Analysis of existence

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The analysis of existence is one of psychoanalysis related psychiatric and psychotherapeutic direction following the phenomenological method and philosophical especially on Martin Heidegger be in-the-world oriented (1889-1976), which marked the man as "being there" with the " “As one of the basic constitutions.

The analysis of existence is often assigned to the humanistic directions of psychotherapy because of its philosophical criticism of psychoanalytic naturalism. But this is only partially true, because today's analysis of existence takes up Freud's fundamental discoveries and interprets them in terms of existential philosophy.

On the history of the analysis of existence

The name “Daseinsanalyse” comes from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, who in his main work Being and Time , which was published in 1927 and was still based on the phenomenology of his teacher Edmund Husserl , referred to people as “Dasein” and called his fundamental ontology “Daseinsanalytik”. The analysis of existence as a form of psychiatric therapy refers exclusively to the treatise Being and Time .

Daseinanalysis emerged in the 1940s from psychoanalysis, which had already influenced it. It was founded by Ludwig Binswanger (1881–1966) and Medard Boss (1903–1990), who explicitly added the human factor to the structure of the analysis of existence created by Husserl and Heidegger. Binswanger and Boss each developed a different understanding of the analysis of existence. Both were trained as psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Unlike CG Jung or Alfred Adler, Binswanger and Boss did not criticize certain contents of psychoanalytic theory, but rather its philosophical-anthropological foundations .

The analysis of existence thus comprises two independent directions: the psychiatric analysis of existence founded by Binswanger and the psychotherapeutic analysis of existence founded by Medard Boss, which is also known as the "Zurich School of Analysis of Dasein".

Ludwig Binswanger

Binswanger's main concern was psychiatry itself. He wanted to overcome their status as a mere conglomerate of individual psychiatric disciplines and establish psychiatry as a unified science. According to Binswanger, psychiatry can only become a unified science if it is based on a philosophically clarified image of man. He explicated this image of man in his main theoretical work, Basic Forms and Knowledge of Human Existence , which appeared in 1942. The human existence is described there in a critical reference to Martin Heidegger's speech about being- in-the-world as being- in-the-world-beyond-the-world .

After 1942, Binswanger developed his own existential analysis method for researching mental illnesses. It is based on the concept of the world design . This method combines phenomenological , structural and hermeneutic elements; it is most purely applied in the famous schizophrenia study Ellen West (1944/45). The revolutionary aspect of the method for researching the world designs of mentally ill people lies in the fact that it does not examine what the mentally ill is lacking in comparison to the healthy, but in which particular world it exists: "It is the world designs that distinguish the insane from the healthy" . Binswanger's analysis of existence is still an important school of thought within psychiatry, and his studies on schizophrenia are among the classic psychiatric writings.

Towards the end of his life (1958–1965), Binswanger returned to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) under the influence of the Freiburg philosopher Wilhelm Szilasi , who had developed a concept of the lifeworld similar to “Dasein” . The hermeneutic-structural analysis of world designs is replaced by the exact descriptive recording of pathological changes in the structure of the consciousness. The two works of this post-existence analysis phase are Melancholy and Mania (1960) and Wahn (1965).

Medard Boss

With Medard Boss, Dasein analysis became a psychotherapeutic direction. Together with his closest student Gion Condrau , he founded a training institute in Zurich in 1971, the "Daseinsanalytisches Institut für Psychotherapie und Psychosomatik". The existential analytical psychotherapy practiced by Boss retains the basic psychoanalytic arrangement as well as the basic rules of abstinence, free association and evenly floating attention. On the other hand, she rejects Freud's conception of the therapeutic relationship as a transference relationship because she fails to recognize what is new and positive in the therapeutic relationship. Freud's interpretive technique is also rejected because it arbitrarily assigns a meaning to the phenomena that cannot be identified in the phenomena.

Personal friendship and close collaboration with Martin Heidegger were decisive for Boss' analysis of existence. From 1959 to 1969, Boss and Heidegger jointly held the Zollikon seminars . Boss's analysis of existence is therefore strongly influenced by Heidegger's late thinking about events. In his main theoretical work Grundriss der Medizin und der Psychologie (1970/75) he wants to introduce a new way of thinking into all of medicine and psychology, which overcomes the "possessive subjectivism" of modernity. By this, Boss, in the sense of Heidegger, understands the mental attitude prevailing in modern times , which reduces both healthy and sick people to the mere object of technical availability. Of many of Boss's publications, in addition to the main work Grundriss der Medizin, the two books on the analysis of existential dreams are of lasting importance. They form an important phenomenological alternative to the dream interpretations of Sigmund Freud and CG Jung. Boss was also one of the pioneers of psychosomatic medicine with his book Introduction to Psychosomatic Medicine from 1954.

New developments

The analysis of existence has been further developed in the German-speaking area since 1983, especially by Alice Holzhey-Kunz (* 1943). The starting point for this further development is the inclusion of Sigmund Freud's discovery that psychopathological symptoms have an unconscious meaning that can be uncovered with an analytical-hermeneutic method. Holzhey-Kunz combines Freud's discovery with existential philosophical insights into the human condition, which she draws mainly from Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre. From this she gains a new analytical-hermeneutic conception of mental suffering. In contrast to psychoanalysis, she understands mental suffering not only as "suffering from reminiscences" (ie from unprocessed childhood experiences), but also as "suffering from one's own being" (ie from the basic conditions of human existence). Because Holzhey-Kunz connects mental suffering with a special individual clairaudience for the abysmal and uncanny of human existence, she also describes the mentally suffering person as unwilling philosophers .

There are three books by Holzhey-Kunz. The first book Leiden am Dasein (1994) contains in the first part a critical appraisal of the theories of Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss; In the second part the basic ideas of Freud's existence are taken up and interpreted in an analytical way; the third part contains the outline of a new analytical-hermeneutic conception of mental suffering. The second book Das Subject in der Kur (2002) begins with a sharp criticism of today's trend of eliminating the subject from psychotherapy in the name of a misunderstood ideal of science. The author proves that, unlike Binswanger and Boss, Freud even linked psychological suffering with secret intentions of the suffering subject. For the analysis of existence she wants to regain a radical and at the same time weak concept of the subject, which also allows Freud's unconscious to be considered. For the first time, Sartre's philosophy was given an important role alongside that of Heidegger. The third book Daseinsanalyse (2008) systematically introduces hermeneutic- existence -analytical thinking and at the same time provides a textbook-like overview of the existence-analytical-hermeneutical view of basic topics in psychology, psychopathology and psychotherapy. In 2014 this book was corrected and reissued with a new fourth part. There the consequences of the new understanding of mental suffering are drawn and the most important elements of a psychoanalytic psychotherapy based on existential philosophy are presented.

The Zurich Daseinsanalyst Uta Jaenicke has developed a new hermeneutic-existence-analytical dream interpretation, in contrast to Boss' dream theory, which starts from Heidegger's analysis of moods and interprets the dream as a confrontation with one's own being.

Dissemination of the analysis of existence

Ludwig Binswanger did not want to found a school, but his thinking had a strong influence on psychiatry as well as the humanities and philosophical anthropology. Psychiatric authors who took up Binswanger's existential analysis approach and developed it further are: Wolfgang Blankenburg , Alfred Kraus, Roland Kuhn, Hubertus Tellenbach . The Binswanger archive is now part of the Tübingen university archive. It was set up by Georg Fichtner in the 1980s. The scientific development and evaluation of Binswanger's work is under way today under the direction of Albrecht Hirschmüller.

The psychotherapeutic analysis of existence founded by Medard Boss is represented today by various national societies (Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Greece, France, England). Some of these societies also offer training in existential psychotherapy. These societies are united in the International Federation of Daseinsanalysis IFDA, which organizes international congresses every two years. She also publishes the yearbook "Daseinsanalyse".

Proof of effectiveness

In the most comprehensive scientific efficacy study to date with regard to the verifiable effects of psychotherapy, Daseinanalysis is classified under those forms of therapy "which have so far been completely inadequate in terms of quantity and quality and / or in which the results of this examination are anything but convincing."

literature

  • Medard Boss: From Psychoanalysis to Daseinanalysis. Vienna / Munich / Zurich 1979.
  • Hans-Dieter Mennel: Analysis of existence in psychiatry: To the history of anthropological and biological approaches in neurology. In: Medical historical messages. Journal for the history of science and specialist prose research. Volume 34, 2015 (2016), pp. 157–167.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Medard Boss (ed.): Martin Heidegger: Zollikoner Seminare. 3. Edition. Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 150 ff.
  2. ↑ Hans-Dieter Mennel: Daseinsanalyse in der Psychiatrie: To the history of anthropological and biological approaches in neuropathy. 2015 (2016), pp. 157 and 161.
  3. ^ Ludwig Binswanger: Selected works. Volume 4: The human being in psychiatry. Edited and edited by Alice Holzhey-Kunz. Asanger, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-89334-205-2 , pp. 57-72.
  4. ^ Reprinted as: Ludwig Binswanger: Selected Works. Volume 2. Edited by Max Herzog and Hans-Jürg Braun. Asanger, Heidelberg 1993, ISBN 3-89334-203-6 .
  5. ^ Reprinted in: Ludwig Binswanger: Selected Works. Volume 4: The human being in psychiatry. Edited and edited by Alice Holzhey-Kunz. Asanger, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-89334-205-2 , pp. 73-257.
  6. ^ In: Ludwig Binswanger: Selected lectures and essays. Volume 1: On phenomenological anthropology. Francke, Bern 1947, p. 217.
  7. ↑ Edmund Husserl: The crisis of the European sciences. Hamburg 2012 (= Edmund Husserl, Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. By Elisabeth Ströker. Volume 8). P. 48 ff.
  8. ↑ Both works are printed in: Ludwig Binswanger: Selected works. Volume 4: The human being in psychiatry. Edited and edited by Alice Holzhey-Kunz. Asanger, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-89334-205-2 .
  9. ↑ These seminars are published as: Martin Heidegger: Zollikoner Seminare. Minutes - conversations - letters. Published by Medard Boss. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-465-01763-3 .
  10. ↑ Medard Boss: Outline of Medicine and Psychology. Approaches to a phenomenological physiology, psychology, pathology and therapy and to a common preventive medicine. 3rd, compared to the second unchanged edition. Huber, Bern et al. 1999, ISBN 3-456-83206-0 .
  11. ↑ Medard Boss: The Dream and Its Interpretation. Huber, Bern et al. 1953; Medard Boss: "I dreamed last night ...". Visual exercises in the field of dreaming and examples for the practical application of a new understanding of dreams. Huber, Bern 1975, ISBN 3-456-80139-4 .
  12. ↑ Medard Boss: Introduction to psychosomatic medicine (= collection of internal medicine and its border areas. Vol. 6, ZDB -ID 503336-6 ). Huber, Bern et al. 1954.
  13. ↑ Alice Holzhey-Kunz: Suffering from Dasein. The analysis of existence and the task of a hermeneutics of psychopathological phenomena. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-85165-103-0 .
  14. ↑ Alice Holzhey-Kunz: The subject in the cure. On the conditions of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-85165-557-5 .
  15. ^ Analysis of existence . In: Alfried Längle, Alice Holzhey-Kunz: Existential Analysis and Analysis of Daseins . Facultas-WUV, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-2966-5 , pp. 181-348.
  16. ↑ Alice Holzhey-Kunz: Daseinsanalyse. The existential philosophical view of mental suffering and its therapy . Facultas-WUV, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-7089-1207-3 .
  17. ↑ Uta Jaenicke: Why circus horses? . In: Daseinsanalyse. Yearbook of Phenomenological Anthropology and Psychotherapy . Vol. 26, 2010. ISSN 0254-6221, pp. 69-81.
  18. ^ Klaus Grawe, Ruth Donati, Friederike Bernauer: Psychotherapy in change. From confession to profession. Hofgrebe-Verlag, 5th ed. Göttingen, Bern, Toronto, Seattle 2001, p. 735

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