Ludwig Binswanger's Collected Papers—Introduction and Critical Remarks

Reviewing the new German edition of selected papers of Ludwig Binswanger, an overview of Binswanger's life and work is given. Deeply rooted in a psychiatric sanatorium tradition established in the nineteenth century by his grandfather, Binswanger sought contact with Bleuler, Jung and Freud, and tried to treat his severely ill patients with individual psychoanalysis. In addition, the therapeutic milieu always played a great role in his work and thinking. Binswanger's experiences with psychotic patients lead him to a philosophical, existential view of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Moving beyond Freud, he dealt with psychotic phenomena and maintained that paranoia, mania and depression can be treated by psychotherapy if the therapist exposes himself in an existential manner with the patient. The author expresses his critical opinion of the editors of the present collection for leaving out important psychoanalytic papers written by Binswanger. Binswanger's deviations from the psychoanalytic mainstream is overemphasized—as a matter of fact he remained a member of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society until his death and can be regarded as one of the most important theorists of modern psychoanalysis dealing also with psychotic phenomena.