Existential Analysis: L. Binswanger's Daseinsanalyse

Ludwig Binswanger produced out of the encounter of existentialism and psychoanalysis an Existential Analysis of remarkable attractiveness.

There are several psychological schools which call themselves existential. That is why Binswanger prefers the German nomenclature Daseinsanalyse to distinguish his thoughts from those of Frankl (6) and others. However, we would like to associate the term Existential Analysis with the existentialist psychological teaching of Ludwig Binswanger which we are going to review here. (See also 13).

First, a word as to why existentialism attracts our attention. In the beginning it had a certain shock effect, but it deserves our serious attention for another reason: because it is radically anthropologic or anthropocentric. That is, human experience is at the core of its philosophy, and it is not only used, as it is in other systems, as a launching platform from which to catapult off to other spaces. Human experience circumscribes the only horizon of understanding, and Man is accepted as the one outstanding frame of reference. Because we are not any more satisfied with explanations of man from a cosmological or a theological point of view, existentialism appeals to us because its view is basically anthropological. It says that we find Being only as Dasein, as Human Being and only proceed from what we find there (da). This exclusive focus on human existence is in tune with the “Zeitgeist”, in which no other problem is felt to be as urgent as the problem of man himself. Psychology had to come to grips with existentialism. Both have the same center around which their interests circle—the existence of man.

Existentialism attempts to answer the basic metaphysical question, the ontological question: What is being? The answer is: Being is known to us, men, only as mine or thine or his Being, in short only as human Being. All philosophizing circles around me and you and him. Only by starting off from man does the world