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In this outstanding paper Edith Weigert relates Central European philosophy, as represented by the existentialism of the psychiatrists and philosophers Karl Jaspers and Ludwig Binswanger, to modern psychiatry as represented by Freud's psychoanalysis and the psychiatric system of Harry Stack Sullivan. This paper is the result of an intensive study of an enormous field, and is of interest of the philosopher, the psychoanalyst, and the historian. Among other thins, it opens the way for an understanding of how psychoanalysis originated in a European environment but eventually succeeded in the atmosphere of America.
We cannot understand thought processes if we do not first understand human existence. Existentialism strives for a pre- or extra-scientific grasp of naïve, spontaneous experience (Erlebnis). Existence is defined as 'Being-in-the-world'. Being-in-the-world is limited in time and has a beginning and an end. It is existence toward death. It is always existence with others; existence without relatedness to someone or something is, in terms of Binswanger, 'Naked Horror'. There are two modes of existence: Care and Love. Because imperfection always leaves existence behind the full development of its potentialities, life includes anxieties (Care) and guilt. Being-in-the-world is fundamentally unfree, it means being thrown without choice into and out of existence. The problems of existence deal with anxiety, guilt, lack of freedom, and nothingness. Care noisily fills the foreground of existence while Love is more silent, so that total cultural epochs have almost lost sight of it.
Existence in everyday living is always in danger of sinking from the level of respecting Selves to the level of doomed and drifting Ones.
In the turmoil of everyday living, existence is never able fully to maintain the integrity of the Self, true to its potentialities. Existence progresses step by step, from situation to situation, selecting, deciding, forming opinions, taking a st