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From 1919 until 1932, psychiatrists from the mental hospitals near Lake Constance and from the Bellevue-Sanatorium in Kreuzlingen/Switzerland organized regular scientific meetings, where well-known representatives of all the relevant psychiatric and psychotherapeutic schools and important phenomenological philosophers came together. Getting in touch with psychoanalytical and social psychiatric trends led to a quite lively and fruitful exchange in theory and practice. Through the Reichenau psychiatrist Alfred Schwenninger, Ludwig Binswanger got to know personally the phenomenologic philosophers Alexander Pfänder and Edmund Husserl, who also held lectures at meetings there. Hans Wolfgang Maier from the Burghölzli in Zurich and his colleagues from Herisau and Münsterlingen concentrated on the mainly social psychiatric and forensic work they did. Quite a few of the lectures were published in the Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie. The paper concentrates on contributions related to psychoanalysis. The Reichenau director Karl Wilmanns showed a sceptical sympathy for psychoanalysis even when applied to schizophrenia. Ludwig Binswanger treated psychotic patients psychoanalytically and tried to combine psychoanalysis, clinical psychiatry and philosophy. Especially phenomenology was for him a fundament of psychopathology. The paper reports in detail some of his contributions at the scientific discussions, theoretical issues as well as issues of a psychoanalytic practice.