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Kierkegaard wrote over a hundred years ago: 'As truth increases in extent, certitude steadily decreases'. This book is an expression of the growing tension in which modern man finds himself. The picture of the world with God the Father observing, rewarding, and punishing His children has been finally destroyed. Psychoanalysis has not solved the problems either, which the progress of
science and technique has created, and thus has disappointed a multitude of people. This book, in which the authors propose a 'new dimension in psychiatry and psychology', is interesting and valuable as a document of this condition.
It is not easy to do justice to this book, to which the editors have devoted so much time and effort. Translations of the papers, which even in their original German are often obscure, were a true labor of love. One must be grateful to Rollo May and his co-workers for undertaking this most difficult task. American readers can now become acquainted with a movement in psychiatry which has encountered great interest and gained wide influence on the European Continent, particularly in Switzerland, Germany, and France. Many consider this movement a decisive step in the development and progress of psychiatry.
The book consists of introductory essays by Rollo May and Henri F. Ellenberger and papers by Eugene Minkowski, Erwin W. Straus, V. E. von Gebsattel, and Roland Kuhn. The three most important papers are by Ludwig Binswanger. In the introduction the editors undertake to clarify the history of existential analysis and the meaning of the term. It may not be their fault if many readers, after reading the introduction, still do not know what existential analysis is. This vagueness seems to be an essential aspect of the whole movement.
Existentialism is a trend in philosophy which has been dominant for some years in Germany and France. To understand it in all its ramifications would demand a thorough study of its creators, from Kierkegaard to Husserl, He