Craig (1988) An Encounter With Medard Boss

An Encounter with Medard Boss
Erik Craig
The following encounter with Professor Dr. Medard Boss,1 was re-
corded in two parts on the sixth and tenth of August in 1986 at his home in
Zollikon, Switzerland. Hoping Dr. Boss would be willing to offer personal,
historical and philosophical perspectives which were not readily available
to American psychologists, I had written him from the States some weeks
previously to ask if he would consent to an interview for an article on daseins-
analysis. However, it was not until I was already in Zurich for a European
Congress on Humanistic Psychology that I received his answer directly over
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
the phone. Dr. Boss had just returned from his vacation a mere two hours
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
previously and had barely had a chance to open my letter of the previous
month. The temper of his husky voice told me he was still quite weary from
his journey and I was immediately reminded he was no longer a young man
but a person who was solidly into his ninth decade of life and who had un-
dergone surgery the previous year. Given his apparent weariness I was
surprised when Dr. Boss warmly consented to meet at eleven in the morn-
ing, two days hence.
I had planned the interview around a few questions focusing on Dr.
Boss's own life and work as well as on his current perceptions of dasein-
sanalysis in general. As our actual meeting unfolded, however, I became
much more actively involved than anticipated. The combination of our un-
familiarity with one anotherand with the situation, my own enthusiasm about
ourmectingand Dr. Boss's "jet lag" heightened my nervousness and activity,
at times to the point of being intrusive. At one juncture, for example, I found
myself suddenly asking a whole sequence of pedantic questions about the
attitudes and behaviors of the daseinsanalytic therapist. Nevertheless, Dr.
Boss responded kindly and generously to these and other questions and when
our meeting ended I felt quite pleased with the outcome. Later, however, a
more critical review of the recording starkly revealed how little opportunity
my questions had provided for Dr. Boss to explore those thoughts and ideas
of his own which he might have wanted to share with American colleagues
in humanistic psychology. As a result, I called Dr. Boss a few days later to
ask if he would consent to a more open-ended interview which would not be
limited by the structure of predetermined questions. Again, he cordially of-
fered to meet the following day.
Both of the interviews which follow were conducted in English and tape
recorded in their entirety. In presenting the interviews here, considerable ef-
fort has been made to preserve the feeling of spontaneity and dialogue
throughout. Frequent references to non-verbal aspects of the exchange have
been included, particularly in the footnotes. In addition, the encounters have
been framed with first person descriptions to provide a more vivid impres-
An Encounter with Medard Boss 25
sion of the human context and of Dr. Boss's own special presence as a man.
Finally, a number of supplementary footnotes have been included to provide,
especially for readers new to daseinsanalysis, a richer context for under-
standing Professor Boss's thinking. Although these notes may be ap-
preciated by many readers, the text of the encounters themselves can do very
nicely without them.
Wednesday, August 6,1986
ZoIIikon, Switzerland
I arrived at 53 Bahnhofstrasse at eleven in the morning for my appoint-
ment with Professor Medard Boss. As I walked through the small garden in
front of his home I found it hard to believe that I was actually about to meet
this man whose written works had been such a constant source of guidance
and inspiration in my study, teaching and practice of psychotherapy. Some-

what nervously, I approached the front door where a shiny brass plate an-
nounced Dr. Boss's residence and practice. I paused briefly, pressed the
doorbell and waited. Very shortly Dr. Boss responded over the intercom,
inviting me to wait until I heard the buzzer and then to open the door and to
proceed directly upstairs to the waiting room.
Immediately upon entering his home I was struck by the care which was
given to every detail of design and decor. The modest foyer, hallways and
rooms conveyed a sense of openness, enhanced by tastefully carpeted floors
and white walls graced by the works of accomplished artists. Human themes
quietly prevailed. A lovely painting by Chagall especially caught my eye as
I turned to go up the stairs. I found my way to the waiting room where I was
welcomed by a delightful Miro print, a classic portrait of Freud, and two
large photographs of Martin Heidegger, one including Dr. Boss himself. I
barely had time to put my things down when Dr. Boss came out of his office
to introduce himself. Like his home, he was modestly built and fastidious.
His wavy gray hair was combed straight back with a hint of a part on the
right. He wore a tailored light blue long sleeved sport shirt, open at the col-
lar, and grey slacks. His face seemed much softer than I'd imagined from
the photographs I'd seen on the dust jackets of his books. Though he was
apparently still somewhat worn from his journey, his composure was steady
and unaffected; his movement sensitive and subdued; his voice gentle:
"Please come into my office."
Dr Boss's ofGce, too, was a modest room, though with a wide picture
window opening out to a magnificent view of Lake Zurich, cradled in
forested foothills within the gaze of mighty Alps. A large desk covered with
papers and piles of books sat in front of the window. Lying silently against
the wall at the far end of the room was a simple, well-worn couch with a
single pillow. Behind the head of the couch, tucked in the corner, was a plain
leather swivel chair: obviously Dr. Boss's analytic home. Towards the cen-
ter of the room close to the bookcases on the left wall there was a round cof-
26 Erik Craig
fee table and, next to it, a sturdy-looking lounge chair with green leather
upholstery and hand-carved wooden arms. As we walked into his office,
Professor Boss stepped over to this lounge chair, placed both hands on its
back and, turning to me, said in a firm, though soft, kind voice, "This is your
seat." With this single gesture, I felt an immediate and palpable sense of
warmth and safety. Dr. Boss then walked around the coffee table and sat in
his own chair at the head of the couch. Comfortably reclined, Professor Boss
asked directly, "How can I help you?"
I briefly described the article on which I was working and my hope that
it might serve to acquaint humanistic psychologists in America with his own
work in psychology and psychotherapy and with the present standing of
daseinsanalysis in general. He noted that this would be very difficult as "one
cannot learn about this whole way of seeing just by reading but one must live
this." I acknowledged this difficulty and asked if, in spite of this, he would
be willing to respond to some questions I had prepared and if he would mind
if I tape-recorded our conversation. He responded simply: "Why not?"
The ensuing dialogue went as follows:
Erik Craig: I wondered if you would begin our discussion by giving a
brief description of what you see as the essence of daseinsanalytic
psychotherapy. What distinguishes it from the other approaches?
Professor Medard Boss: The daseinsanalytic approach is the opposite,
just the opposite, way of going toward and receiving things in comparison
with metaphysical or natural scientific ways of looking. It was Freud who
stated it for the whole past way of thinking when he wrote that he was not
so much interested in the phenomena themselves, as they showed themsel-
ves, but rather in what he inferred about the kinds of forces which were work-
ing behind these immediately given phenomena. This old way of looking at
things is a human-centered^ way, meaning that the human mind is supposed
to make up the significances and give things their significances by looking
for and revealing the forces which are working behind the things themsel-
ves so that these forces may be reckoned with. In this way, the significances
of things are manufactured or construed by human beings and so they think
that they are the "all-makers" of things. Whereas the daseinsanalytic ap-
proach is a phenomenological approach. That means that this approach stays
and remains with what shows itself to us. With the daseinsanalytic approach
we are staying with the immediately given phenomena which disclose them-
selves to us. In fact, human existence is thought to be just this: engaged and
existing only for giving things room and light so that they can come to their
being.
Craig: So what distinguishes the daseinsanalytic psychotherapist is his
or her emphasis on hearing and seeing the things themselves, allowing these
things to appear as the things they are. How does this help to distinguish the
actual therapeutic process or therapeutic meeting?
Boss: Well, if you think of human existence, and in particular of the
human existence of the therapist, you see that we exist as the openness and
the light (Boss chuckles faintly here)5 which is required to help things, in-
cluding other human beings, to come into their being. This, then, gives the
aim and the goal for therapy. For human existence is absolutely necessary
in order for something to be and to reveal itself. Without human beings the
words "is" and "to be" lose their meaning and don't signify anything any
more because being is revealing, is showing. So human existence, as this
human world-openness, is a necessary precondition for things to appear. As
human beings we are engaged to function as this precondition so that any-
thing can show itself and call upon us. We then have to try to allow that
which appears to us to come to its own best fullness. And that's the main
aim also of psychotherapy. And so, as a therapist you are primarily the hear-
ing and the seeing, or the openness, which is called forth to allow things to
develop.
Craig: This is a radically different way of seeing the therapeutic
relationship in comparison with Freud, for instance, who conceived of it as
two persons existing opposite one another as two separate entities, two
separate "psychic boxes", so to speak.
Boss: Yes, yes, it is completely different: there is no separateness be-
tween persons in daseinsanalysis. There is this unity, inseparable, in-
divisible. Ja, not to be separated, not to be divided: a unity of that which
reveals itself and the human existence which gives the light and the open-
ness into which something can reveal itself. This is the unity and there is
also this unity between the psychotherapist and the patient. So you first have
to lend yourself and to be used for the other person to reveal himself. Be-
cause without this openness and light, how could any being be? Something
can be only if there is a realm, an open realm, an understanding realm into
which it can be developed.
However, in order to see things like this you have to exercise your think-
ing until you have got it. It took me years. And I also had personal help from
Martin Heidegger himself - for about twenty five years until he died. But it
took meyears of trying to exercise this way, to turn around my mind and to
see things anew, but once I got it, my therapeutic work seemed to me to be
mere holiday.
Craig: (laughing) I'm reminded of the case of the patient who taught
you "to see and think differently" from Psychoanalysis and daseinsanalysis.
It seems you were beginning to change your way of thinking at the time.
Did you have Heidegger's help through this period?
Boss: Yes. He always came here and gave the seminars. There is just
now a book in preparation to come out in German. It's called the Martin
Heidegger - Zollikoner Seminares and in it there are about twenty seminars
he gave here in this house as well as discussions I had personally with
Heidegger and then excerpts of over a hundred letters he wrote me. But that
will only appear next year.
28 Erik Craig
Anyway, I met Heidegger for the first time in 1947 at his hut in the
Black Forest. But then, as time went on, I thought it not correct that only I
enjoyed his personal help. So I started to have seminars here for my friends,
my colleagues, my disciples. Always fifty to seventy people came when he
came here once, twice or three times every term. At that time, I was very
often away in other countries, in the Far East or in South America but, ex-
cept for those breaks, he continued the seminars here. And therefore I had
personal help from Martin Heidegger, for instance for this book Existential
Foundations of Medicine and Psychology. He helped me from the start for
about eight years.9
There was a problem, of course, with the translation of this book into
English. It's quite impossible to translate such a book correctly, really cor-
rectly, because of the differences of the languages. In English as in French,

for example, language is based much more on substantives whereas in the

German and Greek languages there is a much greater emphasis on verbs.
Craig: Well, now you have actually begun to answer another question
I had. I wonder if it is possible to give a brief "inside history" of the develop-
ment of daseinsanalysis similar to Freud's autobiographical account of
psychoanalysis. Is it possible to give a personal history of the development
of daseinsanalysis from the "inside?"
Boss: From the inside? (chuckling)
Craig: Yes, autobiographical.
Boss: You mean just now?
Craig: Yes.
Boss: Well, the simple reason why I looked for another basis of my
work and my thinking was that the natural scientific way in which I was
trained didn't give me a real foundation for the work I encountered with my
patients. Therefore I went to look for another basis. I even went to India and
stayed in some monasteries with so called wise men. There I found an ap-
proach which was not only different from the natural sciences but also inter-
estingly close to what I had already learned from Heidegger. When I came
back to Europe he and I talked together about what I had found. So these are
my two wellsprings, so to speak, which flowed together for the real founda-
tion of my way of thinking. And then I had the luck, too, that Martin Heideg-
ger and I got to be close friends and I had a lot of opportunity to discuss these
things with him. But the reason why I originally started to look for another
basis was that the old ones proved to be insufficient for me to understand my
patients and their symptoms. It's very simple.
Craig: When did you go to India?
Boss: I went to India the first time in 1956 but, before that, I had in-
struction by an Indian philosopher here, who studied in the Jungian In-
stitute (chuckling again). He taught me the Hindi language so that I could
speak with people in India. And then I went there for half a year in 1956 and
in 1958.
Misskirch, 1963
3. Martin Heidegger and Medard Boss on the "Feldweg"
in the Kashmir Valley

4. Swami Govinda Kaul, Boss's teacher in India
Craig: So your engagement with Heidegger and your early works on

dreams and sexual perversions preceded your trips to India. Is that cor-
rect?
Boss: Yes, I was engaged with Heidegger when I went to India. There-
fore I was very cautious and taught myself always to keep in mind that I
wouldn't project Heidegger into the Indian thinking. That was always before
my mind. But while in India I met one very unusual man. I was over-
whelmed by this man's humanity, his absolute quietness. His whole de-
meanor shone of a kind of sovereignty, like that of an ancient king. The
greatness behind his eyes and his facial expressions was surprising. But at
the same time all his gestures were extremely modest and humble. Before
meeting this man I had never seen such a greatness in this way. He was not
famously known in the world, but in India he was a saint. And, incidental-
ly, in India there is no difference between intelligence and saintliness.

Anyway when I returned from these trips I wrote a book about a psychiatrist's
journey to India.
Craig: The influence of Heidegger on your thinking and work is much
more well known than the influence of these journeys to India. Could you
say how it was specifically that these trips influenced you?
Boss: No, I don't think you can distinguish the two influences. They
are much too similar. That was my greatest experience in India: that I heard
people, philosophers, more than only philosophers or intellectually devel-
oped men, but wise men, using the same words and phrases that I had heard
from Heidegger here.
Craig: So Heidegger's thinking and your experiences in India opened
you to almost the same language.
Boss: Yes.
Craig: Could you say something about the similarities that struck you
most?
Boss: Well, mainly, in this opposition against the European way of
thinking, the Western way of thinking, that is, the human centeredness of
our thinking, starting always from the human mind and the human being. In
Heidegger and in India, there is, instead, the light and the openness which is
behind and before humanity and human existence. This is just a turning
around of our entire way of thinking.
Craig: You have written a brief autobiographical article in a German
book entitled Psychotherapie in Selbstdarstellungen.16 I wondered if you
would be willing to share some of things which you discuss there.
Boss: Well, I would have to read it. (Boss gestures to this book on his
bookshelf and I hand it to him.) Let's see... (After some reading, Boss looks
up inquiringly) What shall I do with this?1
Craig: Well, one story which I heard was about your early desire to be
an artist and how you decided to become a doctor instead.
Boss: Yes, yes, yes. Well, I don't know, I tried, I thought I would like
32 Erik Craig
to be a painter and had some talents painting but my father cured me of this
idea. He took me to Germany, to the great galleries, especially in Munich,
to the Pinacothek, where Miro, Titian, Rubens and Raphael and all these
masters were with their pictures. And this convinced me that I would never
attain half of their work so that I returned and decided instead to become a
doctor.
Craig: Did your father know that this might happen?
Boss: Yes, he knew that I tried to learn the art of painting with some
masters, but he thought it was a completely breadless job and therefore he
tried to dissuade me from painting and he cured me by taking me to this gal-
lery.
Craig: So, he cured you! (laughing)
Boss: Yes, (chuckling) he cured me of this idea. Ja, and successfully.

Craig: Not much is known about your work with Freud, either.
Boss: Ja, I'm one of the fossils still living who started his training in
analysis with Freud himself. It was in 1925 in Vienna when I was a medi-
cal student there for almost a year. He, Freud, was one of the three men in
the world who had what I call Leuchtende Augen, fiery eyes...
Craig: Fiery eyes! (laughing)1
Boss: And ahh... he was good enough to take me in analysis. Freud was
already sick with his cancer. He had come out of the hospital but during my
time in Vienna he took me as often as possible. He was very kind with me
and I noticed that he didn't treat me according to those old written technical
procedures. For instance, my father wouldn't have paid any fee for an
analysis, such a silly thing, therefore I had to pay for it out of the money my
father gave me for eating and very often I was hungry during the analytical
hour and my stomach made some rumours and Freud diagnosed hunger.
And he very often gave me a couple of shillings when I left so that I could
eat something. That's not what he has written about the handling of the trans-
ference but it's a fact he was very human.
Craig: Did he say something to you about giving you these shillings?
Boss: No, no - it was a very natural thing. He said, he didn't want me
to be so hungry and, to take these shillings. But that's all. He didn't explain
it theoretically.
Craig: So he just accepted it as a part of the human being-together.
This reminds me of the question of intervening versus anticipatory care in
psychotherapy. I was aware, for example, in reading the case I mentioned
earlier of the psychiatrist who was your patient and who taught you to see
and think differently, that you behaved in a manner which you would call
intervening care and which psychoanalysts would refer to as gratifying the
needs of the patient. On one occasion, for instance, you went to the patient's
home because she was in danger of committing suicide and, before this, you
actually fed her with a bottle and these are...
Boss: But these are not usual ways I do psychotherapy. This was an
An Encounter with Medard Boss . 33
exceptional case. This was not a neurosis, a psychoneurosis, but, rather, a

real schizophrenic psychosis and with such individuals you have to take on
a completely different method of treatment. But you shouldn't generalize
from this - it's unique to these kinds of patients.
Craig: How does a therapist decide, then, when to be more active, or
intervening? Are there some principles or is there a principle that you would
teach your students?20
Boss: Yes: that you can't, let's say, charge or ask more of a patient than
he or she can bear and that you have to feel it in your fingertips. You try to
give or do no more for a patient than is absolutely necessary: thepatient has
to be responsible the whole way, if possible, if possible. But not all patients
are able to be as adult or mature as is necessary in order to handle a really
orthodox patient-doctor relationship. The psychoanalytic treatment which

Freud developed already demands quite a high degree of maturing and if you
come across or have to do with psychotic or borderline cases then you have
to change your way of behaving in the relationship.
Craig: Would you also include melancholic in these exceptions?
Boss: Yes, also melancholic. You can't have a melancholic just lie
here (gesturing to his couch) and have the ordinary, orthodox way of treat-
ment. You see I have a couch also! I'm not treating patients any more but
future analysts. But when I still had many patients, most of them, by far,
were lying on this couch in a typical, externally seen, typical Freudian ar-
rangement.
Craig: Yes, I see that. There must be times, though, when certain
patients can't tolerate this situation. Do you permit them to sit up or walk
around?
Boss: Yes... but patients, they themselves try to go back to the couch.
I leave this whole room to my patients - at their disposal. Nevertheless, I
say the best way for you to come to know yourself and develop what you
really are is this way of being there on the couch for yourself, independent
of me. There, you're not influenced by my facial expressions, my gestures
and so on. But it's not an absolute law. If you feel like lying on the floor or
standing on your head, you may do so but what the limits are is my skin.
Craig: The limit is your skin.
Boss: Is my skin. Ja, ja.
Craig: So to do physical harm to you or to embrace you is outside the
limits.
Boss: Ja, ja. I explain to them why: because I'm only a human being
too and if I would allow you to handle me physically like this then I would
lose my complete freedom in a relationship with you and it would no longer
be possible to help you to acquire your own freedom. So these are the limits.
Handshakes, nevertheless are not unusual with me. There may be handshak-
ing coming and leaving, but not embracing.
Craig: You said the room is at their disposal? What if a patient is
34 Erik Craig
furious at you and wants to throw all your books off the top of your desk?
Boss: Yes, uh, I try to tell them that they have to pay for any damage.
Craig: So, they are free - but they must be responsible!
Boss: Yes, so that doesn't happen.
Craig: Coming back to your work with Heidegger, have your own
views of this work changed at all in recent years? For example, are there
ways that you have developed in contrast to Heidegger? How have you ex-
tended, modified or been critical of his work?
Boss: No, looking back, I can't criticize or modify Heidegger. I always
come back to him and find myself seeing and thinking that he has gone as
far as possible on those paths along which we can think. Sometimes I think
he went farther than I could follow, that I've not yet reached his limits.
Craig: But you clearly took his work into an area that he did not have
the opportunity or time to develop.

Boss: That's true, he knew nothing about psychotherapy. I had forced
him (Boss laughs and points upstairs) up in the room where he lived and slept
and studied, forced him to read some works by Freud. He hadn't read any-
thing of Freud's. So he was shaking like that. (Boss smirks and mimics
Heidegger's head shaking with comical imitation) He couldn't believe that
such an intelligent man could write such stupid things, such fantastic hypo-
thetical things, about men and women.
Craig: Your comment about the three men who had "fiery eyes" just
came back to me. Was Heidegger one of them?
Boss: Heidegger was one, ja, Freud, another one, and the third one was
this wise man in India. His name was Swami Govinda Kaul, and this was
the man who influenced me most in India. I tried out several of them.
Craig: So you did the same thing in India that you did in Europe? In
Europe you studied with Freud and then Jones, Horney, Sachs, Fennichel,
and Goldstein and so forth.
Boss: And C. G. Jung also.
Craig: Could you say something about these "psychoanalytic years?"
Boss: Well, as I said, I began my training in psychoanalysis in Vienna
with Freud where I had some analytical sessions with him. It was 1925 and
Freud was already very sick and had just come out of the hospital from an
operation on his cancer. So our hours were limited. Anyhow, I was there
for at least thirty hours with Freud until I had to return to Switzerland. I then
continued my classical training in analysis with another true Freudian. His
name was Hans Behn-Eschenburg. I also studied during this time with
Eugen Bleuler at the Burgholzli psychiatric hospital here in Zurich.
Craig: How did you happen to meet all of these other psychoanalysts?
Boss: Oh, well, after my medical studies I went to Berlin to study at the
Psychoanalytic Institute there. Karen Homey was my own training and su-
pervisory analyst and also the analyst of my wife. I was also taught and su-
pervised by Otto Fennichel, Harald Sachs and Hans Schultz-Hencke.
Craig: What about Reich and Goldstein?

Boss: Yes, Wilhelm Reich was also a teacher of mine at the Institute
and, during this same time, I worked with Kurt Goldstein as an assistant in
his clinic, though, of course, Goldstein was not psychoanalytic. Then, later
I was in England for six months at their National Hospital for Nervous Dis-
eases in London. While there I had weekly hours with Ernest Jones. He met
all of the incoming patients who were candidates for psychoanalysis at the
English Institute. He was the first to see them and judge whether analysis
was appropriate and he always took me with him to these meetings.
Craig: And when you returned to Switzerland didn't you work with
Gustav Bally and Manfred Bleuler?
Boss: Yes, yes. The government engaged us to be the analytic teachers
of the psychiatric assistants at the Burgholzli. Actually, it was Manfred

Bleuler's father, Eugen Bleuler, who was the man I studied with first, even
before I went to Berlin and London, who engaged Bally and myself to do the
teaching at the Burgholzli.
Craig: And how did you meet Jung?
Boss: I was in workshops for ten years with Jung also here in Zurich.
He lived very close to here. I was in private practice in the mid-thirties and
at that time Jung had developed an extensive following of women and non-
medical men. He wanted a successor to carry on his work and sought this
in a medical man. He had one who was called Meier and another who was
called Fierz. But Fierz had died long before and, though Meier was still his
successor Jung sought some younger followers. So he gathered a half dozen
or so promising young male physicians and psychiatrists who were practic-
ing near Zurich at the time. Jung thought these six or so psychotherapists
would be the best ones in the work he wanted to teach and he had regular
workshops with them. Every fortnight we came together at his place in Kus-
nacht near Zurich and he offered us descriptions of his patients and told us
how he regarded them. So he hoped he would convert someone of us to his
psychology.
Craig: Uh, ha! (chuckling)
Boss: He did so for ten years but at the end of this ten years he had to
state that not one of us was converted, (chuckling) But about this time he fell
ill and these workshops stopped. But, anyhow, these were ten years of close
relationship with Jung. But about this time I met Heidegger and saw that
Heidiegger was much more the way I am built. And, soon after, my book
on the sexual perversions appeared and Jung was very wild with me because
in this book on perversions I didn't mention Jung as the ultimate flower of
the development of psychoanalysis...
Craig: (laughing)
Boss: ...but instead wrote something about Martin Heidegger whom I
had met in the meantime. And, uh, later Jung quieted down and was nice
with me again. In fact, when he died some years later, I was the only one at
36 Erik Craig
the world conference of psychiatry in Montreal who knew Jung personally
and was asked to say something on the occasion of his death.
Craig: So you have always maintained a certain loyalty to psycho-
analysis.
Boss: Yes, of course. I entered the psychoanalytic society in Switzer-
land many years ago and became, at the same time a member of the Interna-
tional Psychoanalytic Association. Even as a young man I was immediate-
ly accepted as a full member of the Society and eventually became a board
member of the national society. And I have remained true to the society be-
cause I am so grateful for what Freud had done for me and because I couldn't
have become a daseinsanalyst without what Freud had taught me. And, uh,
these people are rather tolerant so I was never thrown out and am still a mem-
ber of the national society.

Craig: (chuckling) Well, I have four more questions. The first is, how
do you now see the future of daseinsanalysis? What are some of its most
immediate challenges and where do you hope to see it go in the future?
Boss: Oh, I hope that people feel first or see something like you have,
for instance, in the way that you have been impressed by the width and
breadth of this way of approaching things. But I, (chuckling)... I don't think
about the future of daseinsanalysis. It's completely stupid because you can't
make such a future. If it's something worthwhile, it will grow and remain;
or it may die. But it depends on the daseinsanalysts and on the recipients.
There may come a time when the people will not be open to the meaning of
what daseinsanalysis or of what Martin Heidegger has found, has seen, has
discovered. Maybe their minds will be closed or maybe they will grow even
more open. That doesn't depend on me. I did what I could to tell it, to hand
on what I had received from Heidegger, but daseinsanalysis has its own fu-
ture now, its own fate.
Craig: Yes. This reminds me of Heidegger's conviction that you don't
go to the future, it...
Boss: It comes to you (chuckling). Ja, ja. So, daseinsanalysis now has
to make its own way. I have grown an old man and shall die, but there is the
Daseinsanalytic Institute in Zurich and there is Condrau and Hicklin and
Kastrinidis and these people. There is an association now in San Paulo, in
Jerusalem and in India and so on.
Craig: Do you see particular areas of work that need to be taken up by
daseinsanalysis?
Boss: Areas?
Craig: Yes, ah... rooms...
Boss: Well, naturally I was concerned mainly with applications of the
daseinsanalytic way of thinking to psychotherapy but there are other areas,
for instance, art. In fact, there have already been some applications of the
daseinsanalytic way of thinking to art, for example, to Paul Klee's paintings
by a student of mine. So that's also possible.
Craig: I also understand there was a conference on the daseinsanalytic

thinking about ecology.
Boss: Oh, ja, ja, jawohl... (then smiling widely) Ecology is made out of
people too! And that influences nature also. And daseinsanalysis is also
able to give a basis of thinking and seeing things for sociology and ecology
and everything with which a human being has something to do. If you
change human beings and their relationship to the world, then you change
also all their theories and their sciences.
Craig: Their ways of understanding the world?
Boss: Yes, their ways of understanding - there are different ways of un-
derstanding. And Heidegger described these two ways of thinking. The one
is that which governs our present time, that is, the reckoning, measuring or
statistical kind of thinking. And this reckoning approach, or the natural

scientific way of thinking, takes as really real only that which can be reck-
oned or counted. The other way, Heidegger's way of thinking, of fundamen-
tally thinking, he describes in his German words, Besinnliches Denken. This
is not easy to translate but it means considering or looking at, contemplat-
ing more in the sense of just opening your eyes so that all the meaningful-
ness which belongs to or which makes up a certain thing, may reveal itself,
may show itself to you and so that you may perceive it and understand its
deepest essence. So that's the Besinnliches Denken. And that's complete-
ly different from the technical, reckoning way of thinking. (The phone
rings for Dr. Boss. He answers, speaks a few words in German and then
hangs up). Well, I am called.
Craig: I guess there were just two more things I wanted to ask quick-
ly. One is what would you say your most important contributions have been
to psychology and psychotherapy and, second, is there any project that you
are now still particularly fascinated with?
Boss: (chuckles a bit) Well, I'm only fascinated about what the world
is and what human existence is and humankind's relationship and pos-
sibilities of relating with the world. That's what keeps my interest awakened
and I have to go on thinking about it. But the other question?
Craig: What do you see as your most important contributions to
psychology and psychotherapy?
Boss: Well in my realm of interest it's naturally that daseinsanalysis is
able to give psychotherapy a direction and a meaning because it belongs to
the basic talents or the basic characteristics of human existence to be, to exist
as this openness and this understanding so that things which have to be,
can be.
Craig: And you see your main contribution as having allowed psycho-
therapists, through a Daseinsanaytic approach, to permit things to appear as
the very things they are.
Boss: Ja, yes, and keep to these things without developing and hiding
behind theories.
38 Erik Craig
Interim
As I left Dr. Boss's home I was pleased that Dr. Boss had so kindly
responded to the particular structure of this interview. I also felt grateful for
this opportunity to encounter personally the man whose work had come to
mean so much to me over the last decade. Ironically, however, as mentioned
in the prologue to this article, when I reviewed more critically the recording
I had made of our meeting, I felt dissatisfied with the limitations which the
narrowness of my questions had imposed on Professor Boss. Three days
later, therefore, after returning from a long morning hike around a high ridge
in the mountains just south of St. Moritz, I called to thank Dr. Boss for his
already generous and hospitable response and to ask if he would consent to
another interview in which I would leave the time open for him to discuss
whatever he felt was most essential to share with his American colleagues
in humanistic psychology. He immediately and graciously agreed: "Of
course," he said, "I am happy to do whatever I can for my colleagues."
Sunday, August 10,1986

Zollikon, Switzerland
When I arrived the following morning Professor Boss had obviously
recovered from his travels. Though the solid stillness of his being remained
quite evident, his eyes had a new sparkle and he was spirited, refreshed and
full of kindly humor. This time, he met me at the head of the stairs outside
his office. He was wearing khaki pants and a white Lizotte sportshirt. I was
amazed at the change in the four days since our first meeting. It became ob-
vious, too, that we were now much more familiar with the situation and one
another. During the entire first half of the meeting Professor Boss sat con-
fidently perched on the edge of his chair. Resting his arms comfortably
across his chest, he spoke the essentials of daseinsanalysis with uninterrupted
enthusiasm. Only toward the end of the hour did he once again slide back
into his chair, though even then his interest and ardor remained undimmed.
This is how we began:
Craig: I would like to leave this time free today for you to share
whatever you would like with your American colleagues, and, in particular,
with your colleagues in humanistic psychology. What do you think is most
essential, from a daseinsanaly tic point of view, for us to think about and to
understand?
Boss: Well I think that there is no other psychology but humanistic
psychology. What we call "psychology" of the animals and so on, that's
anthropomorphizing of the animals and has nothing really to do with what
is psychology. All I can tell you is to repeat that I had to try to find some
other understanding, a different understanding, than what I was taught here
by my medical, psychological and psychiatric studies in Europe. What I was
told in these disciplines didn't satisfy the needs that I thought should be ful-
5. Medard Boss in "Heidegger's chair" in the Zollikon seminar room, August 10,1965
40 Erik Craig
filled as prerequisites of psychotherapeutic practice, and I owed it to my

patients to have a sounder foundation of my understanding in order to help
them, really. So it was my patients who forced me to go beyond what our
psychology had taught. And even now, recent developments in systems
theories and in brain research seem inadequate as a foundation for under-
standing human existence. For instance, the well known brain researcher Sir
John Eccles stated that it seems as if brain research and psychology are com-
ing closer and closer to each other but I think this is a big error. You can
never, for instance, see and understand how a so-called engram in the brain
cells can encapsulate, whether in an electrical or in a molecular way, what
we see and hear. You cannot see how, out of the molecular situation in the
brain cells of the hindbrain, how any such thing as a memory could ever
arise. It's impossible to understand, for instance, how out of a brain system
such a memory as of, for instance, a Christmas tree you have experienced as
a child, could develop and emerge. There remains a gap between neurology
and human consciousness, between biology andmeaning, and this gap shows
that the natural scientific ways of research jdannot give us a real basis for un-
derstanding human beings.
So I had to start anew, completely anew. On the one side I went into
the Black Forest of Germany to be taught by Martin Heidegger as a German
philosopher and, at the same time, I went also far into India, to be taught by
the old and wise men of that country. The Indians have thought about
humanity, about man and his existence in an unbroken chain of many
thousands of years. Whereas, in the West, there was the Christian faith or
the Christian religion which appeared and told people what human beings
are and what they are supposed to do and, therefore, no new foundation or
basic thinking was necessary because the basis was given. That's the reason
why I thought the Indian might come closer to the facts of what the human
being really is. But, to my surprise, both Martin Heidegger's teaching and
the Indian wise man's teachings were very close. Naturally in an hour's time
I can't tell the whole story about the new way of looking but it's called the
phenomenological way or the daseinsanalytic way, as Heidegger has coined
it.
Heidegger tried to see the basic traits of human existence and he called
human existence Da-sein24 (Boss pronounces this almost reverently), which
verbally translated means "being-there." In German the "Da" means:
"there." But in Heidegger's understanding and coining of the term "Da-
sein," which is reserved by him tor human existence, this "Da" means some-
thing completely different than the vulgar use of "Da," "there." For Heideg-
ger, "Da" refers to the world openness, the whole realm we are living in,
from the start. For instance, even the basic reason why you could come
out here to me now and have this discussion is that you, from the start as a
human being, are an openness into which I came by my books first or by
people or disciples of mine. You encountered me and I encountered you in
this way. But to encounter something in this way has a presupposition. It

means that you have to be an open being, a perceiving being, an under-
standing being, from the start It means that you can hear and understand
that there is something, some Medard Boss, who is also a human being and
who is thinking about human existence and is treating people. But you have
to be open in order to be able to understand at all, to have found this place
and to have come here, I don't know, either by train or by bus.
Craig: Yes, but when you say the fact that you and I could encounter
one another "has a presupposition" - that is, that I am an open realm of un-
derstanding - I suspect you don't mean that you "make" a presupposition.
Boss: No - not a presupposition. No, not making a presupposition, but
uh, (chuckling) it means that our encounter could not be possible without
this realm of openness. By just being able to come here you see, at the same
time, you see that you are open, that you are an openness into which I could
come and stay. You are coming now from St. Morliz. So you were in
St. Moritz but at the same time you were already with me. You rang me up,
for instance, so therefore I would have to be "in your mind." But you are
nothing but a "mind"26 fundamentally and therefore you were, at the same
time, both in St. Moritz and with me in Zollikon. This is only possible on
the basis of the fact that your existence is expanded throughout the world,
including St. Moritz and Zollikon at the same time. That's not a supposi-
tion, that's what you experienced. It's what you experienced immediately.
And otherwise, if you could not experience your openness, your openness
including at least St. Moritz and Zollikon, you couldn't have come and found
this place. Ja, it's important to know, to state, that this supposition is not a
mental, a mental artifact; not a mental artifact, but a fact, what you ex-
perienced.
Craig: You can see this and verify it with your own experience.
Boss: Ja, ja... ja, you take it for granted that it is so. Usually one doesn't
think of this miraculous fact that human existence is an expanded under-
standing, expanded from the start through the whole world, what you call
world. But otherwise it wouldn't be possible for you to come from St. Moritz
to this place in this way. That's iheproofl (chuckling)2
Craig: Yes, exactly!
Boss: So this sight, this seeing, is what the whole of daseinsanal-
ysis, what Heidegger's teaching has taught me: that is, only to open my eyes.
And also this is the whole direction that phenomenology or daseinsanalysis
can give to a patient: to help him to open his eyes and to look at the things
themselves and not to build theories beforehand and then to look through the
theories to the human being. And if you look at us as human beings you see
that primarily our essential way of being is just this: being a realm of open
understanding. This is nothing physical: it's no object, it can't be objec-
tified. It is an essence of itself and can't be reduced to anything else. It is
the essence, the basic essence of human existence. And, therefore, human
42 Erik Craig
existence means that all human beings are together from the start and are
building up together or forming together this openness of the world just as
the different rays of the sun are building together the light of the day.
Naturally the rays of the sun don't understand themselves or what they are.
That's the difference between a human being and a ray of the sun. But human
beings are forming together what we call the openness of our world and it is
necessary that such an openness is built by humankind because without such
an openness, without such a realm of light, nothing could be. For you see,
being means appear, enter, rise, and you can only rise into something which
is open. And you can only shine forth where there is some light.
This is the foundation which gives the real meaning and sense to human
existence and to psychotherapy: that human existence is engaged by some-
thing far behind it; engaged to be open, to form and to build the openness of
our world. And this openness as which human beings exist is the prereq-
uisite of the possibility, of the real possibility, that something can be at all.
And, at the same time, human beings are engaged, in this capacity, to allow
what has to enter, to shine forth and to unveil itself, to develop to it's fullest
possible richness. And that gives the meaning and the sense and also the
goal for psychotherapy. Natural scientific researchers can't give you such a
reason to be a psychotherapist at all. They have no such reason to urge you
to help. There are only causes and effects and, as far as natural scientists are
concerned, there is no such goal and no such meaning. So that is how dasein-
sanalysis helps you, for the first time, to understand, first, why you have to
do psychotherapy - among other things, naturally there are many other things
- and, second, into which direction psychotherapy has to go, namely, in the
direction of helping the patient to develop as fully as possible all these
potentialities of behavior and of understanding. I haven't found or seen any
other philosophy or research which could do the same.
Craig: This puts an extraordinary amount of responsibility on the
therapist to be this open realm.
Boss: Yes, Yes, naturally. On the one hand daseinsanalytic insights
reduce humankind's importance in its own eyes because human beings can
no longer see themselves and conceive of themselves as being the "all-
makers," the omnipotent "masters of technique," thinking of themselves as
being capable of doing everything they desire completely on their own. On
the contrary, in daseinsanalysis one sees the human being as simply that
being who is requested and engaged to exist as the openness, as the basis for
the appearance of things, as that being who helps or makes it possible for
things to emerge, to come forth, to come into being. Therefore it is no longer
the human being who, all alone, creates everything and is able to do every-
thing on his or her own. Rather, the person is just - as Heidegger puts it - a
shepherd, a shepherd and a servant of Being. This is just one insight of
daseinsanalysis, a very humbling insight.
Craig: And this is what you mean by the difference between human-
centered and humanistic.

Boss: Yes, yes, that is the difference. Humanistic means (chuckles) ac-
cording to the essence of human existence. And if you recognize this es-
sence as "being the servant," that is, to serve as this openness into which
everything may appear and be helped to appear, then the human being is no
longer such a mighty or god-like personality as the technical people prefer
to think.
On the other hand, however, daseinsanalytic insights also restore dig-
nity to the human being, for it is a great dignity to be such a servant, to be
such a basic necessity for being-ness as such and to serve as this openness.
And the truly important factor is this insight. You really don't learn it just
by heart, by reading. But if you allow yourself to be soaked, totally, by these
insights, then you are changing yourself and this change in yourself as a
human being is what most helps your patients. What really helps is not so
much what you know intellectually, but your actual being togetherwith your
patients in the knowledge of this task of engagement of human be-ing. This
gives you, the therapist, the freedom in which and into which the patient may
develop his potentialities to exist, to communicate with other people and
with himself. That's the main factor. Therefore, it is not so much different
facts that you learn, nor what you add to your medical knowledge that mat-
ters most but, rather, it's this basic change in your attitude towards every-
thing that you encounter and that encounters you. I guess these are the main
points or the main reasons why I felt it was necessary lo learn to open my
eyes as Heidegger's eyes had been opened and also the eyes of the impor-
tant, really serious Indian saints with whom I stayed in India.
And yet, if you see the external facts of my consultation room here, it
looks very much like I'm a Freudian. In fact, I think I'm a more Freudian,
a more truly Freudian, a more faithfully Freudian therapist, than Freud him-
self. Freud spoiled his insight and his genius by his belief that only natural
scientific thinking leads to truth.
Craig: Yes, he was trying to break free of this but he only came half
way.
Boss: Yes, yes, he fell short of a truly humanistic understanding of man
in his theory, in his theoretical papers. But in practice this was not the case.
As you know, I started my own training analysis with Freud in 1925 in Vien-
na and he never behaved towards me like he would behave towards a bundle
of drives (chuckling) but he was compassionate even with me. He knew that
I was hungry because I had to pay him some fees, very small fees but anyhow
some fees, and so he gave me sometimes some money so that I could go and
have a lunch.
There are naturally many more helps lhat the daseinsanalytic view of
existence may give to somebody who seriously tries to understand. For in-
stance, the whole realm of the so-called psychosomatic medicine wouldn't
have been understandable for me without daseinsanalytic help or the dasein-
44 Erik Craig
sanalytic... I don't like to call it philosophy, it's just a sight... the dasein-
sanalytic way of seeing. You have nothing to "believe in" with daseins-
analysis but you do have to see for yourself and return always again to the
phenomena which show themselves to you. Therefore it's called the pheno-
menological approach because you have to return to these phenomena them-
selves. And, as I said, I found this applies actually with psychosomatic
medicine also. Heidegger was reproached by Sartre, Jean Paul Sartre, for
instance, because in Heidegger's basic book, Sein und Zeit, he had written
only about six lines about the body. Sartre had written a whole big chapter
on the body - which, incidentally, even though I can also speak French fluent-
ly, I personally never understood. But when I mentioned this remark of
Sartre's, Heidegger told me that he wrote only a few lines about the body
because this is the most difficult thing. At that lime, when he wrote Sein und
Zeit, he didn't know more about it. Bui in the meantime, during these twen-
ty-five years of our friendship, we spoke mainly, also with my colleagues
here at the seminars, on this "psyche"-body relationship which was com-
pletely unclear, lican be seen, however, from a daseinsanalytic point of view
but that would fill a whole book. I have mentioned it several times in several
articles.30
Craig: Would you say your relationship with Martin Heidegger opened
him to the possibility of beginning to understand the body in a way that he
hadn't prior to your meeting?
Boss: Yes, yes, certainly. Certainly. And it shouldn't be so difficult
any more now even for the natural scientific people because it was told to
them by Einstein that so-called matter and so-called energy are the same
thing, they can be interchanged. All matter can be opened up into an ener-
gy. As you know, there is this famous rule, E = MC% so matter and energy
must be of the same fundamental basis, otherwise they couldn't be changed
into each other. Naturally that's some evidence on a certain level, but the
so-called psyche and this physical, bodily thing, they are not in the same way
equal as these phenomena which concern physicists. Nevertheless, this
gives a direction of how to think, that is, always in terms of the possibilities
of behaving and relating.
The human being can be called a bundle of possibilities of behaving
(chuckles). You are obviously, already from the start, related to some-
thing. As soon as you are born you are related, in some still faint and un-
clear way, to the mother, to the breast of the mother. How far you really ac-
knowledge it or understand it, that's another question. But, at any rate, this
being in relationship to something and this being directed to something is
one of the basic traits of human existence. And so you can be called, every
man can be called, a bundle of possibilities of relationship, of understanding
and behaving relationships to what he encounters. And this bundle of pos-
sible relationships which forms you, which is you, is the essence, the basis
of human existence. So, what you conceive of being the bodysphere of your
existence, everything which is flesh and bones and so on, is the secondary
feature, stemming out of or developing from this bundle of so-called "men-
tal" possibilities for world-relationship.
There is a very nice evidence of it, you see, already with very primitive
organisms, like the amoeba, for instance. If there is something edible in the
surroundings of the amoeba a hole is formed in the amoeba which functions
as a mouth taking in that which is edible. After, the amoeba forms another
hole within its cell which functions as a stomach. Then, at last, there appears
another hole which functions as intestines and anus, actualizing a letting go
or getting rid of what is encountered. Therefore, the amoeba shows you that
the first, the essence, the basis of all is its possibility of a definite relation-
ship with what is encountered, in this instance of feeding itself by something
edible.
Craig: So the possibility, the capacity precedes the behavior.

Boss: Not only the actual eating, digesting and eliminating but the very
organs which are necessary to behave in these different ways. So the pos-
sibility precedes and is the basis of the bodily behavior. The "organs" such
as the mouth, the stomach and the intestines are formed out of this unobjec-
tifiable, this immaterial possibility, and this always in its proper sequence,
first the mouth, then the stomach, then the anus and never the other way
around. The possibility of feeding, of self-nourishment, governs the ap-
pearance and functioning of the amoeba's organs in a regular and definite
sequence.
I give this example of the amoeba because it shows, in a very physical,
bodily way, that the primary thing, the fundamental thing is this: just this
possibility of the amoeba to nourish itself. If there were no such possibility
as the basis there couldn't be this change from being a mouth, to being a
stomach and then to being an intestine and anus. It's the possibility of
nourishing itself, itself, which leads the way for these bodily changes of the
"organs." So the "organs" are not the primary thing but rather the pos-
sibilities of the amoeba to nourish itself. And so it is also with human beings,
it is always our possibilities, our possibilities for relating to things, for han-
dling things, for acting toward things which are the primary fundament lead-
ing and directing all our bodily organs. For example, as I now make these
gestures my arms are responding out of my possibility to have a discussion
with you, a daseinsanalytic discussion; these very gestures belong to and are
directed by these possibilities.
Craig: And how does this help a therapist to understand psychosomatic
medicine or the so-called psychosomatic symptoms?
Boss: Ja, well, all the psychosomatic symptoms belong also to one or
the other possibility of handling something, or relating to something. All of
a person's ways of being or behaving are ultimately directed by this pos-
sibility of handling something in one way or another, and that goes down
even to the very last leukocytes. For even our red and white blood cells fol-
46 Erik Craig
low the directives of what we want to do. Even now as I am speaking about
daseinsanalysis my red and white blood cells are directing themselves into
that which is necessary in order for me to express my view about psycho-
somatics.
So its always the possibilities of a human being, the totalilly of these
possibilities to act and to work with things, that directs you towards what is
perceived by you. If you took that pad of white paper which you have
brought and entered into a relationship with it by writing on it, then that's
how you would be existing at the moment and your entire existence, includ-
ing your bodily existence, would be absorbed in carrying put that possibility.
And so a human existence is always directed by its own possibilities for relat-
ing in certain ways to what is encountered. And always, like the amoeba, we
relate as whole beings, caught up entirely in those possibilities for being

which we are carrying out in each moment of our existing.

Craig: So what is it that goes wrong or amiss?
Boss: Ja. If something goes wrong, if you are extremely tense or ag-
gressive, or if you haven't found a way to carry out your own possibilities
then there is a block somewhere. And this block is one in which the whole
body takes part. It may be in the form of an hysterical paralysis of the arm,
for example; or in the form of muscular tensions or rheumatisms in the arms;
or perhaps some other way. But since human beings exist as a whole, in-
cluding their bodily ways of existing, if their existence is disturbed in any
way, be it neurotically or psychotically or whatever, then their functions, in-
cluding their normal bodily functions, are also disturbed. Some common ex-
amples of psychosomatic disorders are those involving the stomach which
may, for instance, burn from too much acid. People who suffer in this way
strain themselves as whole beings by eating too much, and in every sense,
not only by devouring food but also by "eating" the whole world, by being
too avaricious, uh, what's the word... I completely... Well, I'm sorry, I'm out
of English and thinking in Portuguese (chuckling)... We were recently stay-
ing with my children in Brazil...
Craig: I do understand this: that a person eats too much and consumes
not just food but everything.
Boss: Ja, they want to take in, to swallow down everything, the whole
world. And this strains not only the physical organ, the stomach; but the
whole existence. It's within this kind of relationship to the world that the
physical stomach only plays out or echoes the possibilities of the whole ex-
istence. Therefore it usually suffices to put such patients into hospitals where
they are cared for by nice nurses and shielded from the exigencies of the ex-
ternal world. When this is done the stomach also quiets down.
Craig: You reported a case in Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis of
a woman who had walked past a handsome gardener and as she did she fell
down and both of her legs became paralyzed. She had an hysterical
paralysis. Could you say how these ideas relate to that case?
Boss: Well in this case, this was a neurotic way of relating to the world
because she wasn't free in her whole existence, and especially in herrelation-
ship with men. She was brought up to believe that all men were dangerous
and evil so she couldn't get close to a man, let alone have any feeling for a
man, any loving feeling. She therefore always felt compelled to flee from
men. In this instance, she saw a man who for some time had attracted her.
When she suddenly saw this man nearby and coming even closer to her she
just collapsed. And this hysterical paralysis, this paralysis of the legs was
nothing other than a block, a blocking of her possibilities for moving toward
him. She was completely shocked by this man who could arouse a little bit
of love in her. Her shock was not merely a symptom but a way of being in
and of itself, a being frightened by and being prohibited from relating .to. a
man because until then she had only seen men as terrifying creatures, as wild
animal-like beings which would swallow her up. She was so panic stricken
and shocked that her whole existence fell down or collapsed. It was not just
her legs that collapsed but her whole existence which was blocked from car-
rying out her possibilities for a loving relationship with this man.
Yes, I think that's what I can tell you in a short time. But all this real-
ly shows that your aim as a therapist is to serve for the patient as a human
existence which has become more free, in the wider scnse,/ree to be engaged
with what is encountered and to help that which comes to you to develop
further. You have only to show your patients where you see they are limited,
where they are caught and unable to carry out their own possibilities for per-
ceiving and relating to things. I once tried to qualify the difference between
psychoanalysis and daseinsanalysis (Boss smiles widely here) by saying
psychoanalysis always asks "Why?" in a causal way, whereas daseins-
analysis asks "Why not?" Why not try to behave more freely? After all, we
only defend and limit ourselves if we feel weak, if we are frightened by some-
thing. Daseinsanalysis tries to help patients not to fight against what they
are encountering but to love it, to accept it. Naturally, we do not recommend
accepting the lion which comes onto their path, but rather, simply not to
defend against what is helping both themselves and what they encounter.
You see, defense is also only one possibility for relating to what they en-
counter but in carrying out this possibility others are kept at a distance from
them and cannot come close to them. One only needs this kind of protec-
tion if one is not strong enough to cope with something. If you are able to
cope with that which encounters you then you needn't defend yourself
against it. You can have a party with it or you can love it. Well, I'm afraid
our time is gone.
Craig: Again, thank you very much.
Epilogue
Driving out of Zollikon that day I realized that Dr. Boss's presentation
of the light of Being was more than mere words, the recitation of theory, for
48 Erik Craig
I felt directly the reality of having been together with him in this very light
of human be-ing. I was grateful not only for his permitting me to appear in
his light but also for granting me the privilege of allowing him to appear in
mine. The encounters themselves had shown me in a new, distinctly sen-
tient, way, the significance of Professor Boss's vision of human existence
and psychotherapy. As expressed in the preceding dialogue, Boss notes that
"human existence, and in particular the human existence of the therapist," is
called to exist primarily as "the openness and the light" into which other
beings, including human beings, may "shine forth," "appear" and "come into
their own being," their own "fullest possible richness." As therapists we are
"the hearing and the seeing, or the openness which is called forth to allow
things to develop," called forth "to form and to build the openness of our
world."
My encounters with Dr. Boss made it clear to me that as therapists we

not only grant patients the opportunity to appear in our light but also the op-
portunity for allowing us to appear in theirs and it is this latter, extraordinary
gift which has been almost totally ignored (if not, actively disavowed) in the
ever-growing archives of psychotherapeutic literature. Yet it is this very
freeing of the patient to exist in and as his/her ownmost "lumen naturale,"
not just in therapy but in all of life, that may be the most fundamental exis-
tential definition of a so-called "cure."
Following my second meeting with Dr. Boss, I returned to Hotel Son-
nenberg to prepare for my departure the following morning and then spent
the remainder of the day wandering among cobblestone streets in Zurich and
in the charming city of Rapperswil near the Southern tip of Lake Zurich.
Throughout the day, the light of this courteous, contemplative man continued
to appear to me, and to remind me of the fundamentally luminescent charac-
teristic of all human meeting, a characteristic which is always palpably
"there" if only we have "eyes to see." As the afternoon passed I found myself
musing about the unique quality of light which was shed by Dr. Boss him-
self: it was not particularly "fiery," except in moments, but rather more like
a glow, a steady shining which filled the room. His so-called "eye-contact"33
was really quite remarkable, for it was extraordinarily steady, rarely broken.
Yet there was never a sense of gazing or piercing, never a hint that he was
trying to see or peer "into" one; but, rather, his eyes threw a warm, wide light
throughout the room, indeed beyond the room to the world, such that, in his
terms, "whatever had to be, could be."
It was with this soft, full light of his existence that I felt Dr. Boss lend
himself, uniquely, as a servant of Being. Nevertheless, I suspect he would
be quite unwilling to claim any personal credit for this light since, he would
say, it exists before and behind him and that it is our light too, it is the pos-
sibility for shining which is our own simply by virtue of our being human.
So who is this man? And what does his being and his work mean for
us? I keep hearing this strange title - Medard Boss: Professor of Possibility
and Light. For it is these two fundamental characteristics of human exist-

ence, perhaps more than any others, that he has given his life to revealing
and understanding. Replacing the deterministic conception of the instincts
with a liberating vision of possibility, he has broken the darkness of an un-
conscious psyche with the luminous opening of a fully awakened Being-in-
the-world. Thus, Boss's psychology is a psychology of hope, the essence of
which may be celebrated in the single line of Rilke's "Gesang ist Dasein":
Song is Being-there; Hymn, to be. One might easily say, then, that Dr. Boss's
father's "cure" was a dismal failure. For though, as a youth, Boss may have
given up the external, superficially seen trappings of an artist's life, he was
never dissuaded in essence and being. Not only did he continue to paint and
to love and collect the world's finest art but he also became even more fully
an artist, in its purest sense, in the very sense in which Heidegger himself
described the artistic "sphere of cultural enterprise." Heidegger wrote,

"regarded in terms of its essence, art is a consecration and a refuge in which
the real bestows its long-hidden splendor upon man ever anew, that in such
light he may see more purely and hear more clearly what addresses itself to
his senses" (1977, p. 156). In just such a way this man, Medard Boss, has
lent his existence as a consecration and a refuge for the humanly real, the
private and individually real, to reveal its long-hidden splendor through the
art of psychotherapy. And so, as therapists, he would have us all.
6. Erik Craig and Medard Boss in Boss's library/waiting room, August 1987
50 Erik Craig
Footnotes
1. Although the use of formal titles may seem impersonal to American humanis-
tic psychologists who have grown accustomed to calling their intellectual
heroes by such names as Rollo, Carl or Abe, this kind of familiarity would be
intrusive in Switzerland where the German impersonal "Sie" is used for
everyone except one's most intimate acquaintances. Throughout this article,
therefore, I have remained respectful of the spirit of that land and language.
2. Both recorded interviews were transcribed and carefully edited in order to

achieve a fluent English and to adapt them to a style more suitable for reading,
as opposed to listening. This editorial work involved no substantive changes
but focused, rather, on omitting redundant or tangential material. Occasional
clauses and three or four sentences were added where modest interpolation
seemed likely to facilitate understanding. When this work was finished, a copy
of the entire manuscript, including the edited transcripts, footnotes and contex-
tual descriptions, was sent to Dr. Boss for his review and/or editorial comment
especially in order that he might judge whether or not the final manuscript
remained faithful to the language and spirit of discussion as it was actually
lived. Dr. Boss again responded most generously by carefully reading and
commenting on the manuscript as a whole and by thoroughly rewriting two
pages which lacked the philosophical precision he wanted. In addition to this
editorial work, Dr. Boss agreed to meet on four further occasions during the
following year in order to consider the clarity and completeness of the manu-
script as a whole. In these subsequent meetings he briefly elaborated on some
of his responses to questions raised in the original discussions. In order to
preserve a sense of continuity for the reader, whenever feasible Dr. Boss's these
remarks were simply integrated into the previous conversations. Again, in edit-
ing, no substantial changes were made.
3. It is important to clarify immediately here that whenever Boss mentions

"things" throughout this discussion, he does not refer to the vulgar denotation
of "things" as mere objects. "Things" for the daseinsanalytic therapist refer not
only to all that appears concretely in the light of human awareness (whether
this be objects, plants, animals, persons or events), but also, and especially, to
the particular gathering or assemblage of meanings which comes with these
concrete appearances. According to daseinsanalysis, nothing which shows it-
self to us is ever a mere "object-thing" but rather an actual presencing of "mean-
ing- fullness." This is called the Bedeutungsgehalt, roughly translated the
meaning-content of things. Therefore, what Boss suggests here is that the
daseinsanalytic therapist has a different way of approaching and of being ap-
proached by the meaningfulness or the significance of what is encountered both
in life and in psychotherapy.
4. American readers must be careful not to read this term "human-centered" as

another synonym for "client-centered" or "person-centered." Boss and the
daseinsanalysts use the term human-centered in quite an opposite, almost
pejorative way, referring to what might be considered a species-wide narcis-
sism, the solopsistic tendency of human beings to perceive and relate to the
world according to their own personal needs, theories and prejudices, rather
than according to the nature or "essence" of that which appears in and for it-
self.
5. Boss's chuckle seemed to me to be an expression of delight in his rather mat-

ter-of-fact presentation of this revolutionary view of human existence as quin-
tessentially luminous.
6. Boss's emphasis on unity is grounded in the daseinsanalytic understanding of

the co-constitutionality of human existence. Things can come into being only
within the light of human awareness, but, at the same time, this light of human
"consciousness" itself can only appear in relation to the things it encounters.
As Boss himself once put it, "Not even so-called physical light can appear as
light unless it encounters things which it makes shine forth. This means noth-
ing less than that human being and what appears in the light of human exist-
ence are mutually dependent on each other" (1963, p. 42). Following Heideg-
ger, daseinsanalysts refer to this appropriating co-determinative "e-vent" as the
Ereignis. Seen in a more concrete and practical sense, a therapist permits
patients to appear and unfold in the fullness which they are but also a therapist
can only appear as such if there are actual persons who are willing to be in
psychotherapy. On this fundamental level, therapists need patients as much as
patients need therapists. Furthermore, as the therapeutic relationship continues
to develop, the therapist and the patient continue to constitute one another in
increasingly rich and complex ways. Freud attributed this richness and inten-
sity to transference and countertransference but the daseinsanalytic therapist
considers the richness a natural condition of immediate human relatedness.
7. See "A patient who taught the author to see and think differently" (Boss, 1963,
pp. 5-27).
8. This book by Martin Heidegger (1987), edited by Medard Boss and entitled
Zollikoner Seminare, was published in German less than a year ago. It is direct-
ly from this work that the two articles by Heidegger were translated for the
present volume.
9. A brief account of Heidegger's assistance with this project as well as of the

Zollikon Seminars has been published in The Review of Existential Psychol-
ogy and Psychiatry, V. XVI, Nos. 1-3, 1979, pp. 7-20. Boss's Existential
Foundations of Medicine and Psychology (1979) first appeared in German as
Grundriss der Medizin (1971).
10. This particular difference in language, of the English emphasis on nouns or the
fixed "content" of things versus the German emphasis on verbs or the happen-
ing of things, makes it difficult for English speaking people to understand the
profoundly lived quality of daseinsanalytic thinking. For Boss and Heidegger
even a tree, for example, is never simply a static entity but the tree "trees it-
52 Erik Craig
self," it is a tree happening, a tree "coming-into-presence" (Anwesen) as the
particular tree it is.
11. Boss intentionally exaggerates the "in" here and then chuckles to himself. I im-
agine he finds the use of the term inside comical, since in daseinsanalysis there
is no "inside" psychologically speaking. In fact, quite to the contrary, as
Heidegger said, our existence is "ek-static", that is, we "stand out into" the
world, we exist as a particular "there out in the world," unequivocally engaged
with it.
12. I am aware here that I am asking a lot of this man who grew up in a culture and
time which was not prone to the kind of personal disclosure to which we have
become accustomed in America. The privacy and "respectful distance" of
many Swiss people is evident even today. Nevertheless, as the faithful student
of daseinsanalysis which he is, Boss was kind enough to open himself to this
"foreign possibility" of spontaneous self-revelation.
13. These two studies, The Analysis of Dreams (1958) and Meaning and Content
of Sexual Perversions (1949), were the first of Boss's works to be published in
English. They are, unfortunately, currently out of print though recent interest
in his works may change this.
14. This book, Indienfahrt (1959) was also published in English under the title A
Psychiatrist Discovers India (1965) but it, too, is now out of print. In 1987 a
fourth German edition was published including, for the first time, color photo-
graphs and a preface entitled "After thirty years" in which Boss discusses his
understanding of Heidegger's eventual movement toward a view similar to that
which is considered to be the "highest Indian wisdom" as expressed in the
"doctrine of Chit," a doctrine espousing a "primordial illumination and open-
ing-up" which exists prior to and independent of the individual world-illum-
inating presence of Dasein (see Boss, 1965, pp. 127-129).
15. For Boss and Heidegger, the possibility of "consciousness" or "light" as such
must exist before the appearance of so-called "individual consciousness."
Something may realize itself, become present or appear only if a clearing or
openness for this preceded it. An original openness and "light" are precondi-
tions for Being, for anything to be at all, and therefore, a primordial light and
openness preceded or was a precondition for the light and openness of human
existence. In Indian thinking this "light and openness which is behind and
before humanity and human existence" is known as Brahman, "the vast, un-
limited absolute spirit... releasing from within itself all the phenomena in the
universe" (Boss, 1965, p. 102) of which Atman, or "the real essence of the
human being" is "a partial manifestation" (ibid.). In his book on India (1965),
Boss reports the words of one of his masters as follows: "After all, every seeing
always presupposes light, a clear openness. Nevertheless, the illuminating con-
tact with things and the capacity to light up, which makes up the real essence
of man, must never be understood as the doing or making of a human subject,
of a human person. Being-man, rather, means being 'Atman' basically, which
always is but a particle of 'Brahman,' i.e. the one great, fundamental luminat-
ing, arising and opening-up occurrence" (p. 124).
16 . This little volume, Psychotherapie in Selbstdarstellungen [Psychotherapy in

Autobiography], edited by Pongratz (1973), contains several autobiographical
accounts of the development of world renowned psychotherapists. It is not
available in English.
17. Again, Boss seems somewhat shy about speaking of his own life, though he
then immediately does so and, in fact, with apparent pleasure.
18. This description strikes me quite humorously especially since Boss himself has
a bit of a fiery look as he speaks the words. Nevertheless, in the process of

reviewing this manuscript Boss acknowledged that "fiery" was not a good
translation of "Leuchtende" which means literally "shining." He himself then
said he meant that the eyes of these men were "like the sun," "shining" as if
with some light behind them. "No," Boss said, "it's better to say shining eyes."
19. This distinction between these two kinds of care has become a kind of hallmark
of daseinsanalytic therapy. Intervening care (einspringende Fürsorge) is the
kind of therapeutic care that takes over for or directs the other. The German
word is the same word which is used to describe one actor replacing another
for a performance of a play, thus relieving the original actor of his respon-
sibility. Anticipatory care (vorausspringende Fürsorge), on the other hand, per-
mits and clears the way for the individual to assume responsibility for him or
herself. See the discussions elsewhere in this volume, as well in as Heidegger
(1962, pp. 158-59) and in Boss (1963, pp. 73-74).
20. The fundamentally permissive approach of daseinsanalytic psychotherapy is

often interpreted to mean that there are no boundaries or limits in the psycho-
therapeutic situation. In the following Boss makes it clear, however, that while
a therapist must be flexible in the conduct of therapy, carefully attuning his or
her own behaviors and attitudes to the particular needs of the patient, it is equal-
ly true that there are definite parameters which must be gently but firmly main-
tained. The nature, extent and duration of these parameters depend, of course,
on the vicissitudes of the therapeutic process and the so-called "personalities"
of the therapist and the patient. The therapist's decision, in any case, should
not grow primarily out of his or her personal feeling at the moment but rather
out of careful, critical reflection and principled thinking. In asking the ques-
tions that follow this one, I wanted to learn where and how Boss himself draws
such therapeutic lines.
21. Boss (1979, pp. 9-10) has written elsewhere about his inducing of Heidegger
"with much guile and cunning" to read Freud first-hand. At that time, Boss
noted that whereas Heidegger's reading of Freud's metapsychological works
"made him literally feel ill," Freud's papers on therapeutic practice "made
Heidegger more conciliatory." As Boss put it, Heidegger discovered for him-
54 Erik Craig
self in Freud's writing "the unbridgeable gulf between the absolute natural
scientific determinism of his [Freud's] theories and the repeated emphasis of
the freeing of the patient through psychoanalytic practice" (p. 10).
22. Boss seemed to be tiring somewhat at this point, particularly with the demands
of having to address all of these questions in English. When he did not catch
my meaning for "areas," I quickly tried to think of another ordinary English
word which might have a similar sound and meaning in German. Room, with
the German counterpart, Raum, spontaneously came to mind. There were
many times when we played these little games in the interest of communica-
tion. Not all of these are reported.
23. Boss searches here for an adequate translation but this is not easy even in the
most leisurely of circumstances and there is very little time left in this inter-
view. Other possible translations might be "thoughtful reflection" or "thought-

ful consideration." Heidegger himself described Besinnliches Denken as fol-
lows: "to venture after sense or meaning... [a] calm, self possessed surrender
to that which is worthy of questioning" (Heidegger, 1977, p. 180). Heidegger's
essay entitled "Science and Reflection," here quoted, contains a concise dis-
cussion of these two modes of thinking which Boss mentions and which help
distinguish the daseinsanalytic approach from the approach of the natural scien-
ces and of biologically-minded medicine.
24. Da-sein is intentionally hyphenated here on Boss's own recommendation. Al-

though the term Dasein is not written with a hyphen in its everyday use (it is a
commonly used German word referring simply to the presence of a thing).
Heidegger himself occasionally separated the word with a hyphen to emphasize
the significance of its etymological foundation for understanding the "clear-
ing" or the "there-ness" of human existence, the being there of the human in-
dividual. Boss's 1963 book, Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis does not use
a hyphen but throughout his Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychol-
ogy (1979), the hyphenated version is always and exclusively used when refer-
ring to human Da-sein.
25. This "realm of world openness" denotes one of the "existentialia" or the fun-
damental characteristics of Da-sein, of human being, and refers to the constitu-
tion of human beings, their very nature, as luminating beings, as beings who
are a clearing of awareness - "lumen naturale" as Heidegger calls it (1962,
p. 171) - into which things may appear. For example, in this very moment now,
you the reader, are permitting the words and meanings of this very page to ap-
pear even as you read. And, with this, I too appear to you in some fashion and,
more importantly of course, so does Professor Boss as you permit our exchange
to come into being, to shine forth, to exist with and for you. So, it may be seen,
that as human beings we exist as "a there," an openness into which an ever
changing world of phenomena constantly appears. As Heidegger put it, "By
its very nature, Dasein brings its 'there' along with it" (ibid).
26. Although Boss uses the term "mind" here, he is not referring to the idea of a
psychic or mental apparatus in the Freudian or biological sense, but rather to

the observable fact of human "consciousness" itself, to the "luminating realm"
(see footnote 25) as which we primarily exist as human beings. This "mind"
is not an inferred entity but rather a phenomenologically observable charac-
teristic of Da-sein, of human be-ing. Boss discusses this daseinsanalytic un-
derstanding of mind in the following chapter.
27. Boss has a marvelous, mischievious smile here, relishing, I imagine, the irony
of his use of a term from the natural sciences ("proof") to make a radical
philosophical point. He chuckles quietly with his chin tucked into his chest
and a puckish gleam in his eyes. I enjoy his play with words and laugh with
him. The memory of this quintessentially "Bossian moment" has come back
to me frequently throughout the preparation of this manuscript.
28. This is a tidy little description of what makes humanistic psychology humanis-
tic ! One must keep in mind, however, that these essences are not given in some
metaphysical preformulation but rather they appear directly in our experience
through a process of careful observation and reflective thinking (Besinnliches
Denken: see footnote 23).
29. This is one of the proudest claims of daseinsanalysis: to have understood the
fundamentals of psychoanalytic practice better than psychoanalysis itself, even
better than its founder, Freud. In fact, one frequently mentioned article
(Thomä, 1959) from the journal Psyche was entitled "Sigmund Freud: ein
Daseinsanalytiker?" [Sigmund Freud: a daseinsanalyst?] and examined the
basis for this very claim.
30. Readers interested in the daseinsanalytic view of psychosomatics may refer to

relevant sections of Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis (Boss, 1963, pp. 139-
146, 155-177) as well as Boss's Existential Foundations of Medicine and
Psychology (1979). There is actually a growing literature on the dasein-
sanalytic understanding of psychosomatic phenomena but it is mostly avail-
able only in German. (See the annotated bibliography in this volume.)
31. Boss takes delight in coining these kinds of comparative cliches. Remember
he had earlier referred to Freud's model of the human being as "a bundle of
drives" (p. 38) which he now counters with this term "a bundle of pos-
sibilities." Below, he also mentions his classical coining of the question "Why
not?" in juxtaposition to psychoanalysis's eternal "Why?" (p.47).
32. See Boss, 1963, pp. 117-120.
33. This is one of those terms which would likely evoke Dr. Boss's "fieriness"; I
can hear him now: "How can it ever be seen that such a thing as an eye could
ever 'make contact' with another eye if there was not behind and before these
very organs an open, perceiving, illuminating realm of existing into which such
a thing as an eye could appear in the first place?"
8. Medard Boss, age 26, as a young psychiatrist
during his early "psychoanalytic years"
7. Medard Boss, age 5, pushing his

younger sister Klara. He noted
"this is the first record of my helping.
9. Medard Boss, age 35, as a captain in the medical corps of the Swiss army
10. A portrait of human suffering: painting by Mcdard Boss as a young doctor
11. Self portrait

by Medard Boss

Craig (1988) An Encounter With Medard Boss

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An Encounter with Medard Boss

and inspiration in my study, teaching and practice of psychotherapy. Some-

rectly, because of the differences of the languages. In English as in French,

for example, language is based much more on substantives whereas in the

in the Kashmir Valley

Craig: So your engagement with Heidegger and your early works on

ly, in India there is no difference between intelligence and saintliness.

Boss: Yes, (chuckling) he cured me of this idea. Ja, and successfully.

exceptional case. This was not a neurosis, a psychoneurosis, but, rather, a

orthodox patient-doctor relationship. The psychoanalytic treatment which

the opportunity or time to develop.

Craig: What about Reich and Goldstein?

of the psychiatric assistants at the Burgholzli. Actually, it was Manfred

ber of the national society.

Craig: I also understand there was a conference on the daseinsanalytic

statistical kind of thinking. And this reckoning approach, or the natural

Sunday, August 10,1986

filled as prerequisites of psychotherapeutic practice, and I owed it to my

this way. But to encounter something in this way has a presupposition. It

centered and humanistic.

Craig: So the possibility, the capacity precedes the behavior.

relate as whole beings, caught up entirely in those possibilities for being

which we are carrying out in each moment of our existing.

My encounters with Dr. Boss made it clear to me that as therapists we

and Light. For it is these two fundamental characteristics of human exist-

described the artistic "sphere of cultural enterprise." Heidegger wrote,

2. Both recorded interviews were transcribed and carefully edited in order to

3. It is important to clarify immediately here that whenever Boss mentions

4. American readers must be careful not to read this term "human-centered" as

5. Boss's chuckle seemed to me to be an expression of delight in his rather mat-

6. Boss's emphasis on unity is grounded in the daseinsanalytic understanding of

9. A brief account of Heidegger's assistance with this project as well as of the

16 . This little volume, Psychotherapie in Selbstdarstellungen [Psychotherapy in

a bit of a fiery look as he speaks the words. Nevertheless, in the process of

20. The fundamentally permissive approach of daseinsanalytic psychotherapy is

view. Other possible translations might be "thoughtful reflection" or "thought-

24. Da-sein is intentionally hyphenated here on Boss's own recommendation. Al-

psychic or mental apparatus in the Freudian or biological sense, but rather to

30. Readers interested in the daseinsanalytic view of psychosomatics may refer to

32. See Boss, 1963, pp. 117-120.

7. Medard Boss, age 5, pushing his

10. A portrait of human suffering: painting by Mcdard Boss as a young doctor

11. Self portrait

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