Daseinsanalytic Therapy with a Patient Suffering from Compulsion Neurosis and Writer's Cramp

This is a report on the treatment of a young man who called on the therapist because of severe writer's cramp. Having grown up under the most trying circumstances as the son of a chronic alcoholic, the patient had developed a compulsive personality and an extreme, neurotically inhibited disturbance of relationships. He also had developed a writer's cramp which seriously compromised his occupation as an accountant.

The analysis took 3½ years, with a total of 313 sessions. The primary focus of the initial work concerned the patient's life history as it related to his various impairments in living. Since, however, he soon became involved in a relationship which eventually led to marriage, the treatment also focused considerably on his contemporary situation as well. Throughout the analysis, particular emphasis was placed on the thorough discussion of dreams, with interpretations being carried out in a strictly phenomenological fashion according to the daseinsanalytic approach.

The patient, whom I shall call Otmar, first consulted the therapist in May of 1966. At the time, he was 26 years of age, unmarried, and employed as an accountant in an important commercial corporation. He was referred by a former patient after having been treated by various specialists and general practitioners and also after having undergone surgery for the removal of a tumor from his right hand. Otmar first introduced himself by presenting a meticulously typed card which indicated, in stilted telegraphic sentences, his family background and his professional training and status. He was especially careful to enumerate the psychological literature he had read as an introduction