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Csorbató (Tatra), 20 August 19171
114F
Dear Dr. Binswanger,
I received the first chapter of Part II today and read it at once and, on this first, preliminary, reading, with great interest. It is very instructive for me and very creditable, but I am uneasy about one thing. What are you proposing to do about the unconscious, or rather, how will you manage without the unconscious? Has the philosophical devil finally got you in his clutches?2 Reassure me. I did not receive a letter.
Very cordially yours, Freud
Postcard.
Binswanger wrote on the matter (1956c), p. 64 in 1957 English edition: ‘Unfortunately I cannot find a copy of my answer to this question. Needless to say, I have never “managed without the unconscious,” either in psychotherapeutic practice, which is indeed impossible without using Freud's concept of the unconscious, or in “theory”. But after I turned to phenomenology and existential analysis, I conceived the unconscious in a different way. The problems it presented became broader and deeper, as it became less defined as merely the opposite of the “conscious”, whereas in psychoanalysis it is still seen largely in terms of this simple opposition. Heidegger's existential analysis, as contrasted to Sartre's takes as its point of departure not consciousness, but existence conceived as being-in-the-world; accordingly, the opposition in question recedes into the background in favour of a description of the various phenomenologically demonstrable modes and structures of being-in-the-world.’