronment and the world of fellowmen. How closely the two are
interrelated we have already shown. The psychopathological prob-
lem that poses itself is the following:
Are we dealing here with genuine compulsive ideas as in a com-
pulsion neurosis, or are the ideas already delusional? The diagnosis
of schizo, ' renia per se does not necessarily represent a decision
since in the course of schizophrenia we quite frequently observe
genuine phobias, compulsive ideas, and compulsive acts (in my ex-
perience, most frequently these consist of fear of germs and com-
pulsive washing). Hence, in each case of mixed schizophrenia we
[3^7]
must investigate precisely whether we are facing genuine and pure

symptoms of compulsion neurosis based on the mechanism of sub-
stitution, or merely abnonnal psychic phenomena that impose them-
selves upon the patient against his will and are felt and judged by
him as a "compulsion." We know that there is hardly a psycho-
pathological symptom that has not been called "compulsive." ^ In
our case, we have to ask and decide whether Lola's "compulsively
superstitious" ideas and acts are compulsions at all, or already repre-
sent delusions. And supposing we do want to speak of compulsive
ideas, we are still facing the alternative that they might be much
closer to delusion than to compulsion (viz. Kretschmer's admoni-
tion to search much more for the distinction between compulsion
and delusion than for that between delusion and delusion). Here
we meet again the much discussed but, in my opinion, very vaguely
formulated problem: can delusional ideas originate in compulsive
ideas? What should be asked and investigated is, I beheve, whether
and to what degree compulsion and delusion are only different
stages or periods of one and the same anthropological "change of
form" [Gestaltivandel]. This question has not yet been answered
by psychopathology, which is primarily interested in a strict dis-
tinction between compulsion and delusion as psychopathological
symptoms. The main criterion for this distinction has, since West-
phal, been the insight or lack of insight into the nonsensical and
ego-alien quality of the morbid event. From a symptomatological
point of view, this criterion is valid, although such insight is fre-
quently subject to vacillation so that the criterion often fails in a
particular case.But the question is, whether psychopathology can
content itself with this descriptive psychopathological viewpoint
and its purely "functional" interpretation, which will always form
the directive for the clinical and particularly for the forensic judg-
ment. But should not psychopathology, in the interest of pure re-
search, be directed by other and deeper perspectives? Heeding the
latter view, we believe that psychopathology, through anthropolog-
ical investigation and research, can indeed gain "deeper" perspec-
tives.
The ''Reading Compulsion" Lola, as we have seen, expe-

riences her "reading" as a "must," as a compulsion and, as all genu-
ine compulsive neurotics do, feels a terrifying, unbearable anxiety
[328]
ifshe cannot yield to the compulsion. But in contrast to the

compulsion neurotic, Lola not only obeys a compulsive impulse by
way of thinking, feeling, or acting (as, e.g., the impulse to repeat,
to think things through to the very end, to count, to wash, to de-
stroy, to curse, to pray, etc.), but beyond that, yields to the "non-
sensical" compulsion to gather a sensible answer from "the things."
Thus, the "reading" and interpreting, experienced by herself as an
intruding ego-alien "must," results here in a solution that does
make on which she depends for
sense to her personality, a solution
her and happiness, while in compulsion proper, bliss and hap-
bliss
piness depend only on the obedience to the nonsensical compulsive

command as such, which has to be executed endlessly or in definite
sequences of time. Hence
meaning of the genuine compulsion,
the
if we considermerely descriptively, lies in the execution of an
it
act that is completely meaningless or drained of meaning quite —

independent of what "meaning" may be found in or behind that act
by psychoanalysis. The meaning of the pure compulsion lies, in
our case, quite outside the act, namely, in avoiding the anxiety that
occurs as soon as the act (interpreting is also an act) is omitted.
No doubt, Lola's "reading" compulsion is also of that anxiety-
avoiding type but, in addition, it is given the very meaningful task
of reading the "yes" and "no" out of things, particularly out of
words or names signifying things that coincide spatio-temporally.
In this case, we
can actually speak of a "compulsion to extract the
meaning" [Sinnentname] .^ Things don't function any longer ac-
cording to their own "objective" meaning, but exclusively to ex-
press a "higher" meaning, one pregnant with fate. Are we still
dealing here with compulsion or already with delusion? In my

opinion, with both: compulsion, insofar as the reading imposes
an ego-alien "must"; delusion, insofar as it is based on the
itself as
no longer ego-alien, delusional idea that "fate" speaks through the

objects and provides compelling hints as to the "reader's" future
conduct. One could reply that every superstition is founded on
such a "delusional idea," without deserving the name "delusion."
But we are dealing here (as most investigators since Westphal,
Bleuler among them, have emphasized) with graduated shades of
psychic structures; moreover, Lola's reading compulsion would
have to be termed a delusion if for no other reason than that she
unshakeably "believed" not only in the "omnipotence of fate"
[329]
but also in each one of her interpretations, and that she ascribed
reality-character to them. We may add that her questioning and
reading system as such represents a logically motivated "delusional
system." The fact that her "logical motivation" is extremely
skimpy and superficial, even nonsensical, rather supports than con-
tradicts our opinion.
To be sure, we expect to observe the most extreme nonsensical
acts in genuine compulsion neuroses; but there the nonsense is rec-
ognized as nonsensical by the patient, whereas Lola identifies with
the nonsense, which indicates that she experiences and comprehends
it as something that does make sense!
Hence we have to understand that the signs from which she
reads the intentions of fate are interpreted in just as delusional a
manner as the signs from which she "reads" the intentions of the
"enemies." On
both occasions she "projects" (as we would put it
in psychopathology —
not phenomenologically, to be sure, but
merely theoretically) "something" onto objects and people "that is
not in them at all." We shall, however, neglect this common feature
for the time being, because the reading from the objects is still to
some degree experienced as a compulsion, in contrast to "reading"
from people; furthermore, the reading from objects calls for a
special system of interpretation while the reading from people
seems to be independent of any artificial reading system but guided
only by the natural human phenomena of expression. But if we
could learn anything from the anthropological analysis of our case,
and particularly from a juxtaposition of the two stages, it would
have to be the realization that underneath the reading from facial
expressions, words, and other "signs" of "the people," there must
be an artificial, self-produced system of interpretation of which
the reader is no longer aware. With the simple statement of a
"delusional interpretation" nothing is accomplished. (We shall
return to this point in the discussion of Lola's delusions of persecu-
tion.)
To what degree the questioning of fate is the expression of "in-
fantile regression" must remain unanswered, for lack of any find-
ings about Lola's inner life history. I wish, however, to point to the
possibility that Lola's seeking and finding protection, particularly

from her grandmother, might be connected with a similar relation
to the "person" shesaw in fate. Undoubtedly, this early seeking
[330I
and finding of protection was propagated in the "reading" compul-

sion,which lends additional support to our view of its infantile
quality.
''The Clothes Phobia'' While the "answers" of fate had cer-

tain taboolike characteristics, these characteristics became much
more marked with respect to certain garments and their wearers as
well as other objects mentioned by Lola. Here again, the question
becomes Phobia or Delusion?
That Lola's behavior in these areas displays phobic symptoms
is almost self-evident; but her clothes phobia extends beyond the
psychopathological content of a phobia of the merely compulsive

neurotic type. This is indicated by the very close connection be-
tween the phobia and the delusional system of reading and inter-
pretation as well as by the fact that this very phobia is no longer
felt as ego-alien but as ego-syntonic.
Lola perceives her phobic symptoms not as a "must," alien to
her personality, but as something quite meaningful, namely, again,
as "fateful" in the earlier sense. Here, too, the decisive factor is the
delusional feeling of being delivered to an overwhelming power of
fate. Indeed, to Lola fate manifests itselfnot just through verbal
oracles, but also in material form. We have found sufficient purely
existential grounds as to why clothes were the primary objects
through which fate manifested itself, but we lack the individual
life-historical "explanatory" grounds for this phenomenon.
Since the will of fate expresses itself in the material form of
garments and other utilitarian objects, the ensuing defensive meas-
ures are also purely "material." They consist in the elimination of the
"contaminated" material. This removal of the "fateful or taboo-
laden" clothes expresses drastically the basic pattern of Lola's
battle against fate: by discarding, disposing of, giving away,
selling, cutting up these clothes, she wards off her fate as long as
possible. "Her" fate is, as we know, the sinking into the anxiety of
naked horror, from which she is — we consider the
actually freed if
degree of her subjective suffering — by her delusions of persecution.

Here, the "phobia" expresses the fear of complete subjugation by
the overwhelming power of that fate and, thus, of the "nihilation"
That the phobia is not felt and judged as
of existence in general.
alien to the personality is, therefore, not its only delusional com-
[331]
ponent; another is its incorrigible delusional conviction that fate

manifests itself in material forms.
Unfortunately, we also lack material that could elucidate the
psychopathological genesis of these delusions. We do not know to
what degree abnormal somatic feehngs, or even somatic hallucina-
tions, or feelings of being influenced have played a part (which
does not affect our purely anthropological understanding of the
case, since change in anthropological structure must be understood
as a priori to the ways and means of its a posteriori forms of ex-
pression). However, we know from the case history of another pa-
tient (Rosa), that the putting on and taking off of garments was re-
lated to delusions of being psychically or sexually stripped, drained,
deprived, exposed, and that psychic pressure and a "heavy heart"
were identified with the pressure and weight of clothes on the
body. In German, the verbal analogy is undeniable: "ausgezogen
. . .
," "entzogen . . . ," "seelisch ausgezogen . .
." etc.* Of
course, the patient did not have to be conscious of that analogy,
since language "thinks" for us. Ever since Luther it has been
German man that he would have to "doff the old
usage to say of a
Adam" in order to become a "new man." On the other hand, I am
reminded of idioms like that of the person "who changes his con-
victions like his gloves." The concept of external habiliments as a
—
symbol of the inner man as offered by Carlyle in his Sartor Re-
sartus —
does not suffice; The common ground for the possible
"co-incidence" ("symbol" is derived from symballesthai: to be
thrown together) of the intended object and the word used has to
be demonstrated. It is the common ground that permits the inter-
changeabihty. An additional factor is, of course, the intimate affin-
ity of clothes and wearer, within his own world as well as in the
eyes of his follow men (viz., "Clothes make the man").t
In Rosa's case, to which we have just referred, the content of
the verbal metaphor was, as is so often true in schizophrenia, ren-
dered absolute, that is, severed from the mutually interrelated links
of comparison. Hence, no difference exists any more between be-
[• tr.\nslator's notte: The case historv' referred to above is more fully created
in an extensive footnote in the German original.]
t Strangely enough, "clothes" have rarely been considered in psychopathology.
Cf. R.Kuhn: "Cber Kleider," Die Irrenpflege, 21. Jahrgang, No. 8 (1942); and:
Vber Maskendeutungen hn Rorschach'schen Vermcb, 1944, pp. 71-74.
[33^]
ing psychically stripped or covered, and the taking off and putting
on of clothes; between psychic pressure and weight on the soul,
and the pressure and weight of clothes on the body. This phenom-
enon is related to the simultaneity of seeing and feeling and to the
elimination of the boundaries of the personality (viz, the draining
of thoughts). When this patient sees the others do this or that, she
feels it on her hair, on her arm, and on her dress.She is particularly
exposed to pressure while sewing. The dress "belongs," like her
soul and body, both to her and to the others, and vice versa. She
becomes invested with vulgarity when she puts the dress on, with
goodness when she divests herself of it, until eventually the dress,
itself, becomes personified and turns into an enemy that threatens
to leave the suitcase and torment her. A change of clothes is iden-

tified with a change of persons.
It is regrettable that we know nothing about the last stage of
Lola's psychosis. But even so, we can see analogies, although in
Lola's delusions the clothes were not personified and the enemies
acted much more like actual persons. What Rosa's case more im-
pressively demonstrates is the carrying of the delusions of refer-
ence and encroachment into the clothes. This may arouse a suspi-
cion that in Lola's clothes phobia, delusions of reference and of
encroachment were more markedly involved than the report dis-
closes. That such "ideas" were already present at the time of the
clothes phobia has been definitely established. Hence, Lola's phobia

can in many respects be seen as a prelude to a "clothing" delusion
— as a prelude only since she, herself (i.e., as a self), does not yet
permit the clothes "to get at her," but still "takes them off," "does
away with them . . . ," whereas Rosa actually feels dressed or
stripped by the clothes.
But we must not forget that what we are here observing are
only different degrees of the "secondary elaboration" of anxiety.
Thus, the "of what" of anxiety is in both cases essentially the same,
namely: the Threatening, Damaging, Hostile, which in Lola's case
use the garments only as carriers through which to manifest them-
selves while, for Rosa, the garments, themselves, are the Threaten-
ing, Damaging, Hostile. To us, these two attitudes indicate only
differences in degree regarding the possibilities of warding off the
threat. For Lola, the threat can still be warded off by removal of
the clothes, or by keeping away from their wearers. For the other
[333]
Selected Papers of Litdwig Benswanger
patient, Rosa, it can only be done through a wall of space or abuse.

Lola's terrible fear of the nurse Emmy
and of other wearers of
clothes forms a Hnk between both
True, Lola still differen-
cases.
tiates here between the garment and its wearer; but the person has
—
already become an enemy although not an outright murderer
yet an enemy as a carrier of everything evil and horrible. So far,
only an emotional —not a logical —motivation is given for the hos-
tihty; but in either case the motivation is incorrigible, and inacces-
sible to logical counterarguments. The only remaining difference is
that Lola, in contrast to the other patient, still understands us in our

attempts to change her ideas. And although this understanding does
not save her from the delusional fear of the Dreadful, it neverthe-
less preserves communications between her and "us" to some de-
gree, whereas they were completely disrupted in the other case.
All this leads to the conclusion that Lola's clothes phobia, while
phobic in character, is closely related to delusions, another confir-
mation of the often-observed fact that the mixed form of schizo-
phrenia is typified by the ambiguity of its psychopathological symp-
toms.
The Delusions of Persecution / The appearance of delu-

sions of persecution marks the end of the mLxed form of schizo-
phrenia and its transition to a paranoid syndrome. The scene that
is permeated by compulsive and semiphobic symptoms, ambiva-
lence, delusional perceptions, and feelings of hypnotic influence,

dissolves into a picture dovmiated by delusions.
Already in the superstitious stage we discovered manifold de-
lusional components:
1. A single delusional perception of being watched, a forerun-
ner of what Lola later called being be?jengiert, being seen, ob-
served, eavesdropped upon.
2. The feeling of being hypnotized: ("You want to hypnotize
me, don't look at me this way!") Already this could be seen as a
delusional fear of being influenced.
3. The delusional component in the ^^reading co?n pulsion: the
attempt to learn the intentions of fate through a self-designed sys-
tem of verbal symbols and the incorrigible submission to these "ex-
periences." Already the compulsion is merely an auxiliary. The
"compulsion" to question fate continually protects Lola from the
[334]
break-through of the Uncanny-Dreadful, but does not yet repre-

sentits transformation into the secretiveness of the enemies the —
delusions of persecution. The imperative of having to "read" is the
whip that drives Lola on so that she may avoid the Dreadful that
threatens her entire existence.
4. The delusional coDiponent in the clothes phobia: this has
been recognized as identical with that of the "reading" compulsion.
One could call it a kind of persecution mania if this expression were
not reserved for delusions of persecution by one's fellowmen. Lola
feels actually that she is pursued by the Dreadful, which is ever and
everywhere close at her heels, which threatens her and lurks about
her. She is, in what Jaspers most fittingly describes as a "delusional
mood not to be confused with psychasthenic moods and feelings. In
the delusional mood there is always 'something' which, however
vaguely, has in it the seeds of objective validity and importance. A
general delusional mood without definite content must be quite un-
^°
bearable."
Hence, the clothes phobia, too, enables us to understand that
the delusions do not "originate" in the phobia, just as they do not
"originate" in the "reading" compulsion, but that the phobia is al-
ready the expression of a delusional mood, of a "being keyed"

[Gestivnntheit] by the "unbearable" Dreadful. What the case of
Lola deinonstrates is that there are phobias and compulsive ideas
based on delusions, on a delusional mood.
Jaspers agrees with Hagen, who states that there emerges in the
patient "a feeling of rootlessness and insecurity which drives him
with the force of an instinct to search for something stable to hold
on to and cling to"; and that "he can find this completion and con-
solation only in an idea, in a way very similar to that of the healthy
person under corresponding conditions." This explanation of the
process, however, contains such heterogeneous elements that it
calls for closer examination. The analogy with the healthy does not
appear valid. It is true that in sadness or desperation the healthy,
too, may search for a definite idea and grasp it in order to find
something stable to hold on to. But while this is a valid description
of what happens in less seriously ill patients, it does not hold true in
Lola's case. Considering the genesis of delusions of persecution, we
must be particularly cautious in accepting this explanation, as far as
phenomenological facts are concerned. It is correct only theoreti-
[335I
cally if we focus upon the effect: Lola in her delusions of persecu-

tion did not suffer as terribly as in the superstitious stage. But
neither has she "herself" brought about these delusions nor does
she experience them as "completion, strengthening, or consola-
tion." There we are thinking strictly in terms of "normal psy-
chology." As we found in the existential analysis, in Lola's case, the
more or less "active" resolve of the self to search for a hold is re-
placed by the process of mundanization of the existence, which
follows its own norms and course. We must not impute to the self
something which the self, in its delusions, no longer is able to per-
form! To expect the self still to make decisions or at least render
some help contradicts the anthropological phenomenon of delu-
sions as such, since where there is delusion there can no longer be
any genuine self. To speak of a "delusional self" would be a con-
tradiction in adjecto. The fact that Hagen, however vaguely,
states that a feeling "drives the patient with the force of an in-
stinct" (which in any case suggests a relative lack of participation
on the part of the self), demonstrates, in itself, the degree to which,
in psychopathology, we still miss firm fundamental concepts and
basic premises. Two approaches are mainly responsible for psy-
chopathology's failure in the area of delusions. Either the oft-
criticized attempt was made to understand and explain the delu-
sions in terms of normal psychology, or they were declared
scientifically "ununderstandable," and stared at as an incomprehen-
sible enigma that could at best be explained in terms of cerebral
pathology.
In my opinion, the Daseinsanalytic case studies have at least
demonstrated that there is a road to the scientific understanding of
the delusions (not to be confused with empathic and psychological
understanding), and that this road is that of phenomenological-
anthropological investigation.
As already shown here, we can approach the scientific under-
standing of the delusions only if we recognize that we arc dealing
with a certain mode of existential dccapacitation [Ermnachtigiing]
or, to use a synonym, with a certain mode of mundanization. We
say expressly, "a certain mode!" Therefore, it is our task to demon-
strate and describe precisely each stage of this process of dccapaci-
tation while considering all possible structural links in the structure
of the existence or of the bcing-in-the-world.
[336]
In an earlier chapter I have shown that, like the genuine pho-

bias, delusions can only be understood in terms of existential anx-
iety (and by no means through the "affect of anxiety"). "World"
now no longer means a totality of conditions that the existence has
taken in its stride, but a condition definitely determined by the be-
ing as something frightful, a condition of hostility, of something
that once and for all, hostile or threatening. It is a world design
is,
that no longer carried by nor bears any traces of love and trust,
is
or of the closeness to humans and things that results from these

feelings.*
Autism and Anxiety / "Autism" — as emphasized in earlier

studies — is mood and thus must not
neither a "being keyed" nor a
be interpreted as such in existential analysis. The case of Lola con-
firms this view. We have only to recall what we said about the lack
of materiality or consistence of her world design. Where the
"world" no longer shows a material vesture, where the "life -fire"
isburned out and only "ashes" are left, the "key" [Gestimmtheit]
of the existence, its "keyability," has suffered or has altogether dis-
appeared. We described Lola as a "burned-out crater," that is, as a
person in whom almost all were

freely flowing, immediate feelings
extinguished. Instead, the existence was dominated, even consumed
(ashened) by anxiety. But this anxiety (as I have emphasized re-
peatedly) is basically not feeling or affect, but an expression of
existential anxiety, that is, of the draining of the existence, and of its
progressive loss of "world." Of course, loss of world is accom-

panied by loss of self. Where the existence is no longer in a position
to design the world freely, it also suffers the loss of the self. This
was clearly realized and expressed by Schopenhauer. He was the
first to mention the possibility that we "could become conscious of
ourselves through ourselves, independently of the objects of cogni-
tion and will," although he subsequently adds, "but, alas, we cannot
do and as soon as we try it and direct our cognition inward for
it,
complete contemplation, we lose ourselves in a bottomless vacuum
•The present paper was concluded in 1945. In 1946 W. Szilasi published his
"Macht und Ohnmacht des Geistes (Francke, Bern) in which the author, follow-
ing the interpretation of Platos Philebos points out with unsurpassed clarity and
conciseness the essential unity of anxiety and confidence as "the original tran-
scendental power. . .
."
[337]
Selected Papers of Ludwig Bins'wanger
and find ourselves resembling a hollow glass sphere with a voice

sounding out of its emptiness, a voice whose som-ce cannot be dis-
covered within; and by thus trying to grasp ourselves, we shudder-
ingly grab nothing but a contentless apparition." *
This (psychological) presentation of the mutual relation of
world and self can perhaps more clearly demonstrate to the psy-
chopathologist what we mean, than can the Daseinsanalytic presen-
tation. When we speak of a "burned-out crater," we speak of
losses both in existence and in world, even though they can be
traced to a single root. The "about what" of anxiety and of the
shudder of which Schopenhauer speaks; the "at what" of the naked
horror, as we call it, is no object and no enemy, but the ghostliness
or "contentlessness" [Bestandlosigkeit] of the existence (deprived
of "world") as such. Consequently, in terms of existential analysis,
we no longer speak of a mood or of an affect (as in the case of fear)
but of a loss of world and self.
Hence, when we we must first of all think of

talk about autis?n,
existential analysis world and self (or at least of a
and of losses of
reduction of the potentiaUties of world and self) and we must be ;
aware of the fact that this "reduction" manifests itself first of all in
a reduction of "keyability." Small wonder that this fact had al-
ready attracted the attention of E. Bleuler, the originator of the
concept of autism, although he thought primarily of the increasing
barriers to positive feelings.
It is this reduction of the potential "keyability" caused by exis-
tential anxiety that explains the "lack of contact with reality," the
reduction of the foiiction du reel (Janet), the lack of attunement
to the environment and world of fellowTuen, of syntony (Bleuler)
or synchronism (E. Minkowski), which accounts particularly for
autistic thinking. That autistic thinking is "directed" by strivings,
• Cf. The World as Will and Representation, Book Four, Paragraph 54. The
same situation is tersely expressed by Szilasi (in reference to Heidegger) as follows:
"The existence perceives as external world that which is originally it (the existence)
itself."
tSec "Das Denken," Jahrbuch Bleuler und Fretid, IV, 24: "It appears
autistischc
that the process of Dementia praccox as such renders difficult the formation of such
positive affective tones (Gcfuchlstone) or else the 'pleasure mechanism' would have
to result much more frequently in ecstasies or in feelings of extreme joy; on the
other hand, one must admit that to produce for oneself a perfect hallucinatory
paradise calls for a certain creative ability which not every one possesses who turns
schizophrenic."
[338]
that "thinking occurs in terms of the strivings without considera-

tion of logic and reahty," all this is psychopathologically not a pri-
mary cause, but the effect of existential anxiety, and of the reduc-
tion or elimination of the keying potential which accompanies the
latter.
The Hallucination Problem / Our knowledge of Lola's hal-

lucinations is too skimpy to allow for a detailed discussion. Never-
theless, this case may yet throw some light upon the problem posed
by hallucinations.
The fact that hallucinations are associated with autism, that is,
with a certain state of existence, has already been emphasized by
Bleuler. But I know of only one paper that explicitly explained the
problem of hallucinations on the grounds of "structural-analytic"
considerations. I am referring to a brief paper by E. Minkowski: "A
propos du probleme des hallucinations" (1937)." In it, Minkowski
clearly states that the hallucinations must no longer be investigated
as isolated disturbances but "en fonction du fond mental qui
. . .
les conditionne. . .
."
What Minkowski, in his discussion, calls the phenomenon of

"desocialization" consists in the fact that the patients are not at all
surprised when they notice that others do not perceive what they
themselves think they are perceiving. But all this still does not help
us to progress beyond autism in the usual sense. We can do so only
if we, with Minkowski, realize that the perceptions, in general,
have a significance that by far transgresses their sensory and cogni-

tive function —
as can be demonstrated by the "sensory metaphors"
(to "have tact," "flair," etc.) —
and if we focus on them not from a
merely spatial (measurable) distance, but rather from the "experi-
enced distance." Hallucinations and, particularly, "voices" cannot
be understood through a "rational" concept of closeness and dis-
tance, presence and absence, but only by understanding them in
terms of dynamics and living would say "through phenome-
(I
nological-anthropological understanding"). Without going further
into Minkowski's paper, I only want to point out that in the case of
Lola, too, the delusional perceptions (the perceptions of hostile
by no means represent iso-
signs, hostile intentions, hostile voices)
lated phenomena, and that it would be hopeless to attempt to
understand them merely on a sensory basis. They have to be under-
[339]
stood as partial phenomena of a special world design —a design of

the world, and particularly of the world of fellowmen —under the
(unfamiliar, purely anxiety-conditioned) aspect of the Threatening
and the Hostile.* They are the strongest expression of the hostile
closing in, that is, of bodily closeness (viz. especially the feelings of
hypnotic influence and the bodily hallucinations possibly connected
with the former or with the clothes phobia).
Considering Lola's flight from the world, we may assume in her
case, too, that the world "has closed in on her" and has "weighed
too heavily on her soul" (Jiirg Ziind). In the stage of superstitions,
she was still able to keep away from that closeness and pressure;
this she could not do any more in the phase of the delusions of per-
secution and during the hallucinations that accompanied them.
To put it more correctly, the delusions of persecution and the
corresponding sensory illusions are the very representation of that
"experienced" hostile crowding of world and of that hostile world
pressure. It is true that these delusions helped her to overcome
the ghostliness and bottomlessness of the existence (Schopenhauer),
the existential anxiety as I have elaborated it here, but only at the
price of a recurrence of world closeness and pressure in a particu-
larly intensive way. True, the delusions helped the existence to a
tenure or content [Stand oder Bestand]; once again it had some-
thing through which it could comprehend itself ^but at the ex- —
pense of its freedom/ What we have called delusional perceptions
or hallucinations are nothing but isolated bridges or links "between"
an unfree subjectivity and a corresponding "imaginary" objectiv-
ity; they are only isolated aspects of a deeply changed existential
structure.
With all this, I intend nothing more than to point to the posi-
tion and method from and by which the problem of hallucinations

can, in my opinion, be attacked by means of existential analysis.
• Obviously, where the transcendental unity of anxiety and confidence has
been torn apart in favor of the superiority or tyranny of one or the other, we are
dealing with what is clinically known as psychosis.
[340I
Notes
[i. See Binswanger, "The Case of Ellen West," in Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and
Henri V. EUenberger (eds.). Existence; and "The Case of Jiirg Ziind," in Schiz-
ophrenie.]
2. Binswanger, Grundformen und ErkermtTiis menschlischen Daseins (Zurich,
i95j),p. 445 ff.
3. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread.
4. See Bins\^'anger, "The Spatial Problem in Psychology," Zeits. fur Netirologie,
Vol. 145, Nos. 3 and 4 (1933), p. 598 ff.
5. See Binswanger, Grundformen, pp. 328 ff. and 375 ff.
6. On the problem of Extravagance, compare the analysis of The Masterbuilder
in my Henrick Ibsen und das Problem der SelbstreaJisierung in der Kunst
(Heidelberg, 1949).
7. See Gaston Bachelard, La psychoanalyse du feu (Paris, Gallimard, 1939), pp.
84 f.
8. See also Binder, Zur Psychologie der Zwangsvorgange (Berlin, 1936), and
"Zwang und Kriminalitat," Schweizer Archiv fiir Neurologie und Psychiatric,
Vols. 54 and 55.
9. See Erwin Straus, Geschehnis und Erlebnis (Berlin, 1930), and my own paper
with the same title in Monatsschrift fiir Psychiatrie, Vol. 80, Nos. 5 and 6
(i93>).
10. K. Jaspers, Allgemeine Psychopathologie, 3rd ed. (1922), p. 63.
11. From Annales Medico-Psychologiques, No. 4 (April, 1937).
I34U
Extravagance rVerstiegenheit)
Human existence projects itself in breadth, and in height;^ it not

only strides forth, but mounts upward. In both respects, there-
also
fore, it is possible for human existence to go too far, to become
Extravagant. If, now, we are to understand the anthropological
meaning of Extravagance, we must seek what it is that makes pos-
sible the change from existential rising into a mode of existence
that is Extravagant. Anthropology can never limit its investi-
gations to only one existential direction, but, rather, being anthro-
pological^ must always have before it the total structure of human
beings. The basis, therefore, of this change or conversion from
Extravagance will, from the start, be viewed
existential rising into
not merely upward movement, but will be understood as part of
as
the koinonicr or community of other basic potentialities of human
existence. As I have attempted to show elsewhere,^ Extravagance
is, in fact, rooted in a certain disharmony in the relation between
translator's NOTE: There is no one word in English that adequately conveys

the meaning of the German verstiegen. The verb, sich vcrstcigen, means to climb
too high so as not to be able to return, to lose one's self among precipitous moun-
tain peaks, to fly high, to go too far, etc. As an adjective, it is, therefore, inac-
curately rendered by such words as "extravagant," "eccentric," "queer," "odd," or
"high-flown," none of which convey the sense of one's climbing into a cxd-de-sac.
The term "extravagance," capitalized, is used here because, despite the fact that its
common English usage is not adequate to the German word, its Latin roots {extra,
beyond, and vagari, wander) taken together, give the meaning of wandering be-
yond a limit. To feel the full sense of the word, imagine a mountain climber
trapped on a narrow ledge such that he can neither descend nor ascend, and from
which he must be rescued by others.
Extravagance (Verstiegenheit)
rising upward and striding fonh. If we call such a relation "anthro-

pologically proportionate" when * then we must
it is "successful,"
speak of Extravagance form of anthropological disproportion,
as a
as a "failure" of the relationship between height and breadth in the
anthropological sense.
The rising upward of human beings is not to be understood
within the context of its being-in-the-world'^ and its correspond-
ing spatialization and temporalization. It is, rather, to be under-
stood in the context of its being-beyond-the-world in the sense
of the at-homeness and eternalness of love,* in which there exists
no above and below, no near and far, no sooner and later. If,
nevertheless, human existence, as a finite being, still remains "con-
signed" to height and breadth, can "go too far" only where it has
it
broken out of the home and eternity of love and is completely con-
tained in "space and time." For only where the communio of love
and the cormnunicatio of friendship is missing and where mere
intercourse and traffic with "others" and with one's self has taken
over the exclusive direction of our existence, only there can height
and depth, nearness and distance, present and future, have so much
importance that human existence can go too far, can attain to an
end and a noiv from which there is neither retreat nor progress. In
such a case, we speak of conversion into Extravagance. It may be
an Extravagant "idea," an ideology (ideologies are by their very
nature Extravagant), an Ejctravagant ideal or "feeling," an Extrav-
agant wish or plan, an Extravagant claim, opinion, or viewpoint, a
mere "whim" or an Extravagant deed or misdeed. In all these in-
stances, "Extravagance" is conditioned by the fact that the Dasein
has "gotten stuck" at a certain experiential locus [Er-Fahrung]
from which it can no longer, to use a phrase from Hofmannsthal,'
"strike its tent," from which it can no longer break out. Robbed of
communio and covnminicatio, the Dasein can no longer widen, re-
vise, or examine its "experiential horizon" and remains rooted to a
"narrow minded," i.e., sharply limited, standpoint. In this respect,
the Dasein is "stalled" or ob-stinate, but not yet Extravagant,* for
• Of the languages familiar to me, only German clearly draws this distinction.
In English and the Romance languages, corresponding expressions are drawn al-
most exclusively from the worldly sphere {aller trap loin, andar troppo lontano,
or troppo oltre, to go too far or so far as to maintain). Spanish is an exception. It
recognizes both an irse demasaido lejos (too far or too wide) and a tomar su vuelo
demasiado alto (to fly or swing too high).
[343]
Selected Papers of Lxtdtvig Binswanger
an additional precondition of Extravagance is that the Dasein rises

higher than is appropriate to the breadth of its experiential and in-
tellectual horizon, that, in other v/ords, breadth and height are
not proportional to each other.
The classic clinical psychiatric example of this is Bleuler's
concept of a certain kind of mental deficiency as a "dispro-
portion between striving and understanding"; the classic exam-
ple from dramatic Uterature is Ibsen's master-builder Solness,*
who "builds higher than he cUmb." * In no case, how-
is able to
ever, should this disproportion between breadth and height be
understood as a relation between particular "abUities" or char-
acteristics, and least of all as a relation between "intelligence
and the need to be admired"; what we must look for, rather,
are the anthropological co iditions that make such dispropor-
tionate relationships possible. We do not consider Extravagance
as something appUcable to particular groups (parties, cliques, sects,
etc) that patendy embody a lopsided collection of "traits" or
"identifying characteristics." Nor, therefore, is it to be understood
in general as a character trait or as some kind of ascertainable psy-
chological, psychopathological, or sociological event or "symp-
tom." It is, approached "daseinsanalytically" " i.e.,
rather, to be —
as something to be understood within the total structure of human
existence — as, in short, an anthropological, ontological possibility.
Only when approach is understood can we reach a genuine
this
understanding of the richly extensive "symptomatology" of Ex-
travagance. Only then shall we, for example, be able to see how
and to what degree we can differentiate anthropologically between
the (incorrectly) so-called "extravagant ideas" of the manic,'" the
"extravagant" ("screwy," "bizarre") gestures, language, or actions
of the schizophrenic," and the phobias of the neurotic —even while
as psychopathologists or in our everyday life we speak of them all
as "extravagant." Even schizophrenic insanity can, in my opinion,

•TTiat Ibsen clearly saw ("seeing" is his own word for poetry) the significance
of the relation between height and breadth for the success or failure of liuman
existence is indicated by the fact that in his Little Eyolf he presents a figure in
clear contrast to the mastcrbuildcr Solncss. The road builder Bcrghcim is a figure
who docs not seek to "build higher" than he can actually climb, bidccd, as his pro-
fession indicates, he does not, like Solncss, build towers soaring into the sky only
to lie one day shattered upon the ground. Bcrghcim builds pretty roads on the
earth. He does not .strive after an unattainable "happiness," nor desire more than
he is capable of. He thus attains to that which he seeks and grows thereby.
[344]
be understood'^ only if it is taken initially as an existential mode of

Extravagance. The same holds true for "mass phenomena" of Ex-
travagance.
Let us, however, turn our attention back to Extravagance con-
sidered as a structural displacement of anthropological proportions.
The horizontal, as a vector of meaning, the "going out into the
wide world," corresponds more to "discursivity," to the ex-
periencing, traversing, and occupying of "world," to the "broad-
ening of the field of vision," the broadening of insight, perspective,
and vista with respect to the "hubbub" of outer and inner "world."
Similarly, the vertical, as a vector of meaning, the rising upwards,
corresponds more to the desire to overcome the "earth's gravity,"
the desire to be elevated above the pressure and "anxiety of the
earthbound," as well as the desire to gain a "higher" perspective, a
"higher view of things," as Ibsen says, from which man may shape,
master, or, in a word, appropriate the "known." Such an appro-
priation of the world in the sense of a becoming and realizing of
the self is termed choosing oneself. Choice, be it of a particular ac-
tion or of a whole life's commitment, presupposes a rising or lift-
ing of oneself above the particular worldly situation and thus above
*
the ambit of the known and seen. But what does this "above"
mean? As Nietzsche so eloquently described in the preface to Hu-
man, All Too Human, it does not mean the adventurer's "circum-
navigation of the world" in the sense of worldly experience; it
means, rather, the strenous and painful scaling of the "rungs on the
ladder" of the problem of evaluation,^ i.e., of establishing an order
of preference.
Rising upward is thus not simply mere learning, knowing one's
way about, knowledge in the sense of experience, but involves,
rather, "taking a stand," choosing oneself in the sense of self-
realization or maturation. We
must, however, be careful not to
confuse this rising upwards with mere will in the sense of the psy-
chological distinction of understanding, feeling, and will.t Rather
• This lifting of oneself above a worldly situation must not be confused with
the "beyond" of the being-beyond world as such in the sense of love.

t Gaston Bachelard makes the same point (see VAir et les Songes) when he
characterizes vertical rising as valorisation, as the apprehension and lending of
value. Recall, for example, the decision of Antigone.
1 1 am in complete agreement with E. Minkowski when he (sec "La Triade
psychologique" in Vers une Cosmologie, pp. 57 S.) disputes this "triadic" dassifica-
[345]
Selected Papers of Ltnjwic Binswanger
we must realize that (as is hinted by Bleuler's term "striving") in

rising, the fact of being carried (by the "wings" of moods, -wishes,
passions —by "fantasy" or imagination) passes smoothly into the
fact of decisively* "taking a stance." Nevertheless, we must clearly
distinguish, anthropologically, between the dispositional state of
being carried by wishes, ideas, ideals, and the strenuous, toilsome
act of scaling the "rungs on the ladder," which allows these wishes,
ideas, and ideals to be weighed against each other in life, art, philos-
ophy, and science and to be translated into words and deeds.
This conception sheds hght on the height-breadth dispropor-
tion that underhes the possibility of "manic ideation." We shall
soon see that this mode of disproportion is so different from that
of Extravagance that we cannot even speak of it as "extravagant
ideation," but rather as a "flight of ideas," a term that is also used in
psychopathology. The height-breadth disproportion of the type of
being-in-the-world represented by the flight of ideas is completely
diffêrent to that exemplified by Extravagance. In the for?ner, the
disproportion consists in the fact that striding forth is replaced by
a leaping and jumping-beyond "into the infinite." The horizon or
circle of vision is "endlessly broadened," but at the same time the
rising upward remains solely a "vol imaginaire" a htmg- carried on
the wings of mere wishes and "fantasies." The result is that neither
an overview in the sense of experiential wisdom, nor a penetration
of the problematic structure of the particular situation (elevation
is, at the same time, also basically a penetration, since altitudo refers
essentially to both height and depth) is attained, and thus no deci-
sive stance is taken. This height-breadth disproportion is rooted in
an "excessive" expansion of the manic's pervasively volatile world;
excessive, that is, in that the sphere of the authentic undergoes a
simultaneous process of "leveling.'''' ^^ By "authentic," we refer to
those heights (or depths) which can be attained only insofar as the
Dasein undergoes the arduous process of choosing itself and grow-
ing into maturity. The disproportion evidenced in the manic pat-
tern of life"'' is spoken of daseinsanalytically as flightiness. It signi-
tion of psychological phenomena and, indeed, argues against the very possibility of
such a classification.
• Consequently, we must unreservedly agree with Bachclard when he writes:
"II est impossible de fairc la psychologic dc la volontc sans alicr a la racine memc
du vol inuginairc."
[346]
Extravagance (Vcrstiegenheit)
fies the impossibility of obtaining a genuine foothold on the

"ladder" of human problems and, in this respect, thus also signifies
the impossibihry of authentic decision, action, and maturation. De-
tached from loving coTrmmmo and authentic conmnmicatio, all too
far and forward and carried upward, the manic
hastily driven
hovers in fraudulent heights in which he cannot take a stand or
make a "self-sufficient" decision. Love and friendship have, in these
airy heights, lost their power. Human intercourse is reduced to the
level of psychiatric treatment.
The Extravagance of the schizoid psychopathic personality and
the countless forms of schizophrenic being-in-the-world are quite
different.^* Here the anthropological disproportion is no longer
rooted in an excess of breadth (of "leaping") and of the heights of
mere vol i?naginaire that outweigh the (authentic) heights of
"decision." It is rooted in the excessive heights of decision that
outweigh the breadth of "experience." Disregarding for the moment
the essential difference between the psychopathic schizoid and
the schizophrenic, we may say that their mode of "going too
far" differs from that of the manic precisely in that they
are not carried into the "airy heights" of optimistic moods, but
that, alone,and "without regard to experience," they climb up to
one particular rung of the "ladder of human problems" and remain
there. The height involved in this climbing upwards bears no rela-
tion to the narrowness and inflexibility of the experiential horizon
("experience" being understood in the widest sense of ex-perience,
i.e., "discursivity" ^^
as such). Here Elxtravagance means more than
merely "being stalled" in that what is involved is not only the im-
possibility of experiential progress forward, but rather the strict
attachment or bondage to a particular level or rung of human ex-

perience (Problematik). The widely flexible human "hierarchy of
height" is, in this case, basically "mis-taken" and one particular idea
or ideology becomes fixed or made absolute. Insofar as "experi-
ences" are still they are no longer valued or turned
realized at all,
to account, for their "value" is inflexibly fixed. Extravagance

signifies, therefore, the ^âbsolutizing" of a single decision. Again,
such "absolutizing" is only possible where the Dasein is "despair-

ingly" exiled from the home and eternalness of love and friend-
ship, where, therefore, it no longer knows or senses the "relativity"
of the "above" and "below" seen against the background of an un-
[347]
questioning trust in Being, an unproblematic ontological security.

It from this security, and from intercoiirse or traf-
stands isolated
ficwith others, and is thus barred from the challenge and correc-
tion that can only be derived from such intercourse. Thus, with-
drawn with itself alone, such a process
into intercourse or traffic
can only "wear it becomes a mere staring at a
itself out" until
Medusalike, psychotically rigidified problem, ideal, or "nothing-
ness of anxiety." ^^ Consequendy, rescue from the Extravagant pos-
ition becomes possible only by means of "outside help," as is true of
a mountain-climber who has climbed too far out upon a precipice.*
The neurotic, too, can be "rescued" from the Extravagance and
confinedness of his existence (for example, in cases of phobia) only
by outside help, in the sense of collaboration and communication
with someone else. For this very reason, it is perhaps true that the
example of neurotic Extravagance shows more clearly than any
other that Extravagance (in the physical or the psychic sense) is
always based upon a failure of insight or circumspection with re-
gard to the particular meaning-context or "region of the world"
in which the Dasein overextends itself. In mountain climbing, one
goes too far only if the over-all structure of the precipice is hidden
from view or unknown. Similarly, one goes too far mentally or
psychically only when one lacks insight into the over-all "hierarch-
ical structure" of human ontological possibilities and, in ignorance
thereof, mounts ever higher and higher. Thus, E.xtravagance can
never be understood solely from a subjective point of view, but
only from the combined perspective of (transcendental) subjectiv-
ity and (transcendental) objectivity. |\Vhat we call psychotherapy
is no more than an attempt to~Bring the patient to a point
basically
where he can "see" the manner in which the totality of human ex-
istence or "being-in-the-world" is structured and to see at which of
its junctures he has overreached himself. That is: the goal of psy-
• At this point it may not be superfluous to suggest that, as Hcinrich Wolfllin

formulated it highly important dissertation "Prolegomena zu cincr Psy-
in his
chologie der Architektur," Kleine Schriftcn (Basel, 1946), p. 23: "The image of our
bodily existence" even,'\vhere represents the "standard" according to which we
judge every other appearance. This is true first of all of the "standard" according
to which lanf!,uage grasps and names "all other appearances." Language is able to
do this because, unlike analytic understanding, it sees our existence in its unirv and
togetherness. This is not to say that language "corporal izes" the noncorporal "phe-
nomenal modes" of our existence. What it does, rather, is to see the psychic and
the spiritual as already inherent in the corporal appearances, and vice versa.
(348I
chotherapy is to bring the patient safely back "down to earth"

from his Extravagance. Only from this point is any new departure
and ascent possible, j

have attempted merely to sketch out an understanding of the
I
anthropological meaning of Elxtravagance. In so doing, I have

and have allowed the
stressed the interpretation of spatial aspects
even more important aspect of temporality to remain in the back-
ground. But it has obviously been implied in such expressions as
"maturation," "decision," "discursivity," "leaping," "being carried
upwards," "climbing the rungs of the ladder," "being brought to a
standstill," and, finally, in the expressions "anthropological propor-
tion" and "disproportion." Existential height and breadth signify,

ultimately, two different "spatial" schemata of one temporal direc-
tion of finite human existence; they are, therefore, only concep-
tually separable.
Notes
1. Binswanger "Dream and Existence" volume!; Gaston Bachelard, VAir
[in this
et lei Songes: Essai sur V imagination du mouvement
(Paris, 1943). For an in-
troduction to phenomenological cosmology in general, see E. Minkowski, Vers

une Cosmologie (Paris, 1936). For a theory of lived space, see also Erwin
Straus, in Nervenarzt, No. 11 (1930), and E. Durckheim, "Untersuchungen
zum Neue psychologische Studien, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1932).
gelebten Raum,"
2. W. Macht und Ohnmacht des Geistes, p. 46.
Szilasi,
3. Binswanger, Henrik Ibsen und das Problem der Selbstralisation (Heidelberg,

1949)-
4. Szilasi, p. 19.
5. Manin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit and Vom Wesen des Grundes.
6. Binswanger, Grundformen und Erkenntnis Menschlichen Daseins (Ziirich,
1953)-
7. Binswanger, "Uber das Wort von Hofmannsthal: Was Geist ist, erfasst nur der
Bedrangte" (Festgabe fiir R. A. Schroder), Scknoeizer Studia philosophica.
Vol. VIII (1943).
8. Binswanger, Henrik Ibsen.
9. Binswanger, in Schiveiz. Arch., Vol. 57 (1946), p. 209.
10. Binswanger, "Uber Ideenflucht," Schiveiz. Arch., Vols. 27-30.
11. Binswanger, in Mschr. Psychiatr., Vol. no (1945), pp. 3-4.
12. Binswanger, in Schweiz Arch., Vol. 63 (1949).
13. Binswanger, "Ober Ideenflucht," especially the second study.
14. Binswanger, in Schweiz. Med. Wschr., No. 3 (1945).
15. Binswanger, Sc-fcizopforeme (PfuUingen, 1957).
16. Binswanger, Grundformen, Chapter i.
17. Binswanger, Schizophrenic.
[349]
INDEX
"abnormal" behavior, 249-250 cious circle of, 118; world-design

"abnormal" existence, 214 and, 298-299
abnormality, suffering as, 57 aphasia, 196
absolutizing, of decisions, 347-348 a priori, existential, see Existential A
abstraction, explanation and, 39 Priori
Aeschylus, 236, 328 a priori categories, power of, 119
affect, symbol and, 78-80 a priori knowledge, 14; Kant on, 10

aggression, destruction and, 200; Aristotle, 200, 211,216
symbols and, 73 "asthenic affect," 225
"alien power," surrender to, 263- astronomy, Ptolemaic, 41
264, 291, 311 Augustine, 152, 240
allegory, vs. symbolism, 81 autism, 288 n., 310; anxiety and, 337-
anal-eroticism, 64, 72 339
anaUty, 64 automatic repetition, 109- no
analytic of existence, Heidegger's,
210-221
Angel, Ernest, viii, 26 n., 46 n., 59 n., Baader, Franz von, 152, 160
90 n., 112 n., 142 n. Bachelard, Gaston, 323, 345 n.
Angewiesenheit, 98 "bad faith," Sartre's concept of, 96
answer ableness, 10 1 n. Haines, Cecil M., 48 n., 50 n., 62 n.
anthropocentrism, enlightened, 6 Haines, H. G., 62 n.
Anthropology man as, 26 Barrett, William, 1 2 1 n.
anthropology, Freud's concept of Befindlschkeit,gS, 115, 118, 160

man in light of, 149-179; homo behaviorism, 49
natura and, meaning of
166-179; being, as meaning, 122; problem of,
term, 149; psychology and, 185; 3; Sartre's concept of, 129-135;

totahty of subject in, 342 source of, 6; understanding of, 21
anxiety, affect of, 337; autism and, "being-alive," 10 1 n.
337-339; in case of Lola Voss, 267, Being and Nothingness (Sartre), 96

286, 314; of "earthbound," 345; being-at-something, 303
"escaping" and, 300; of event, 114; being-beyond-the-world, 219, 343
existential, 311, 322, 337; freedom "being carried," 346-347
and, 142; "free-floating," 319; "being-concerned-with-beings," 2
"nothingness" of, 348; primal exis- being-donc-to, 176
tential, 297; vs. self-determination, being-driven-about, 315-316
115; "uncanniness" and, 306; vi- being-in-advance-of -itself, 214
[35']
Index
being-in-the-world, 6, 17, 28, 68, et Briicke, Ernst Wilhelm von, 195

passim; analysis of, 17; Dasein as, "bumed-out crater" feeling, in case
213; as fate, 204; insanity and, iii; of Lola Voss, 322-323, 337-338
"intenrionality" and, 26; mental
illness and, in; as Ontological A Care, as a priori condition, 124; de-
Priori, 23; qualifications 45;of, fined, 122; Existential A Priori
"rising upward" in, 342-343; schiz- and, 71, 117; Heidegger's use of
ophrenic, 347; subjective experi- term, 22, 120, 213; individual vari-
ence and, 29; transcendence as, ations on, 126; ontological a priori
125; worid-design and, 31 of, 95, 100; vs. pouT-soi, 130;
being-in-the-worid per se, 297 thrownness and, 99-100, 116; tran-
being-left- alone, 321 scendental universality of, 20;
being-toward-death, 257 world-design and, 3
being-with-others, 73 Carlyle, Thomas, 313, 332

Beyond the Pleasure Principle Cartesian mechanism, man as, 108
(Freud), 152, 200 Cassirer, Ernst, 173, 313
Binswanger, Ludwig, consciousness, categories, manifestation through,
concept of, 97-98; Daseinsanalyse 1 19; see also Kant, Immanuel
of, 25; on Freud, 52-55, 138, 149- causalism, principle of, 92
179, 182-204; Heidegger and, 124- cause-effect relationship, symbol and,
128, 207-221; on natural-scientific 83
psychology, 47; as phenomenolo- chaleur inwne, 322-323
gist, 68-70; psychopathology, defi- chemical processes, 193-195
nition of. III; Sartre and, 128- choice, evaluation and, 345
138; "unconscious" of, 84-87 Churchill, James S., 123 n.
biology, corporeality in, 39-40; medi- Cicero, 236, 239
cine and, 46, 103; vs. psychoanal- circles, of science, 34, 41-42, 50, 53,
ysis, 103-104; psychology and, 193 84-87, 102, III, 140, 145
"bird of prey vs. dove" image, 227- circular argument, 15 n.; Hegel's, 35;
229,235-236,247 Kant's, 33-34
Bleuler,Eugen, 169, 191, 193, 195, clinical psychiatry, foundation of,
216,338,344,346 185 ff.; Magna Charta of, 182-205

bodily functions. Id and, 162 clothes and underwear phobia, in
body, significance of in Daseinsan- case of Lola Voss, 300-302, 309,
alyse, 159-160, 171 n., 212, 215, 217, 312-313,317,326-335
Cohen, Morris R., 42 n.
body-soul relationship, 225; see also collective unconscious, 240, 246
mind-body problem Combs, A. VV., 79 n.
Bohme, Jacob, 152 common universal, 62-74, 113-114
Boss, Mcdard, 21, 85 n., 75-76, 125- comprehension, 1 16
'27 compulsion, external, 153
brain, "higher parts" of, 191; struc- compulsion neurosis, in case of Lola
ture and function in, 197 Voss, 326-328
brain lesions, 197-199 conscience, 257
Brcntano, Franz, 5, 44, 300 consciousness, absolute, 6; in Da-
Brock, Werner, 2 1 n. seinsanalyse, 68; essential structures
(35^
Index
of, 23; Freud on, 51; "intentional- transcendence, 207; vs. uncon-
ity" of, 26; origin of, 5; psycho- scious, 95; as world-design, iii,
analysis and, 48; as reference-to, 126
5; Sartre's concept of, 96-97 Daseinsanalyse, Binswanger's, 25; as
consciousness-of-a-world, 45 complement to psychoanalysis, 47;
contentlessness, 338 defined, 4; knowledge and experi-
continuit)', in Existential A Priori, ence in, 28; ontology and, 124;
118; threat to, 113; time and, 72; phenomenological basis of, 32, 68;
world-design and, 112 vs. psychoanalysis, 2; psychopath-
continuity-discontinuity, category ology in, 110-119; symbol in, 59-
of, 70; Existential A 73 Priori as, 83; subjective properties in, 63;
"Copernican Revolution," Kant's, 9- universal in, 63
13, 15, 64, 123-124, 133; "new," 5-6; Daseinsanalytic concept, Heideg-
Sartre's, 128-129, 133 ger's, 27
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 10 data, quality of, 34
corporeality, in natural science, 39- death, awe of, 151; inexorability of,
40; pure, 85 179; symbols of, 77
crimes, in "uncanny" world, 308-309 death instinct, 73, 200
criminals, fear of, in case of Lola delusions, freedom and, 340
Voss, 314, 321 demundanization, 112
Critique of Pure Reason, The, 9, 13, denial, 250-251
22, 27, 89-90, 12 1 depersonalization process, 189
De Saussure, Raymond, 106 n.
Da, meaning of, 21, 98, 100 n.; as Descartes, Rene, 9, 40, 42, 52, 54-55
world-openness, 320 desocialization, 339
Dalbiez, Roland, 61-62 destruction, aggression and, 200
"dam," against threats, 287-289 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 173-174, 187, 203
danger, fear of, 319 disappointment, 222
Dasein, anxiety and, 311; as "back- "dis-becoming," 310
ground" of individual, 71; as being, discursivity, 345
122; as being-in-the-world, 20, 70, disease, concept of, 216-217; see also
126; "Care" and, 22, 95-96; as con- mental illness
stitutive, 120-138; "enemies" of, dreams
dissolution, of, 233-235
263-264; finitude of, 212; freedom Doppelgdnger, 307
and, 140-141; Heidegger's use of dreadful, the, in case of Lola Voss,
term, 17, 21; historicity of, 174; in- 289, 291, 303, 312-315; death as,
dividuality of, 127; intentionality 322-323; temporalization and, 314;

of, 207; as "martyr," 259-260; uncanniness and, 304-324; verbal
meaning of, 6, 17, 21, 67; in men- communication with, 310
tal illness, 116; ontological struc- dreams, in ancient Greek culture,
ture of, 206, 250; overextension of, 239-243; bird-of-prey image in,
348; "powerlessness" of, 140-141, 226-237; in case of Lola Voss, 277;
212; as prior to its "parts," 97; re- in Daseinsanalyse, 72; existence
ligion and, 174; "stalling" of, and, 222-248; of flying, 227-228,
343-344; surrender of, 263-264; 233-234; Heraclitean theory of,
"thrownness" in, 99-100, 116; as 241-243; as "history," 248; as life-
[353]
Index
dreams (cont'd) 170; reality of, 150; see also being;

function, 248; ontological element being-in-the-world; Dasein; tran-
of, prophecy through, 236,
247; scendence; world-design
239; Quisque theory of, 240-241; existential analysis, 69; see also Da-
Roman view of, 240; self -dramatiz- seinsanalyse
ing in, 227; sexual symbolism in, existential anxiety, 311, 322, 337
75-76; as sexual wishes, 72-73; truth Existential A Priori, 53, 59; Boss's
and, 242-243; unconscious and, 50; criticism of, 127; Care and, 117;
wish stimulus and, 53, 164 concept of, 9-31; construction of,
drives, 50-51,57, 99 112; of continuity, 113; and de-
notation of unconsciousness, 94-
97; explanation and, 32; as exten-
Ego, Freud's concept of, 95, 188, 196, sion of Heidegger's thinking to
201; Griesinger's theory of, 188; ontic level, 125; vs. Freudian "un-
and human self, 171; Id and, 105; conscious," 88-100; as horizon of
vs. non-ego, 99; "organized," 161 experience, 88-94; ^ Kantian cate-
ego-alien, compulsion and, 329-330; gory, 67, 128; as meaning-matrix,
phobias and, 331 67, 139, 144; over-all characteriza-
ego frustration, 106 tion of, 25-31; "power" of, 71;
ego-syntonic, delusion and, 331 Sartre's restatement of, 136-137;
Eigemnelt, 31, 70, 72, 80, 296 symbol and, 65; and transcendental
electron, "unconscious" concept and, experiential horizon, 92; uncon-
86-87 scious and, 84, 88-100; as universal,
Ellenberger, Henri F., 26 n., 46 n., 69
59 90 n., 112 n., 142 n., 253 n.
n., existential decapacitarion, 336
emotions, as intrapsychic signs, 82; existential fire, anxiety and, 322
James-Lange theory of, 82; logic existential height and breadth, 346-
of, 254 349
empiricism, vs. rationalism, 9 existential psychoanalysis, Sartre's,
encyclopedia, 35 136-138
enemies, in case of Lola Voss, 263- existentials, list of, 23; role of, 1 1
264, 291, 311 existential weakness, 290

en-soi, Sartre's concept of, 134-136 experience, Daseinsanalytic concept
ens realissimuTfi, 122, 129 of, 27; Existential A Priori and,
epistemology, vs. ontology, 1 2 114; intrapsychic sign and, 82;
equations, symbols and, 8i Kant's concept of, 27; as knowl-
Erklarung, see explanation edge, 27-28; in psychoanalysis, 67;
eros (life-instincts), 158, 200 subjective, 29
Esquirol, J. E. D., 190 experiential horizon, 90; see also
Euripides, 238 horizon
evaluation, problem of, 345 exphoresis, 216
evil, vs. good, 152 explanation, and Existential A Priori,
existence, analytic of, see analytic of 140; ideal of, 32-39; mutually op-
existence; change and, 168; dreams posing goals in, 36; phcnomenog-
and, 222-248; "mystery" of, 321; raphy and, 143-144; systematic, 32-
"no way out" of, 253; as "ours," 58; vs. understanding, 38
[354]
Index
explanatory system, natural science ence and, 220-22 1 ;

of world-
as, 38-42 designs, 133
expression, Klages' theory of, 223- Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, 85 n.
224 Freud, Sigmund, on aphasia, 196; on
Extraordinary, the, in case of Lola basal phenomena, 46; on Binswang-
Voss, 315-316 er's appraisal of him, 3-4; Bins-
extravagance, concept of, 342-349 wanger's views of, 52-55, 138, 149-
Extravagant ideal, 343; in case of 179, 182-204; on brain damage,

Lola Voss, 284, 288, 321; in schizo- 197-198; clinical psychiatry and,
phrenia, 253-255 185 consciousness concept, 51;
flF.;
dream theory, 231; Ego concept,

facticitv, 100, loi n., 117, 132, 212; 97, 201, 240; on explanation in sci-
freedom and, 140 ence, 49-50; on freedom, 108;
fallenness, 257; thrownness and, 213, genius of, 190; on good and evil,
218 1 5 1- 1 52; "great idea" of, 194;
"fall from the clouds," 222-223, ^^Jt Heidegger and, 169; homo natura
227 concept of, 102, 150-179; Id con-
fantasy, 346 cept of, 97, 103-104, 161-162, 201,
fate, being-in-the-world 204 as, 240; instinct theory, i, 105, 151-153,
"fate" theme, in case of Lola Voss, 156-157, 168, 246; investigational
297-298,314 methods of, 201-202; on latent
fear, as intrapsychic phenomenon, dream thoughts, 231; lifework of,
82; superstition and, 310-312; as 182 ff.; Locke and, 54, 154; and
symbol, 83 "Magna Charta of clinical psy-
feces, as svmbol, 62-63 chiatry," 182-205; main service
Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 176 to science, 55-56; "mathematical
feeling, as experience, 29 formula" of, 163; on mathematics,
Fenichel, Otto, 62-65, 87 49; as natural scientist, 169; neu-
Ferenczi, Sandor, 60, 78-79 rosis defined by, 199; own descrip)-
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 152 tion of work, 95; paranoia theory,
filling-emptiness, symbolism of, 63, 324; pleasure principle, 153, 160,
174-175; "productivity" of, 150;
Fletcher, Ronald, 51 n. "psychic apparatus" concept, 195;
Fliess, Robert, 60 on religion, 2, 150, 183; scientific
flightiness, 346 insight of, 170; sexuality concept
Floumoy, Theodore, 77 62 n., of, 158, 199-200; on spirit, i, 6, 184;
flying, dreams of, 228, 233-234 Super-ego theory of, 201; symbol-
frame of reference, 25, 29, 120, 264 ization concept, 60, 83; taboo path-
free association, 202 ology of, 294; therapy of, 201-202;
freedom, anxiety and, 142; of Dasein, truth and, 177-178; "unconscious

140; defined, 116; delusions and, mental acts" of, 52; "unconscious"
340; existence and, 168; Freud on, theory, 48, 85, 95, 201
108; illusion of, 108; loss of, in men- frustration, neurosis and, 106
tal illness, 118; mechanicalness and, function, constitutive, 23
165; as nothingness, 129-130; Sar- future, projection toward, 1 15-1 16
tre's view of, 132-135; transcend- Future of an Illusion, The, 1 50, 1
83
[355]
Index
Galilei, Galileo, 39-40, 42-43, 52, 55 height-breadth disproportion, con-

garments, as symbols in case of Lola cept of, 346-349
Voss, 300-302, 308-313, 317 Heinroth, J. A., 191
Gebsattel, V. E. von, 2 1 1 n., 3 10, 3 16 Heraclitus, 176, 236, 239; on dreams,
Gestalt psychology, 45, 68 242-243
Gewesenheit, 218 Herbart, Johann Friedrich, 163, 186
Geworfenheit, 99; see also thrown- Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 174
ness Hess, W. R., 162
Gibson, W. R. Boyce, 38 n., 89 n. historization, in case of Lola Voss,
God, and belief in God, 38; as ex- 299
perience, 29 history, dreams and, 246
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 152- History of the Psycho-analytic
153, 156, 174,232-233,244 Move?nent, The (Freud), 165
Goldstein, Kurt, 112 n., 189, 196 hoarding, as symbol, 63
good, 1;^. evil, 15 1- 1 52 Hoche's syndromes, 193
Gotthelf, Jeremias, 234-235 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 343
Greeks, cultural history of, 235-236 hole, "filling" concept and, 63-64,
Griesinger, Wilhelm, 186-193, 198, 72; "world of," 287
204 Holy Virgin, "experience" of, 29-30
guilt, inherent, 217; pathological, 57 homo cultura, vs. homo natura, i
tj
Gurvvitsch, Aron, 39 n. homo natura, 55, 62, 102, 166-179;
concept of, 3-4, 53-54; mechanism
of, 167-168; as scientific theory,
Haberlin, Paul, 216-217 155-166
hallucinations, in case of Lola Voss, Honigswald, Richard, 209, 215
281, 339-340 horizon, defined, 88-89; o^ Existential
Hamlet, "fate" theme in, 299 n. A Priori, 137; experiential, 90;
Hegel, Georg W. F., 34-35, 70, 241, philosophic notion of, 92; time
243 and, 122
Heidegger, Martin, viii; analytic of Lola Voss, 305
hostility, in case of
existence concept, 206-221; on an- horror, in case of Lola Voss, 307,
thropology, 149 n., 150 n.; a prioris 3'z, 323, 331
of, 24; on being-in-the-world, 6; Hubback, C. J. M., 48 n.
Binswanger's relation to, 124-128; Human, All Too Human, 345
"Care" concept, 16 {see also Care); human spirit, see spirit
Daseinsanalytik of, 16-26, 30; Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 174, 319
"Dasein" term of, 17; "final essen- hunger, as instinct, 158-159
tial element" in, 21; Freud and, Husserl, Edmund, 5, 44, 68, 94, 206,
169, 174; Kant and, 21-22, 120-124; 224; A Priori of, 23-25;"intendon-
meaning theory of, 224; "non-free- ality" of, 26; phenomenological re-
dom" concept, 295; as ontic realist, duction of, 37
121, 123; ontological structure con- hypnosis, fear of, in case of Lola
cept, 250; ontology of, 26, 67; on Voss, 270, 326-327, 334
tcmporalization, 315; "thrownness" hypocrisy, 151
concept, 97-101, 116, 285 n.;
'Svorld" of, 70 Ibsen, Hcnrik, 344
[356]
Index
ice-skating incident, 90-91, 93, 112, intuition, categorical, 24; Kantian,

142 12; reality and, 25
Id, Ego and, 188; Freud's concept of, I-thou relationship, religious, 2, 183
54, 95, 105, 196, 201; and human
self, 171; instincts and, 161; psychic Jackson, John Hughlings, 196-197
apparatus and, 164; value scheme Jacobi, Friedrich H., 186, 191
of, 105 Jaeger, Werner, 242 n.
idea, pathology of, 192; productivity James, William, 85 n.
and, 150 Jaspers, Karl, 335
idealism, 11; Kantian, 120-12 Jemeinigkeit, loo, 127
ideals, "extravagant," 253-254 Jones, Ernest, 61, 77-78
ideas, flight of, 192 Jung, Carl, 62, 76, 165; collective
Ideler, Christian Ludwig, 191 unconscious of, 240, 246
Use, case history of, 250, 254, 259
inauthenticity, 1
1
5- 1 16 Kahlbaum, Karl L., 193
individual, self-determination of, 95; Kant, Immanuel, 5-6, 32, 89-90; "a
understanding and, 18; vs. world, priori forms" distinguished by, 24;
6 categories of the understanding,
Individual Dasein, 23 U-I2, 27-28, 67-70, 128; on con-
individuality, Binswanger's concept function of understand-
stitutive
of, 70; vs. psychoanalytic theory, ing, 13; "Copernican Revolution"
5z of, 9-13, 15, 64, 123-124, 133;
infant, newborn, 154 Heidegger's relation to, 21-22, 120-
insanity, and being-in-the-world, 1 1 1- 124; personal numerical identity,

112; emotions and, 204; martyr- 247; on reason, 173; Sartre and,
dom and, 259-260; retreat into, 129
262; as "thrownness," 99; see also Keller, Gottfried, 229-234
mental illness key ability, reduction of, 338

insecurity, feelings of, in case of Kierkegaard, S0ren, 176, 241, 245,
Lola Voss, 325 286, 295, 297, 304 n., 3 ion., 314-
instincts, i, 50-51; Binswanger on, 3;

Klages, Ludwig, 157 n., 159-160, 173,
biological concept of, 103; cathexis
176; theory of expression, 223-224
of, 161; defined, 52; Freud's con-
Kleist, K., 186
cept of, 85, 105, 151-153, 156, 168,
knife, phallus as symbol of, 73-75
200, 246; gratification of, 106; Id
knowledge, a priori, 10, 14; dreaming
and, 161; intentionality of, 103;
and, 243; experience as, 27-28;
psychoanalysis and, 103
mind and, rationalism and, 9;
9;
instinctual impulse, Freud on, 156 understanding and, 10- 11
instinctual! ty, hoyno natura as, 168
koinonia, 216, 218, 262; Extravagance
intentionality, 5, 26, 103
and, 342; psychiatrist and, 220
Interpretation of Dreams, The Konrad, Karl, 1 1 1 n.
(Freud), 62, 162, 188, 199 Kraepelin, Emil, 191, 193
intrapsychic sign, as "impossibility," Kretschmer, Ernst, 195
82 Kubie, Lawrence S., 108 n., 109, 1
14
intrapsychic symbols, 62 Kuhn, Roland, 301 n., 332 n.
[357]
Index
Lamettrie, Julien de, 167 Master Builder, The (Ibsen), 344

Langan, Thomas, 1 2 materialism, vs. idealism, 11; neuro-
Lavelle, Louis, 100 n. logical z's. biological, 194
"leaping," 112 "mathematical formula," Freud's, 163
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, mathematics, symbols in, 81
154 n., 186 matrix, existentials as, 22-23; Sartre's
Lessing, Karl F., 245 notion of, 132
"letting things be," 252 maturation, 345
"leveling," 192, 346 Matussek, Paul, 219 n.
Liepmann, Hugo Carl, 192, 203 May, RoUo, 26 n., 46 n., 59 n., 64 n.,
life, awe of, 1 50-151; retreat from, 90 n., 112 n., 142 n., 149 n., 253 n.
258-259; symbols of, 77 Mayne, E. Colbum, 106 n.
life fire, vs. "dead earth," 322 meaning, as being, 122; priority of
life-instincts, 158, 200 over impressions, 114; in psycho-
life situation, inappropriateness to, analysis, 67; psychology and, 45;
254 theories of, 224

lightning, as divine semen, 77 meaning context, 134; Care as, 122
Lindner, Robert, 99 meaning-matrix, 23, 112, 133; Ex-
Lindsay, T. F., 61 n. istential A Priori as, 67, 144
LittleEyolf (Ibsen), 344 meaning-to-a-self, 45, 48-49
Locke, John, 54, 154 medical psychology, 55-58
logical positivism, 16 n., 35 medicine, biology and, 103; science
Logos, dreams and, 241-242 of, 46-47; somatic, 56-57
Lotze, R., 164-165, 167 n., 174, 176 melancholia, guilt and, 207-208
love, as experience, 29; Extravagance memory, 216
and, 343; truth and, 173; world- mental health, defined, 107; instinc-
design and, 337 tual satisfaction and, 106; psychol-
Lowith, Karl, 159, 168, 224 ogy and, 57
Lucretius, 240 mental illness, as brain disease, 192-
lying, in case of Lola Voss, 269 193; Dasein and, 113, 116; defined,
114; freedom and, 118; human po-
Maclntyre, A. C, 95 n., 94 tentialities and, 194; origin of, 311;
magical powers, in case of Lola Voss, psychiatry and, 209; somatic pat-
306 tern of, 216-217
man, as "body," 159-160; depersonal- "meta-ontic" discipline, 125, 127;
ization of, 189; essence of, 21; "as Binswanger's Dasein and, 26; Sar-
a whole," 211; as idea, 153-155; as tre's concept of, 137
"living being," 204; as machine, metaphysics, 1
108, 167; oncological a priori struc- Meynert, Theodor Hermann, 157,

ture of, 22 186, 189-190, 192, 195-197, 203
Mana, in case of Lola Voss, 296, 306 Miller, James C, 94 n.
manic-depressive personality, 143 mind, constitutive function of, 24;
manic ideation, 346 knowledge and, 9-10; vs. matter,
Mann, Thomas, 177 9; vs. nature, 10
Marcusc, Herbert, 144 mind-body problem, 209-210, 216-
martyr, as sclf-cxhibitor, 259-260 217
[358]
Index
Minkowski, E., 211 n., 338-339, 345 "Novalis" (Baron Friedrich von
mirages, 36 Hardenberg), 157 n., 159
Mitwelt, 31, 70, 72, 213, 263, 296
Mneme, 216 obesity, in schizophrenia, 256
Monakow, Constantin von, 169, 191, Odyssey, The, 236-237
'93. «95 oneness, of Greeks, 239
money, as symbol, 63 "ontic," defined, 19 n.
Morgan, Lloyd, 105 ontic knowledge, vs. ontological,
Morike, Eduard, 226-229 i24n.
mother, resentment of in case of ontic-ontological dichotomy, 18-19,
Lola Voss, 268 124 n.
mundanization, 284, 299, 336; in case ontic realism, 121, 123
of Lola Voss, 300, 309-312 "ontological," Heidegger's use of
Munroe, Ruth L., 86 n. term, 23, 26
Ontological A
Priori, 23
ontology, in "Copemican Revolu-

Nachmanson, Max, 105 n. tion" of Kant, 123; Heidegger's
narcissism, 200; "blows" to, 1780.; view of, 26, 124; as phenomenol-
in case of Lola Voss, 324 ogy, 124
Nasse, Erwin, 191 oracle, consulting of, in case of Lola
Natanson, Maurice, 128, 133-135 Voss, 297-298, 320
natural science, as explanatory sys- organism, concept of, 216; develop-
tem, 39-42; homo natura concept mental laws of, 198
in, 156-157; psychology as, 42-46 Original Project, Sartre's concept of,
nature, man as, 150 ff.; vs. mind, 10 132-133. 137
Neoplatonism, 159 Ostow, Mortimer, 105
neurosis, Dasein and, 116; defined, otherness, principle of, 245
107; Freud's definition of, 199; Overpowering, the, in case of Lola
frustration and, 106; transference Voss, 293-295, 317
of, 106
neurotic Extravagance, 348
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3, 151-152, 159- pain, failure and, 56
160, 173-175, 178-179. 184.345 Painter Nolten (Morike), 226-229
"nihilation," 323; in case of Lola paranoia, Freud's theory of, 324
Voss, 331 Pascal, Blaise, 173
non-being, Heraclitean view of, 241 Paton, H. J., i2on.
non-Dasein, 98 Pavlov, Ivan, 169
non-ego, 99 persecution complex or delusions,
non-freedom, Heidegger's concept 255, 261; in case of Lola Voss, 311,
of, 295 3'7. 330. 334-340
normality, defined, 107; essence of, personality, v^. achievement, 172
108 personal pronouns, 170, 225
nothingness, of anxiety, 348; freedom Perronius, 240
as, 129-130; phenomenological, 94 phallus, knife as symbol of, 73-75
not-self, 123; world as, 20 phenomena, Kant's concept of, 11;
noumena (Kant), 11 spatio-temporal aspect of, 39
[359]
Index
phenomenography, 37-38, 141- 144 ence, 207; sick organism in, 209;
phenomenological Nothing, 94 world-design of , 2 1
phenomenological reduction, Hus- psychic apparatus, Freud's concept

serl's, 37 of, 162-163, '95
phenomenology, as basis of Dasein, psychic determinism, 99, 117
32; vs. Daseinsanalyse, 68; "expli- psychoanalysis, vs. biolog)', 103-104;
cation" of, 37; Husserl's, 25; mind "circles" of, 42, 87, 102, 106, 108,
and, 24; natural-scientific knowl- III, 140; common universal in, 62;
edge and, 167; ontology and, 123; existential, 136-138; as explanatory

and patient's world, 30 system, 49; memory and experi-
Pheno?nenology of Mind, The, 34 ence in, 67; phenomenology and,
philosophy, as circular enterprise, 33; 30; reversibility of symbols in, 74-
phenomenology and, 32; system- 78; science of, 47-53; subjective
atic, 33-34 properties in, 63; sj-mbol in, 59-83;
phobia, vs. delusion, 331; emergence systematic explanation and, 32-58;
of, 93; Extravagance and, 348 traumatic experience in, 91; "un-
physician, as psychiatrist, 219-220 conscious" concept in, 84 (see also
physics, science of, 39 unconscious); use of term "sym-
Plato, 121, 159-160, 169, 173, 206, 211, bol" in, 78
216, 241 psychoanalytic theory, individual in,
pleasure principle, Freud's, 153, 160, 52; universals in, 74

174-176 psychology, anthropology' and, 185;
pleasure sensations, 65 biology and, 195; homo natura
Poseidonius, 239 concept and, 155-166; medical,
possession, deindividualized, 6$ 55-58; as natural science, 42-46;
possessive pronouns, 170, 225 paradoxes and dilemmas of, 5, 44;
pour-soi, as being, 135-136; vs. en- phenomenological, 44; and scien-
soi, 134; Sartre's concept of, 129- tific method, 43
130 psychopathology, 55-56, 102-119; de-

power, vs. powerlessness, 139-145 fined, III; psychiatric medical re-
preconditions, in Heidegger's method, search and, 59
121, 124; Sartre's search for, 137 psychophysical problem, 209
pre-oedipal ties, 93 psychosis, concept of, 191; Dasein
primal urges, 75, 156 and, 116; Daseinsanalytic signifi-
projection, in case of Lola Voss, cance of, 263; "phantasms" in, 264;
330 as "thrownness," 115; see also

pronouns, possessive, 170, 225 thrownness
psyche, as biological structure, 104 psychotherapy, characterization of,
psychiatric examination, Freud and, 46 ff.; in "overreaching of self,"
202 348-349; transference mechanisms
psychiatrist, "freedom" and, 220-221; and, 165
as physician, 219-220 psychotic, aggressiveness of, 73-74;
psychiatry, brain pathology and, 190; religious experience of, 29-30; see
clinical, 182-205; "disease" in, 216- also psychosis
217; Magna Charta of, 2 10-2 11; psychotic content, 263

phenomenology and, 30; as sci- Ptolemaic astronomy, 41
[360]
Index
Ranke, Leopold von, 173 Scheler, Max, 202

rationalism, vs. empiricism, 9 Schclling, Friedrich von, 152, 160,
reading compulsion, in case of Lola 306
Voss, 326-327 Schiller, Johann Christoph von, 153,
realism, empirical vs. ontological, 121
reason, of Kant, 12; scientific, 157, schizoid psychopathic personality.
173 Extravagance of, 347
regression, neurosis and, 199 schizophrenia, Binswanger's studies
regret, 257 of, 113, 142-143, 249-264; in case
Reinhardt, K., 239 of Lola Voss, 284-340; central
religion, of ancient Greeks, 234-239; problem of, 251; extravagant
belief and, 38; Binswanger's and ("screwy") ideas in, 344; incipient
Freud's attitudes compared, 2; dif- symptoms in, 326; "physical mech-
ferences in, 36; experience in, 29, anisms" of, 165; "thrownness" in,
38; Freud on, 2, 183 284-285

religious I-thou relation, 2, 183 Schizophrenie, Introduction to, 249-
remembering, concept of, 216 264

repetition, and Existential A Priori, Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 240, 246
114; in neurotic acts, 109-110; re- Schopenhauer, Arthur, 337, 340
pression and, 202; thrownness and, science, "circles" of, 34, 41, 50, 53,
116 84-87, 102, III, 140, 145; "experi-
repression, Freud's concept of, 163; encing" of, 207; human existence
symbol and, 78; in transference and, 6; as "irresistible force," 157;
neurosis, 106; by unconscious, 96 as progressive historical process,
res extensa, 43, 48, 55, 103, 215 41; "self-understanding" by, 206-
residing, sense of, 252 207; spirit and, 4
resignation, individual nature of, 264 scientific explanation, human exist-
responsibility, pour-sot and, 1 30 ence and, 140

reversibility, 74-78 scientific method, 26, 32, 43
"rising upward," 342-343 Sechehaye, M., 99
Riviere, Joan, 56 n., 106 n. secretiveness, in case of Lola Voss,
Rokitansky, Karl von, 191 308
Roliand, Romain, 184 Sein und 7.eit (Heidegger), 17, 127,
Rorschach test, 302 n. 206-207, 214, 285 315n.,
Rosa, case of, 332-334 self, "choosing" of, 71; consciousness

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 157 n., 159 and, 53; Dasein as, 67; loss of, 338;
ruthlessness, greatness and, 172 relation to, 18
self-consciousness, 51
sadism, 263 self-determination, 95-96, 115
Sartor Resartus (Carlyle), 313, 332 self-having-to-let-itself-be-overcome,
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 96-97; existential 177
psychoanalysis of, 136-138; relation self-love, 200
to Binswanger, 128-138; relation to self-protection, in case of Lola Voss,
Kant, 129; view of freedom, 132- 300
135 self-realization, 345
Schachtel, Ernest, 104 self -surrender, to others, 263
[361]
Index
Semon, Wolfgang, 216 symbol, vs. allegory, 81; in Daseins-

sense perception, 40 analyse, 31, 72; Freudian concept
sensibility, 11 of, 60, 83; intrapsychic, 62; repres-
sexual intercourse, dream symbols sion as, 78; signs and, 78-83; vs.
in, 75-76 thing sjTnbolized, 61; verbal, 297-
sexuality, Freud's view of, 158, 199- 298
200 s^TTibolic equations, irreversibility of,
shame, role of, 257 74
signs, symbols and, 78-83; as warn- symbolic reference, mental illness
ings, in case of Lola Voss, 305 and, 114

Silberer, Herbert, 76 symptoms, case histories and, 250
Simmel, Georg, 299 n. synchronism, 338
skating incident, Binswanger's ac- syntony, 338
count of, 90-91, 93, 112, 142 Szilazi, Wilhelm, 207, 216, 337 n.,
Smith, John E., viii 338 n.

snakes, fear of, 79-80
Snygg, D., 79 n. taboo, in case of Lola Voss, 293-294
Sonnemann, ULrich, 37 n., 41, 88 n., tabula rasa, 54, 154-155, 174
89, 92 n. taking-at-its-word, 310, 313
soul, body and, 225-226; concept of, temporahzation, spatializarion and,
171 n.; and mind-body problem, 343; in case of Lola Voss, 314-324
209 Terrible, Power of the, 261-262
space-rime, in natural science, 39-40 "there," meaning of, 21, 98, 100 n.,
spatial-temporal proximity, taboo of, 320

293-294,299,317,343 Threatening and Hostile, world-
Spinoza, Baruch, 243 design and, 340
spirit, Binswanger's definition of, 3; thrownness, in case of Lola Voss,
deficiency of, i; Freud on, 183- 284, 291; "cash-value" of, 115-116;
184; nature as, 166; science and, 4; defined, 142; dominant power of,
"unconscious," 3 218; fallenness and, 213; freedom
Straus, Erwin, 115 n., 202, 211 n., 264 and, 140; unconscious and, 97-101;
Strebungen, 50 world-design and, 212, 319
"striving," Bleuler'sconcept of, 346 thyroid condition, 266
sublimation, Freud's theory of, 175 time, being and, 122; intuition and,
substance, basic, 40 122; see also temporalization
Sudden and Urgent, the, 295, 303 tomb-world, 1 13, 287
suffering, spirit and, 184 transcendence, 19-20, 214, 219; as
suicide, 287 being-in-the-world, 125; Dasein
sun, as "eye," 77 as, 207; defined, iii; Extravagance
Super-ego, 153; Freud's concept of, and, 348
95, 201; and human self, 171; in- transcendental category, 31, 65, 71
stincts and, 107 "Transcendental Dialectic," Kant's,
superman, concept of, 179 15-17
superstition, anxiety and, 318-319; in transcendental experiential horizon,
case of Lola Voss, 268, 270-275, 90-91
289, 308, 318, 326-336 transcendental knowledge, 1
[362]
Index
transference, Freud's doctrine of, 246 verbal symbols, in case of Lola Voss,
transference bond, dreams and, 245 297-298
transference mechanisms, 165 Ventehen, 116- 117, 224
transference neurosis, 106 verstehende psychology, 187-188
transformation, rule of, 34 Verstiegenheit, see Extravagance
traumatic experience, defined, 90; vol imaginairey 346-347
"horizon" and, 93 Vom Wesen des Grundes (Heideg-
truth, 179; dreams and, 243; Freud ger), 206
on, 173, 177-178; objective and Vorhanden, 122, 213-216
subjective, 245; search for, 171 Vorhandensein, 28
truthfulness, 151 Voss, Lola, 69, 113, 250, 252, 255,
258-263; anamnesis of, 266-269;
catamnesis in, 277-284; existential
Umivelt, 296 analysis of, 284-324; heredity in,
Uncanny and Dreadful, the, in case 266; history of, 266-340; psycho-
of Lola Voss, 285-286, 289, 292, pathological-clinical analysis of,
295, 297, 303-324 324-340

unconscious, 84, loi; collective, 240,
246; denotation of, 94-97; "exist-
ence" of, 86-87; Freud's theory of, Weiss, Paul, 33
48, 201-202; as process, 86-87; psy- Welt-Emwurf, 126; see also world-
chiatric problem of, 218-219; as design
ps)'choanalytic concept, 84; as real Wernicke, Carl, 186, 191 -196, 200 n.,
"being," 95; "repression" by, 96; 203
"throwrmess" and, 97-101; as tran- West, Ellen, case of, 64, 113, 252-253,
scendental horizon, 99 259, 285, 296, 307, 322
"whirlpool" concept, 112, 315
"Why?" question, loi n.
understanding, of being, 21; cate- word-play oracle, in case of Lola
gories of, 11-12, 27, 67-70, 128; Voss, 292-293
constitutive function of, 13-16, 24- world, being of, 19; individual vs.,
25; Dasein and, 18; explanation 6, 18; loss of, 338; materiality of,
and, 32, 38; knowledge and, ii; 322-324; as not-self, 20, 123; onti-
scientific, 2 10 cally conceived, 18-19; "withering"
unfreedom, self-chosen, 1 18 of, 112
universal, common, 62-74, 11 3-1 14 world-clock, 94

Urban, Suzanne, case of, 113, 250, world-design, 31, 126; in case of Lola
258, 260, 262 Voss, 289; Dasein as, iii; empti-
Urgent and Sudden, the, in case of ness of, 112; hallucinations and,
Jiirg Ziind, 295, 303 339-340; limitedness of, 141; love
and, 337; of manic-depressive, 143;
in psychosis, 1 15; as "thrown," 131,
value scheme, of Id, 105 212,319
Van den Berg, J. H., 58 world-outlook, anal-erotic, 64; expe-
verbal communication, superstition rience in, 30
and, 3 10-3 1 Wundt, Wilhelm, 224
[363]
Index
ZeichTtung concept, S4 Ziind, Jiirg, 113, 252-253, 257-259,

Zeller, O., 1 86 285, 287, 289, 291, 295-296, 302,
Ziegler, Leopold, 174, 313 307, 324, 340
69 70 7172 73 12 1 1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
[364]
.
PSYCHOLOGY
BeinG-in-THe-worLD
Selected Papers of Translated \A/lth
LUDWIG BINSWANGER an Introduction by
Jacob Needleman
"This is an important and timely book Needleman's introduction . .
is a model of clear exposition of difficult topics."— rollo may.

Contemporary Psychology
"This is much more than a translation of Binswanger's important papers.

Needleman's stimulating introduction explicates the core of Bins-
. . .
wanger's Daseinsanalyse. Focusing his attention on what Needleman

calls the 'existential a priori,' he attempts to show how Binswanger's
thought is related to the tradition of Kant, Husserl and Heidegger. In a
suggestive analysis of the nature of explanation, Needleman also
argues that Binswanger's Daseinsanalyse complements Freudian
psychoanalysis. A well-designed study which serves as an excellent
introduction to the thought of Binswanger and the more general topic
of existential psychoanalysis."— T/je Review of Metaphysics
Contents
Part One: A Critical Introduction to Ludwig Part Two: Selected Papers of Ludwig
Binswanger's Existential Psychoanalysis: Binswanger Freud's Conception of Man
: in
The Concept of the Existential A Priori. the Light of Anthropology. Freud and the
Systematic Explanation and the Science of Magna Charta of Clinical Psychiatry.
Psychoanalysis. The Symbol in Psycho- Heidegger's Analytic of Existence and
analysis and Daseinsanalyse. The Uncon- Its Meaning for Psychiatry. Dream and
scious. Psychopathology. The Dasein as Existence. Introduction to Schizophrenie.
Constitutive: Binswanger, Heidegger. Sartre. The Case of Lola Voss. Extravagance
(Verstiegenheit).
HARPER & ROW. PUBLISHERS COVER DESIGN BY

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Selected Papers of

HARPER TORCHBOOKS JTB U

RESEARCHES IN THE SOCIAL, CULTURAL

Philosophy, with appraisals of Durkheim's life

and work. Edited by Kurt H. Wolff. TB/1151 TB/1222

HAMMOND, J. L.: *The Rise of Modern Industry. TB/3072

Field Theory in Social Science:

with a Critical Introduction

to His Existential Psychoanalysis

with a new Preface for the Torchbook edition

my mother and father

Priiucd in the United States of America.

This b(H)k \va.s originalK- published in 1963 bv Basic Books, Inc.,

I'irstiiAKi'KR roR<:MB(H)K edition published 1968 by Harper & Row,

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-18674.

PREFACE TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION Vlll

PART ONE: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

I The Concept of the Existential A Priori 9

II Systematic Explanation and the Science of Psycho-

The Ideal of Explanation

ni The Symbol in Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalyse 59

VI The Dasein as Constitutive: Binswanger, Heidegger,

PART TWO: SELECTED PAPERS OF

Exist e?itial Analysis

The thesis of this is that no science of the mind is possible

But of course the interesting question is whether these other

a dubious procedure to allow the patient to dictate to the thera-

a discrepancy bet\^een what bothers me, as a patient, and what

patient of those physiological or even psychological ramifications

quite this way. He speaks of "disorders," "neurosis," "psycho-

be "maladaptive" with respect to a more fundamental goal, etc.,

etc. In addition, therefore, behavior thcrap\- on its very own

Any refusal, under the banner of a positivistic rejection of

the "unverifiable," to scrutinize these more fundamental goals

It is argued in this book that the failure of Scientism seriously

believe that some of the enormous difficulty of this problem

and obtaining knowledge of nature. Not only is it totally at

cause fundamentally it never (jucsrions the Cartesian concept

with the only knowledge of nature, and thus nature is

the knowledge of nature, the knower can never be interested

the Cartesian estimation of the material world and the unjusti-

but it is a dualism in which nature as an object can have no

which can love, if this "power" of loving or creating or willing,

All of these quite general remarks taken together with the

fied with a theory simply because it "works," without our ques-

Though these illusions are not peculiar to psychiatry and

The recent growth of interest in religion, particularly

with concepts pertaining to mental health and illness and the

the exception of psychotherapists and their concepts, but very

It is clear to me that the various new trends in psychotherapy,

arc all, directly or indirectly, intentionally or unwittingly, chil-

dren of the modern natural-scientific metaphysics. As such, they

December, tp6j Jacob needleman

Ludwig Binswanger's Daseinsanalyse is an effort to complement

he himself considers vital: toname but one, the unique conception

translations in Existence,^ readers in this country have had to settle

for secondhand presentations of Binswanger's thought, particularly

tion somewhat has been the main principle guiding my choice of

to theSamuel F. Pels Foundation, under whose auspices I was able