Discussion of the Case of Otmar Presented by Dr. Gion Condrau

In his case presentation, Dr. Condrau gives a few details of what Daseinsanalysis is all about. He tells us that the analyst attempts a “thorough discussion of dreams” and that interpretation is “carried out strictly phenomenologically.” Thus the analyst does not “search for an unconscious meaning of dreams” and does not “differentiate between a latent, unconscious dream content and a manifest dream altered through unconscious censorship.” Condrau adds, “We believe that the dream told by the patient is really the dream he dreamt.”

Dr. Condrau describes his patient Otmar's personality: “he is impeccably dressed and clean and spoke with a monotonous voice … his mien merely showed indifference or fatalism … with his accounting pedantry, manifest in measuring his therapist's delays … he tends to rationalize and intellectualize.” About Otmar's father we were told that he was a brutal alcoholic, who terrorized and beat his wife, Otmar, and Otmar's younger sister Marian; he would lock them indoors to impede their going to mass. The father was an atheist and once horrified them by tearing down a crucifix from the wall and stamping on it; he was repeatedly hospitalized in psychiatric wards. The mother was described as soft and weak and never the source of security for her children. Otmar had a puritanical upbringing and “had virtually no relationship with other children of his environment.” We were not told which parent enforced this.

Otmar's relation to his analyst is very important. “He introduced himself with a typed card, indicating in telegraphic sentences his family background, his professional training and status…. He showed up on the dot and expected his therapist to be equally punctual…. After some initial difficulties, the