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The author of this interesting monograph is a physician and psychoanalyst. He is Lecturer in Psychotherapy at the Medical School of the University of Zurich, Training Analyst of the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Zurich, and a member of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society. The volume is subtitled, A Daseinanalytic Approach to the Psychopathology of the Phenomenon of Love. A foreword by Oskar Diethelm says, “To many critical readers, these psychopathological theories and procedures may not be acceptable, but to everyone they will be provocatively stimulating. They will enlarge the reader's vista and force him to reevaluate some of his thinking in psychopathology.” This reviewer will say that the book did no such thing for him and yet the book is significant. Diethelm implies but does not definitely state the obvious conclusions one would draw from the volume. The author himself is a little vague in the matter. The opening parts of the book review the available theories of sexuality and show their inadequacies. The author's tendency is to carry on this comparative discussion even through his case material and to the very end. Daseinanalysis is existential analysis based on Hiedegger's Sein und Zeit (), using the word daseinanalytic coined by Heidegger. The author's theories also derive from Jung and Binswanger's introduction of the daseinanalytic mode of thinking of Heidegger.
The individual, the world, and the possibilities and limitations in each of them are considered, by the author, in bringing about full expression of the dual ‘mode of being.’ As the author says, “The amazing factor concerning heterosexual as well as homosexual love relations is how frequently and with what an instinctive certainty a person is able to find the exact reciprocal partner with respect to the psychic male-female mixture.” The author presents several cases; a fetishist, a corprophiliac, a kleptomaniac, a voyeur, a sado-masochist, and three homosexuals (two women and one man). Thes