ERWIN STRAUS AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL

APPROACH TO PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

William F. Fischer, Ph.D.

When I was invited to contribute a paper to an issue of the

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology that would be devoted
to the thought of Erwin Straus, I unreflectively assumed that
my three years of participation in his Lexington seminars con-
stituted a solid foundation for such a project. Further strenght-
ening this assumption was the realization that Dr. Straus' insights
into and characterizations of human phenomena, first encount-
ered in those seminar sessions and subsequently refreshed and
deepened in the course of my own teaching, have frequently re-
curred to me while conducting seminars on personality theory
and psychopathology. Hence, I accepted the invitation and set
about the task of selecting a particular aspect of Dr. Straus'
thought to thematize and discuss.
Having recently concluded a course in which Dr. Straus'
characterizations of psychopathology were compared with those
of other existential-phenomenological theorists, I decided to
commit myself to an in-depth examination of the meanings of
psychopathology as he had articulated them. At first glance, such
a project seemed both intriguing and manageable. However, in
my concrete efforts at implementing this commitment, I soon
came to appreciate a number of formidable problems. First, Dr.
Straus' characterizations of psychopathology are inextricably
and dialectically interwoven with his whole philosophical an-

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thropology. Second, while those of his writings that are ad-
dressed to specific psychopathological phenomena, i.e., Phe-
nomenology of Hallucinations (1962), Disorders of Personal
Time in Depressive States (1947), The Pathology of Compulsion
(1938), and Pseudoreversibility of Catatonic Stupor (1955), all
reprinted in his 1'henomenological Psychology (1966), are un-
usually rich, they are relatively few and are typically limited to
forms or aspects of psychotic living. Further, many additional
references to the meanings of psychopathology are scattered
throughout his other works. Finally, reflection has convinced
me that a representation and discussion of Dr. Straus' explicit
characterizations of psychopathological phenomena would miss
his most important contribution to the task of working out a
more adequate and genuinely psychological psychopathology.
As I have already suggested, this is not to imply that Dr.
Straus' understandings and portrayals of such phenomena are of
little or no value to psychologists. Indeed, his characterizations
of compulsive living, his analyses of the various types of halluci-
nations, and his depictions of the transformed temporalities of
depressive modes of being, are often both rovocative and con-
vincing. However, they are even more significant insofar as they
demonstrate the actual, as well as the potential, fruitfulness of
adopting a more adequate, phenomenologically achieved, under-
standing of human existence as a philosophical anthropological
basis for psychology as well as for psychopathology. In other
words, it is my contention that Dr. Straus' fundamental contri-
bution to the psychologist's task of working out an adequate
psychology and psychopathology lies in his repeated demonstra-
tions of the inappropriateness of natural scientific characteriza-
tions of human existence, and in his alternative description, at
least in its major themes and dimensions, of a phenomenologi-
cally achieved portrayal of the fundaments of the human situa-
tion. Hence, the interrelated purposes of the present paper will
be: to describe the style of movement and method that Dr.
Straus typically employed in his efforts to realize this protrayal;
to set forth these major themes and dimensions of the human
situation; to represent his own applications of this alternative
philosophical anthropology for achieving an understanding of
specific psychopathological phenomena; and to inquire into the
more general implications of this grasp of the human situation
for the project of a genuinely psychological psychopathology.

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Dr. Straus' Typical Style of Movement and Method

In his study of the major figures of phenomenological psycho-

logical psychology and psychiatry, Herbert Speigelberg states,
"Straus started from and always returned to psychiatry. It was
only in trying to understand the abnormal that he discovered
increasingly that it was necessary to first understand the norm,
a task which in turn required more knowledge than ordinary
science could supply." (p. 262) As a general characterization, I
would have no quarrel with this assertion. However, in itself, it
fails to differentiate Straus' movement and method from that of
other well-known, phenomenologically oriented practitioners,
such as Binswanger and Minkowski. They too had found that
existing theories of psychology and psychotherapy, grounded as
they were in natural scientific conceptions of human being,
were inadequate as bases for their psychiatric projects. They too
had found that it was necessary to return to the norms of every-
day human existence, to rethematize them, and to articulately
understand them in a more faithful manner. However, in their
respective efforts they each discovered that certain contemporary
philosophers, Heidegger in the case of Binswanger and Bergson
in the case of Minkowski, had already described the basic themes
and dimensions of human living in a manner that seemed much
more fruitful. Hence, both Minkowski and Binswanger appropri-
ated already completed philosophical anthropologies and both
attempted to apply the respective philosopher's meta-ontic, if
not ontological, characterizations of human existence to the
concrete problematics of psychiatric practice.
As he explicitly describes in his essay, Psychiatry and Philo-
sophy (1969), Erwin Straus took a different route. In his deter-
mination to comprehend the phenomena of abnormality, as he
encountered them in his psychiatric practise, he, as had Bins-
wanger and Minkowski, repeatedly found himself referred to
the task of grasping the norm, or, as he often called it, the
axioms or unwritten constitution of everyday life. It seemed
clear to him, as it had to the other two, that psychopathology
constituted a profound transformation of the norm. Yet, he
also realized that this very same norm, those interrelated axioms
that we live so readily and unreflectively, are so close to us that,
in effect, they remain hidden. The psychopathological, on the
other hand, emerges as thematically striking and bewildering in

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our encounters with it. In trying to comprehend its meaning, we
are thrown back upon the norm; we realize that psychopatho-
logical phenomena are intrinsically, that is, dialectically related
to that norm, and yet the latter is so taken for granted that it
remains inarticulate.
When Dr. Straus looked about for an already delineated
characterization of the basic themes and dimensions of everyday
life, he found that most were dominated by natural scientific
conceptions of the real and that as such, they were prejudiced
and inadequate. Further, unlike Binswanger and Minkowski, he
could not rest contentedly with any of the philosophical anthro-
pologies that had already been formulated by various pheno-
menological philosophers. Hence, he could not appropriate and
apply Heidegger's ontological analytic of dasein, as Binswanger,
for example, had done. In fact, one gets the vague and persistent
impression that although he typically thought of the pheno-
menological philosophers as his allies, he became increasingly
aware of their tendency to stress man's subjectivity, usually at
the cost of his corporeality. Perhaps it was an expression of his
original medical training, or perhaps there were other reasons,
but in any case, Dr. Straus invariably criticized the phenomeno-
logical philosophers for their inability or unwillingness to also
appreciate man's biological character. This divergence increased
as Dr. Straus came to realize that human subjectivity, in all of
its forms, is both conditioned and pervaded by human corpore-
ality. Eventually, he came to describe his own method and style
of movement in the following manner:

Instead of proceeding from philosophy to psychiatry we shall start from

psy ehiatry and let it lead us to philosophical questions. Thus I shall apply
a kind of philosophical "epoche," i.e., I will first bracket all philosophical
teachings (as far as they are known to me) and launching out from the
psychiatric situation I shall expose myself to philosophical adventures,
with the risk of incurring the scorn of experts. I shall scan clinical experi-
ence for its hidden content of philosophical problems and attempt to pro-
pose a solution to some of these problems uncovered in the perusal. (1969,
pp. 18-19, my emphasis)

The solutions that he eventually proposed constitute Dr.

Straus' own efforts at articulating a philosophical anthropology.
They emerged in the course of his phenomenologically enacted
attempts at comprehending psychopathological phenomena and
although they are similar in certain respects to the characteri-

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zations of human existence that have been articulated by Mer-
leau-Ponty, they stand as a unique contribution to the task of
founding both psychology and psychopathology.

Themes and Dimensions of Dr. Straus' Philosophical Anthro-

pology

Perhaps the most appropriate way to begin a presentation of

Dr. Straus' philosophical anthropology is to assert at the outset
that he totally and emphatically rejected Descartes' separation
and reification of the relations of mind and body, as well as
those of person and world. Instead, in a manner that is consis-
tent with most other existential-phenomenological thinkers,
especially Merleau-Ponty, Dr. Straus relativized these relations
and grasped them as both dialectically intertwined and mutually
implicative. Hence, the human world is understood as arising
out of, i.e., as co-constituted by and reflective of, varying human
modes of experiencing and acting. Correlatively, these very
same modes of experiencing and acting are seen to be solicited,
as well as occasioned by, and graspable only in terms of the
unfolding phenomena of the human world. To use the more
philosophical expression, the relations of person and world are
understood as intentional, although for Dr. Straus, the inten-
tionality of human experiencing and acting does not imply, or
point back to, the subjectivity of an empirical or transcendental
consciousness. Rather, for this thinker, the subject of human
experiencing and acting is always the irreducible totality that is
the human person.
According to Dr. Straus, the co-constitution of the human
world occurs at two distinct, although related levels, namely,
that of sensing, or sensory experience, and that of perceptual -
knowing. At each of these levels, albeit in different ways, both
the form and the concrete possibilities of the living human body
play a decisive role. Specific explorations of the meanings of
this role may be read in such works as The Upright Posture
(1952), Born to See, Bound to Behold (1965), The Forms of
Spatiality (1930), Lived Movement (1935-36) and The Spec-
trum of the Senses (1963). In general, however, Dr. Straus pro-
posed that in getting up, in raising ourselves from the ground, in
opposing gravity and attaining an upright posture, each of us

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 establishes a relation of contraposition to the engulfing whole;
thus a situation is created whereby each person, as a part, faces
the Other, or, as he came to call it, the Allon, to which we all
belong. In this context, each of us can meet other parts, that is,
objects, animals, or other people, as partners or as enemies.
Each of us can be affected by and respond to the expressions
and activities of others. As parts vis-a-vis parts, always in the
context of the whole, or the Allon, each is partially, although
never completely, freed from the forces of gravity; each is cap-
able of moving himself relative to others, as well as to the Allon,
and it is this capacity for motility that makes sensory experi-
ence possible.
At this juncture, it might be most appropriate to point out
that Dr. Straus lived, as well as thematically understood, the
reinterpretation and vindication of sensing, or sensory experi-
ence, as one of the fundamental projects of his intellectual life.
As he often said and wrote, "In my work I have tried to 'save'
sensory experience from theoretical misinterpretation." (1960,
p. 5) Space does not permit an extensive presentation and dis-
cussion of the misinterpretation of sensory experience, that is,
the metaphysically prejudiced construing of man's immediate,
incarnate presence to the world, to which Dr. Straus has re-
ferred. Suffice it to say that it is embedded in the philosophical
writings of Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes and Locke, and that it is
constituted by a characterization of sensory experience as a
deficient, primitive mode of knowing. Students of the history
of psychology, as well as of contemporary systems grounded in
natural science metaphysics, are well aware of the fact that vari-
ations of this characterization continue to thrive even today.
Typically they involve theories as to the source and nature of
sensation, or sense data, and they invariably appeal to such prin-
ciples as the constancy hypothesis, as well as to such alleged
processes as the interpretation of distal or proximal stimuli by
' various cortical and subcortical centers.
As a result of his phenomenological analyses of different
modalities of sensory experiencing, Dr. Straus has radically op-
posed these characterizations and their derivatives. Against
them he has described the norms, the general, as well as the
sense-specific, characteristics of the I-Allon relationship. More
or less systematic summaries of these norms, these "axioms of
everyday life," can be found in The Primary World of the Senses

100
(1963), Norm and Pathology of I-World Relations (1961), and
Psychiatry and Philosophy (1969). The enumeration and de-
scription presented below is based upon the characterizations
presented in these works.
1. As I have already suggested, the I-Allon relationship is
effected in the act of rising up against gravity, in establishing a
relation of contraposition. Each of us belongs to the surround-
ing whole from which we detach ourselves and within which
we encounter the world.
2. Sensory experience occurs within the relation to the Al-
lon. Through each of our several sense modalities, we are pre-
sent to the Allon in its substantiality, in its otherness as object.
Although each sense modality illuminates and reveals different
profiles of the Allon, it presents itself in its coherence, in its
integrity.
3. The subject of sensory experience is neither an ethereal
consciousness, nor a physiologically characterized nervous sys-
tem. While stimuli have no existence independent of the recei-
ver's organism which they excite, the objects of sensory experi-
ence do. The stimuli that provoke responses in the experimental
animal are not the same stimuli that reach and affect the eyes of
the experimenter. There is no sharing of stimuli; stimuli and
objects are not synonymous. The subject of sensory experience
is the incarnate human person.
4. While we are present to the Allon in sensory experience,
while it reaches us, it remains at a distance. In the dialectics of
its being revealed and being hidden, it is forever enigmatic. It
nurtures and invites, as well as threatens and repulses. In sick-
ness and disease we discover the Other, the alien, even in our
own bodies. In spite of the most intimate of contacts, distance,
surprise and otherness are essential characteristics of sensory
experience. The Allon, although familiar in its superficial mani-
festations, is unfathomable in its depth; at its core, it eludes
exhaustive comprehension. Thus, jealousy is founded upon the
never to be resolved ambiguity of the Allon.
5. Although the relation to the Allon is one of mutuality,
i.e., both I and it arise simultaneously, not one before the other
and not one without the other, it is not one of equality. As the
ever-present encompassing whole, the Allon presents itself in
fragments and profiles. Each actual situation reveals itself to be
but a segment of a larger one. Incomplete in itself, each segment

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requires completion. Each actual situation points beyond itself
to that which is no longer, to that which is to come, ultimately,
to whole as it continues to unfold.
6. Correlative to the temporal unfolding of the Allon is the
becoming of my own existence and experiencing. As I pass from
one experience to the next, I become aware of the fact that the
temporal character of my own acts of experiencing are not coin-
cidental with the temporal character of the phenomena that are
experienced. In seeing, for example, I move from one room of a
house to the next, I apprehend the permanent order of the
rooms in their own right. I can detatch and appreciate the tem-
poral, existential order of the Allon from the temporal order of
my own experiences of it. It is this duality of orders that enables
us to have experiences of repetition. Even more important,
perhaps, it is the non-coincidence of the temporal orders of
experiencing and the temporal orders of that which is experi-
enced that makes communication possible. The Allon in its own
temporality opens up to and appears before all of us.
7. As motile creatures, as beings who have partially freed
themselves from the forces of gravity, arising and standing on
their own two feet, each of us establishes his "here" in contra-
position to the many possible "theres," to an almost infinite
range of future whereabouts. In this relationship, my position
vis a vis the Allon is always precarious. In being affected by the
Allon in one way or another, in its physiognomically experienced
manifestations of attraction and repulsion, of safety and danger,
each of us is always concerned with both joining and separating,
with sharing and defending.
8. In our experiences of time and space, we move from the
whole to the immediate here and now. This place, this moment,
is determined in its relation to a whole that is never directly
given. In words and other representations, we symbolically get
hold of the whole which, as such, is inaccessible. It is only be-
cause we can relate the present to that which is not present,
through the symbolic mediation of the whole, that we are able
to plan as well as to remember.
9. In the I-Allon relation, I meet the other as partner, or as
enemy. Mediated by the Allon that we both experience and
share, although each of us from his own perspective, we can and
do communicate. Even more to the point, we can achieve mu-
tual understanding. This is extremely important because it is a

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particular kind of failure to communicate and to mutually un-
derstand that constitutes the bases of our experience of the
other as psychopathological.

Applications of the Philosophical Anthropology to Specific

Psychopathological Phenomena

In the very first paragraph of Phenomenology of Hallunci-

nations (1966), Dr. Straus states,

Thanks to their strangeness, halluncinations are easily recognized as dis-

turbances of sensory experience. Since the actual interpretation of the
norm, however fragmentary, vague, and prejudiced it may be, predeter-
mines any possible conception of pathological phenomena, a reappraisal of
the norm of sensory experience has become mandatory. (p. 277)

Two aspects of Dr. Straus' thought are clearly thematized in

this passage. First, hallucinations constitute disturbances of the
I-Allon relationship as it is lived in sensory experience; they are
not the phenomena of the perceptual-knowing relation to the
world. Second, the characterization of the hallucinations as
psyhopathological phenomena already presupposes and is found-
ed upon a prior understanding of the norms of sensory experi-
ence.
With regard to the first issue, namely, the identification of
hallucinations with the sensory, rather than with the perceptual-
knowing relations to the world, several points should be made.
As was previously noted in the section of this paper that dealt
with the themes and dimensions of the philosophical anthropo-
logy, Dr. Straus makes a radical distinction between sensing and
perceptual-knowing relations. In the former, the person as well
as the world, or Allon, is thematic in their mutual involvement.
The relationship is primarily pathic, or affective, and the Allon
is experienced in its immediate physiognomy. Objects and others
are not given in their logical relations or their impersonal, public
characteristics, as they are in the perceptual-knowing relation-
ship. Rather, the individual is seized by the Allon in its affective
power and his experience has the form of being ego-centric and
personal. As a consequence of this distinction, Dr. Straus asserts
that hallucinations are not appropriately characterizable as per-
ceptions without objects. Further, he points to the commonly
recognizable fact that hallucinations do not yield to logical ar-

103
guements and suggests that this is so because they arise and are
lived as a fundamentally alogical, alingual, i.e., sensing level, of
relation to the world.
With regard to the second issue, namely, the fact that the
determination of hallucinations as psychopathological phenom-
ena is prefigured by a prior interpretation of the norms of sen-
sory experience, Dr. Straus elaborates upon this by first describ-
ing how natural science characterizations of those norms have
prevented an adequate understanding of the possibility and
meanings of hallucinations. His critique of those characteri-
zations is so familiar to readers of phenomenological writings
that I will not repeat it here, but will, instead, pass on to a pre-
sentation of his understanding of hallucinations as fundamental
transformations of everyday I-Allon sensory experience.
As I have suggested earlier in the previous section of this
paper, Dr. Straus asserts that in sensory experience, we are re-
lated to the Allon as other. Through various profiles and per-
spectives, it presents itself to each of us as not-me, as other-than-
me, and yet, as accessible to me. Each of us reaches it, and it
reaches each of us, yet none of us absorb it. An object, an other,
a part of the Allon, in revealing itself to me, also remains, at
least in part, hidden from me. I am present to it partially, per-
spectivally, but never exhaustively. In Dr. Straus' own words,

Partly revealed and partly concealed, the Allon forces our interest; it
arouses our desire to know - not the intellectual curiosity to determine
what the thing is, but to ascertain how it behaves - for, in its independent
existence, the Allon is threatening through its mere presence. To know,
therefore, means here to master. (p. 280)

In its being simultaneously revealed and hidden, the manifest

and the veiled aspects of the Allon are not clearly, nor easily,
demarcated.

The familiar and the strange interpenetrate each other. Suddenly the hid-
den powers may pierce through, as in an earthquake when the solid ground
proves treacherous.... At the seashore in twilight, when the aesthetic
charm begins to fail, we may suddenly discover the immense vastness of
the ocean, and with it, the forlorness of our own existence. In some forms
of depersonalization the insurmountable strangeness of the Allon, always
present although not always obvious, manifests itself. (p. 280)

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 When we are ill, stricken by disease, we discover the alien
power of the Allon in our own bodies.

That even without any mental disturbance something which is my very

own can be experienced as belonging to the Allon is of great importance
for an understanding of halluncinations. (pp. 280-281)

Again, returning to the norm, Dr. Straus asserts,

We find ourselves within the world. We do not survey from a grandstand a

parade of objects filing by; we are in the game, face to face with other
things, together with the Allon and related to it.... Sensory experience is
the experience of an I-World relation. Self awareness does not precede
apprehension of this world: one is not before the other, one is not without
the other. The world is the counterpart of my activities, and I am affected
by its power.... From the start, sensory experience has an emotional
component. The Allon is threatening or comforting, appealing or repelling,
and we respond to its physiognomies with fear or confidence, trust or dis-
trust. Sensory experience is ego-centric.... In sensory experience I am
seized, caught up; my own case is called up.... In sensory experience we
move in a prelogical sphere where reality has the character of actuality.
The real is that and only that which acts and seizes on an experiencing
creature. That something is real means that something is happening to
me.... It is in this region, this prelogical sphere, that hallucinations and
delusions occur. Hallucinations, therefore, do not yield to arguements. The
immediateness of the experience yields to no doubts. Hallucinations are not
in competition with the rest of the patient's perceptions. In fact, the reality
of voices eclipses the reality of all other data and thwarts the effects of
any rational analysis of circumstances. (pp. 282-283)

Continuing his discussion of the interrelations of norm and

psychopathology in sensory experience, Dr. Straus points out
that there are several varieties of hallucinations. For example, in
alcoholic delerium patients are typically subject to visual hallu-
cinations, whereas in schizophrenic modes of existence, indivi-
duals are plagued by auditory and tactile hallucinations. Reflect-
ing upon the difficulties in comprehending these divergences,
Dr. Straus suggests that if hallucinations constitute fundamental
transformations of the norms of sensory experience, and if each
sense modality constitutes a particular mode of contact, that is,
a particular relation to the Allon, then phenomenological ana-
lyses of the typical modes of living these different sense relations
should help us to understand the meanings of the various psy-
chopathological manifestations.
While focusing his attention primarily on the auditory rela-

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tion, Dr. Straus describes the norm of this sense modality in the
following characterizations:
Under normal conditions, sound is perceived as an utterance. Sound and
sounding body do not share the same locality. Detached from the sound-
ing body, sound moves toward us; it permeates, fills and homogenizes
space; it captures our ear. In music, sound is transformed into pure sound -
at least in approximation, although the ideal case is never fully realized.
We listen to the symphony, but we are still able to hear the orchestra. De-
tached sound points back toward the sounding body, with its definite
localization and, thereby, limited range of inference.... Sound detached
from the sounding body is something; yet, it is not a thing one can mani-
pulate like the piano which produces the sound; it is not a thing, but nei-
ther is it no-thing. Sound is somewhere between thing and no-thing. It
does not belong to the category of objects which we can handle. In hearing,
we have already heard. We cannot escape from a sound in the manner by
which we escape from visible things. Sound is obtrusive; it reaches us. We
cast an eye on visible things at their distant place; we lend our ear to the
words which come toward us and claim us. A voice calls and orders. (pp.
284-286)

In contrast to the norm of auditory relations,

The schizophrenic hears voices, not persons. In the auditory hallucinations

of the schizophrenic, the normal pattern of the acoustical modality is
deformed. The severance of the sound from the sounding body is brought
to a pathological extreme. Voice and speaker are radically disjointed....
Occasionally, it is but one voice, but more often it is some, many, or "they"
voices emanating from an anonymous group.... Even if as the
voice of one individual, the voice continues to talk; the individual
recognized
does not
take over. Voice and speaker remain separate.... Voices have no determin-
able position. They are ubiquitous. They call from the side, from above,
from the rear; it seems as if the sector of frontal attack alone is spared....
Occasionally, a patient reports that voices penetrate his head, his ears, or
his heart. There, he feels them rather than hears them. This experience
confirms once again the pseudo-acoustical character of auditory halluci-
nations.
Lack of localization is not a simple deficiency. Indeed, voices do not lack -
they mock - spatial determination. Eluding all limits and boundaries and
not hindered by walls and distances, voices are overwhelming and irresis-
table in their power. The patient is helpless. There is no escape from the
attacking voices.... Struck by the irresistable power of voices, the schizo-
phrenic feels no need to test the reality of his experience. He is not shock-
ed by physical absurdities; he is not surprised that he alone hears the voices;
he does not wonder that the voices aim at him.... The schizophrenic is
not a hermit who, frightened and disappointed, withdraws in seclusion
from which he could return any day. The disturbance goes deeper; voices
are atmospheric. They behave like the elements - the wind, the rain, the
fire - and yet they speak, deride, and threaten. This metamorphosis indicates

106
that the patient has lost his place in the human world, that its framework
has collapsed.... The ubiquity of schizophrenic voices indicates that the
general order of things - assigning definite places with limited zones of
reach and influence - disintegrates in the catatonic mode of being caught.
The physiognomy of horror effaces all differences. The world as a whole is
turned into one realm of hostile powers that threaten the patient from all
sides. He is alone and defenseless. He is paralyzed in his action, for human
action is related to "anisotropic space" or, to put it in less abstract words,
voluntary motion is limited to an environment in which the goods of life
are unevenly distributed, in which zones of danger alternate with zones of
safety. Voluntary motion, aiming at some goal, is always directed toward a
place of preference. But, in the schizophrenic world, homogeneous in its
physiognomy of the uncanny, the patient has nowhere to turn. Akinesis,
mutism, and auditory hallucinations that occur together in a catatonic
stupor are all manifestations of the same alteration: the schizophrenic
mode of being-in-the-world. (pp. 286-288, his emphasis)

Summarizing his analyses and discussion, Dr. Straus states,

...hallucinations are not a mere addition, a kind of foreign body in a nor-

mal modality. They originate in distorted modalities. As caricatures of nor-
mal structures, the distortions signify pathological modes of being-in-the-
world. Here, is the method of choice. Instead of explain-
by means of physiological hypotheses, reducing the I-World
ing behavior phenomenology
relation to events within an isolated organism, phenomenology tries to
understand the mentally sick by understanding first the norm o man as an
experiencing being. (p. 288)

If I now attempt to summarize Dr. Straus' application of his

philosophical anthropology to the task of comprehending the
possibility, as well as the meanings, of hallucinations, I would
stress the following themes:
1. Hallucinations are not simple additions, discrete or elemen-
tal eccentricities, that are somehow appended onto otherwise
normal sensory functioning. Rather, they reflect the fact that in
the immediate experiential lives of the individuals who undergo
such phenomena, a profound transformation of sensory relations
to the world have already taken place.
2. This transformation of the immediately experienced world
that is manifested in such phenomena as hallucinations is, in
turn, founded upon a still more pervasive deformation of the
norms of human existence; it rests upon and reflects a psycho-
pathological mode of being-in-the-world.
3. Hallucinations, as expressions of varying psychopatholog-

107
ical modes of being-in-the-world, tend to occur in specific sense
modalities. Thereby, they thematize and illuminate the typical
characteristics and divergences of the particular psychopatho-
logical disturbances.
4. Hallucinations are phenomena of the I-Allon relation, that
is, of the realm of sensory experience. As such, they cannot be
adequately comprehended as perceptions without objects, but
instead, reveal themselves to be aberrations of the alingual, pre-
logical sphere of human existence.
5. The possibility as well as the meanings of hallucinations,
as phenomena of already transformed I-Allon, or sensory rela-
tions, are discoverable only when one has returned to the norms
of sensory experience and has reflected upon their lived themes
and structures. Here, phenomenology is the method of choice
because it allows those themes and structures to reveal them-
selves in their own language and typicalities, unencumbered by
the prior metaphysical commitments of the theoretician.
Space does not permit a detailed presentation and discus-
sion of all four of Dr. Straus' efforts at applying his unfolding
philosophical anthropology to the understanding of specific
psychopathological phenomena. However, aside from the just
completed representation of his attempts to comprehend the
possibility and meanings of hallucinations, I think that it might
be both illuminating and fruitful to characterize another of these
efforts, this time, his reflections upon the meanings of a partic-
ular psychopathological mode of being-in-the-world, i.e., The
Pathology of Compulsion (1938, English translation, 1966).
In the opening pages of The Pathology of Compulsion, Dr.
Straus once again characterizes the style of movement and
method that I have attempted to describe in an earlier section
of this paper. He states,

...we cannot simply begin our investigation of a special psychopathologi-

cal problem like compulsion at the usual level of conceptual specification.
Rather, we must first turn backward, away from special pathological prob-
lems to the general problems of normal psychical life. In doing so, patho-
logical manifestations may be useful in leading us to concealed questions.
Later, when we have secured fresh possibilities of understanding through
the solutions of such problems, we can return to special problems. (1966,
p. 297)

108
 Hence, in his discussion of "compulsion sickness,"' Dr.
Straus interrogates, as well as thematizes, the dialectical relations
of the pathological manifestations, i.e., the symptoms or expres-
sions of this transformed mode of being-in-the-world, and the
concealed, i.e., the lived and prethematically taken for granted,
characteristics of the norm. The major themes of his discussion
may be characterized as follows:
1. In the temporal unfolding of their lives, compulsive indi-
viduals manifest a striking transformation of the norm; there is
a breakdown of everyday historical existence. To be more speci-
fic, the lives of these people do not appear to be articulated by
the beginnings and endings of various projects or tasks. They
embark upon few, if any, new adventures; they avoid different
relationships or involvements. Experiences of satisfaction and
contentment, usually based upon the realization that some sig-
nificant project has been successfully completed, are typically
absent. The willingness to take a rest, or to interrupt one's work
and go off on a holiday, is also rare, if not totally non-existent.
For compulsive people, each day is essentially a continuance,
frequently a repetition, of yesterday's unfinished work. Correla-
tive to this lack of change or progress in their respective tasks,
their understandings of themselves, as well as their lives, remain
relatively fixed and static.
2. The difficulty, if not impossibility, of terminating and
hence letting go of some task or project shows itself to be based
upon an over-riding demand for perfection, for absolute, once
and for all, total completion. As a result, compulsive individuals,
in contrast to others who are frequently less gifted, rarely, if
ever, finish their projects. The areas, actually the battlefields, of
their performances, must be continually restricted. Sometimes,
an individual's lived demand for perfection is so insistent and
the obstacles in the path of realizing this necessity, not as an
ideal but as an actuality, are so numerous, that non-stop, frantic
activity, eventually leading to exhaustion, is a real danger.
3. In general, the lives of compulsive people reveal themselves

109
to be mercilessly driven and yet futile, perfectionistic struggles
against the "evil forces" of the world. What are these "evil forces"?
According to Dr. Straus, they are the never ending processes of
change, the unfoldings and transformations of life, the manifes-
tations of dying as they inevitably emerge among the living, the
forms and suggestions of decay as they continually appear in
various contexts of growth, and the eruption of divergence as it
invariably arises and defeats the demand for sameness and iden-
tity.
4. While the effectively functioning individual concerns him-
self with the future, with the positing and realization of desired
relationships and involvements, the compulsive person is so dis-
tracted by and attuned to these evil forces that he is chronically
preoccupied with efforts of warding them off. In the course of
his defensive maneuvers, he is constantly seized with and affect-
ed by their physiognomic power. Depending upon the particular
situation, he finds himself filled with and moved by diverse
shadings of terror, dread, repulsion and disgust. It should be
understood that these modes of being-affected occur in the im-
mediacy of sensory communication, not in the worldly concerns
of a disinterested, speculative observer. Face to face with and
caught up by the menacing, the ever-encroaching manifestations
of change, death, decay, divergence, etc., the individual is threat-
ened with potential congealment, with the imminent possibility
of being overwhelmed. There is no faith in the redemptive power
of the future; evil cannot be offset by good; sin will always over-
shadow penitence and atonement. Hence, in spite of an everpre-
sent sense of futility, the evil must be continually fought on ev-
ery front.
5. While we, in our everyday existence, live in the provisional,
in the tentative, the compulsive individual does not; evidently,
he cannot. While we, for the most part, trust ourselves and the
world, the compulsive individual dares not. If, in our becoming,
we do not fully grasp some significance now, we tend to trust
that it will reveal itself eventually. Even if we suspect that it
may not, we do not anticipate the end of the world. The com-
pulsive individual, on the other hand, cannot dwell in the in-
completeness, the uncertainty, of the present. In its ebb and flow,
in its instability, its ambigous references to both past and future,
it is too dangerous, it is hostile. While each of us realizes that we
cannot do everything at once, that we cannot say the final word

110
on this or that, once and for all, that we cannot grasp the whole
from all sides simultaneously, but can only come to understand
it through its emerging profiles, the compulsive individual de-
mands a total and final comprehension of that which is to be
done prior to taking any course of action. Thus, if he is to em-
bark upon some task, more typically, if he is drawn into some
task, he will first make endless attempts to convince himself that
he fully realizes its meanings, its consequences, and most impor-
tantly, its dangers. Unable to eradicate all doubts, he will then
attempt to analyze the task by dismembering it into the smallest
possible units or steps. Each must then be enacted according to
a precisely described, rigid schedule. In his efforts to carefully
monitor these actions, to ensure not only the perfect enactment
of each step, but also their exact conformance with the prescribed
sequence, or schedule, he often loses sight of the whole that is
to be realized. The discrete actions lose their meaning and foun-
dation and he no longer knows with certainty what he is doing,
or why. Othertimes, in the midst of performing one step, he
finds himself wondering whether or not he has possibly omitted
another one. He becomes confused and anxiously experiences
the situation as coming apart. The only way to relieve the dis-
tress is to go back to the beginning and start all over again.
6. When any of us embark upon some particular personal
project, we find and thereby situate ourselves in relation to the
general order of human values. As we attempt to actualize these
personally meaningful states of affairs, each of us is revealed,
both to himself and to others. In my own incarnated choices, I
illuminate and am illuminated in my particular convergences
and divergences with respect to that which is typically chosen
and enacted. In understanding and appropriating my projects
and their actions as mine, I realize that for some of them, at
least, there are no public, socially incontestable justifications.
My desires, my wants, the various states of affairs that I value,
all express me; their justifications, when such are called for, are
found to be embedded in and constitutive of the life that I am
living, the relationships and states of affairs that I am co-creat-
ing. The compulsive individual, on the other hand, does not ac-
cept this. For him, all actions, all desires, all values, must have a
public, socially incontestable justification. Hence, he may ap-
peal to a tradition that he is already living as beyond question,
or he may try to find his absolute truth in some theological dog-

111
ma, or he may refer to the secular law, which he insists must be
taken literally. Whatever his justification, the compulsive refuses
to consider or acknowledge that it too is founded, at least in
part, upon human desires and interests. He will not admit that it
too is perspectival and relative to the temporal, unfolding char-
acter of human becoming and understanding.
7. If one is able to conserve and yet surpass the immediate
physiognomic meanings that are revealed in the sensory order,
then one tends to rely primarily upon logical analyses and con-
sensually validated conceptions as one's tools for living. If, as is
the case with the compulsive, one is continually being seized
and threatened with congealment by the menacing physiogno-
mies of the Allon, then one's principle means of warding off
these evils and implementing one's projects tend to be magical.
When one cannot surpass the egocentric, sensory relation to the
Allon, where one has great difficulty in determining the mean-
ings of entities and situations beyond that which has been re-
vealed physiognomically, where it is problematic, if not impos-
sible, to establish the specific spatial and temporal locales, as
well as limits, of events, then magic becomes the proper mode
of response, perhaps the only mode of response.
In the foregoing characterizations and analyses of the major
themes of compulsive being-in-the-world, Dr. Straus has pointed
to its multi-level character, as well as to its particular divergence
from the norms of everyday living. To be more specific, through
reflection he has illuminated the structural - lateral as well as
vertical - interrelations of such diverse phenomena as the inabili-
ty to complete and let go of everyday life tasks and projects,
the obsessive and debilitating concern with perfection and the
attainment of absolutely final perspectives, the chronically dis-
tracting attunement to the possibilities of change, death, decay
and divergence, the vulnerability to being seized and congealed
by the immediate physiognomies of these possibilities and the
affective responses of terror, dread, repulsion and disgust which
they elicit, the constant appeal to ritualistic, magical behaviors
employed in an effort to ward off these possibilities, and the
abiding demand for impersonal, socially incontestable justifica-
tions, as well as rules, for living. Finally, Dr. Straus has attempted
to demonstrate how all of the phenomena that characterize the
compulsive mode of being-in-the-world can be grasped, at their
most general level of meaning, as expressions of a profound

112
transformation of the individual's sympathetic modes of com-
munication with the Allon, i.e., as a breakdown of personal
becoming as it is founded upon one's unfolding sensory relations
to the world.

1'he General Implications of Dr. Straus' Philosophical Anthro-

pology for the Achievement of a Genuinely Psychological Psy-
chopathology
As has been suggested earlier, Dr. Straus believed that all
efforts at comprehending the general, as well as the particular,
meanings of psychopathology must involve a simultaneous, if
not a prior, thematization of the norms, or axioms, of everyday
life. He supported this belief with numerous demonstrations of
the ways in which various psychopathological phenomena, e.g.,
hallucinations, delusions, compulsions, etc., invariably referred
back to these norms and that in so doing, they constituted es-
sential, as well as fundamental, transformations of them.
In realizing that psychopathological phenomena can only be
comprehended as manifestations, or expressions, of fundamen-
tally altered modes of being-in-the-world, Dr. Straus insisted
that they could not be adequately characterized in terms of
hypothetical intrapsychic or physiological processes that come
to reveal themselves in what is an otherwise universally shared
world whose meanings are known beforehand. Rather, each
form of psychopathology is an ongoing process of co-constitut-
ing a particular type of world; each is a family of projects or
styles of the world where one cannot analyze and quantitatively
isolate the respective contributions of the individual, on the one
hand, and the so-called external world, on the other. Further,
the presence of a particular psychopathological phenomenon,
such as an hallucination, or a compulsion, or a phobia, must not
be grasped as a mere addition to an otherwise normally function-
ing individual. The subject of psychopathology is the individual's s
existence as such, i.e., his dialectically interrelated and mutually
implicative experiences, responses and projects of the world.
Hence, the presence of one or more psychopathological phenom-
ena means that the whole existence is transformed; the indivi-
dual's relations with the world must be seen and understood in
their structural, rather than their elemental, or additive, mean-
ings.

113
 According to Dr. Straus, psychopathology is, in one way or
another, a transformation of human becoming, ultimately a dis-
tortion or deformation of the unfolding I-Allon relation. The
following excerpts from The Pathology of Compulsion as well
as Disorders of Personal Time in Depressive States should make
this quite clear.

Because the sympathetic ties with his own past and future self are derang-
ed, because he is not integral with the doer whose deeds after all belong to
the past or future, such thoughts (obsessions) are interminable. (1966,
p. 320)
The loss of sympathetic contact with his own development removes the
patient from a temporal perspective. (1966, p. 320-321)
The symptoms of compulsion belong to historical time and are expressive
of a disturbance of personal becoming. (1966, p. 320-321)
In other words, we live and we experience in a state of becoming.... With-
in the developing whole of our life history, we experience our existence in
each moment as growing or shrinking, advancing or standing still.... The
patients who speak about the future - which they are unable to envisage -
or the past - which is far remote - refer to disorders in personal time.
Thereby, they call our attention to the pathology of becoming.... With a
standstill of becoming, future is rendered inaccessible. We do not proceed
more toward the future. The Now loses its position between "not yet"
any
and "no longer". The present is no longer a continuation of the past; the
morning does not grow into noon and the evening. The context and con-
tinuity of time crumbles. (1966, pp. 292-293)

Perhaps the most important implication of Dr. Straus'

thought for the project of achieving a genuinely psychological
psychopathology is its abiding injunction to approach psycho-
pathological phenomena, as well as the norms of which they are
transformations, in a manner that respects and thereby fully
illuminates their lived meanings. As Dr. Straus himself both re-
alized and enacted, it is only a phenomenological approach, one
that avoids a priori characterizations of man as a mind, or a
psyche, somehow appended onto a body, or as a skin encapsu-
lated organism somehow located in an external world, that can
even hope to achieve this goal.

114
 REFERENCES

Straus, E., Phenomenology of hallucinations (1962). In Phenomenological

Psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1966, 277-289.
, Disorders of personal time in depressive states (1947). In Phe-
nomenological Psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1966, 290-295.
, The pathology of compulsion (1938). In Phenomenological Psycho-
logy. New York: Basic Books, 1966, 296-329.
, Pseudoreversibility of catatonic stupor (1955). In Phenomenologi-
cal Psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1966, 330-339.
, Psychiatry and philosophy. In Psychiatry and Philosophy (E. Straus,
M. Natanson & H. Ey, eds.). New York: Springer Verlag, 1969, 1-83
, The upright posture. In Phenomenological Psychology. New York:
Basic Books, 1966, 137-165
, Born to see, bound to behold. Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie, 27e Jaar-
gang, Nummer 4, 1965, 659-688
, The forms of spatiality (1930). In Phenomenological Psychology.
New York: Basic Books, 1966, 3-37
, Lived movement (1935-1936). In Phenomenological Psychology.
New York: Basic Books, 1966, 38-58
, The spectrum of the senses (1963). In The Primary World of Senses.
Glencoe: The Free Press, 1963, 367-379
, Unitarian Symposium No. 4, 1960, p. 5
, Norm and pathology of I-World relations (1961). In Phenomeno-
logical Psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1966, 255-276
Speigelberg, H. Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1972.

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