Daseinsanalysis 51

Polkinghorne, D. E. (in press). Phenomenological research methods. In R.

S. Valle & S. Hailing, Existential-phenomological perspectives in
psychology. New York: Plenum.
Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. New
York: State University of New York Press.
Shapiro, K. J. (1988). Metaphor making through the body. Phenomenology
+ Pedagogy, 6(1), 5-14.
Schon, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in
action. New York: Basic Books.

• * * * *

Daseinsanalysis: In Defense of the Ontological Difference

Scott D. Churchill
University of Dallas

A Review of Psychotherapy for Freedom: The Daseinsanalytic Way

in Psychology and Psychotherapy, edited by Erik Craig, A Special
Issue of The Humanistic Psychologist (Volume 16, Number 1,
Spring 1988, 278 pp.)
"Existential analysis" was introduced to the English reader in 1958 with
the publication of Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri Ellenberger's Existence:
A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology. While Erwin Straus, Viktor
von Gebsattel, and Eugene Minkowski were cited as pioneers in "Psychiatric
phenomenology," Ludwig Binswanger alone was named founder and represen-
tative of "existential analysis," a new school of psychoanalysis built upon the
edifice of Martin Heidegger's (1927/1962) early ontology. Subsequent texts
(Spiegelberg, 1972; van den Berg, 1972) have followed suit, discussing Heideg-
ger's influence on psychiatry with primary reference to Binswanger, either
ignoring the distinctive contribution of Medard Boss altogether or giving him
curiously short shrift in comparison to his colleagues.
In what amounts to the single most important English text on daseins-
analytic psychotherapy since the publication of Existence thirty years ago,
the record is set straight with regard to Medard Boss' steadfast and uniquely
authoritative contribution to the field of phenomenologically-grounded

• Special credit is due Christopher Aanstoos, General Editor of The

Humanistic Psychologist, for his willingness to devote a special double-issue
to daseinsanalysis, and for his personal involvement in the actual production
of this volume.
52 Theor. & Philo. Psych. Vol. 9, No. 7, 1989

therapies and psychophathologies. Edited by Erik Craig, himself a daseinsan-

alytically-oriented therapist and author, Psychotherapy for Freedom: TheDa-
seinsanalytic Way in Psychology and Pyschotherapy brings together a uni-
quely developed collection of essays, seminars, and interviews delving into
foundational as well as clinically-oriented issues regarding the application of
Martin Heidegger's philosophy to the field of psychiatry.
Perhaps the single most remarkable feature of this text as a whole is the
way in which it owes its existence to the initiative, devotion, and extensive
research efforts of the editor himself. Equipped with a tape-recorder (and
sometimes with German transcripts of lectures or seminars given by the
authors, mostly representatives of Boss' Daseinsanalytic Institute), Craig con-
ducted interviews with his principal authors, through which the final text of
each article was fashioned out of the collaborative dialogues that took place
over a period of months. Craig's efforts were rewarded with the resulting col-
lection of "encounters" and essays, which were then published as a special
issue of The Humanistic Psychologist (Bulletin of Division 32 of the American
Psychological Association).*
In his introductory chapter, Craig situates daseinsanalysis in the context
of psychotherapy and makes a compelling case for an existential reading of
Freud's aims with respect to therapy. In the opening paragraph, Craig describes
Freud's interest thusly: "to restore the individual's own-most freedom to be"
(p. 1). Could this be the common "latency" once posited by Merleau-Ponty
as the point of convergence between psychoanalysis and phenomenology? The
individual's "own-most" "freedom" "to be"-* far cry from Freud's "intra-
psychic" "mechanisms" of "defense"; but, throughout this text we are invited
to imagine a Freud who would speak a more holistic and emancipatory
language. The introductory chapter proceeds to enlighten the reader regar-
ding Boss' particular background in psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and In-
dian thought; and, in the process, it offers one of the best introductions to
Martin Heidegger's philosophy in print today.
Part One, the first of four major sections of the text, presents foundational
articles concerning the history and philosophical tenets of daseinsanalysis.
It begins with a transcribed "encounter" with Medard Boss, in which the editor
presents a rich dialogue that acquaints the reader in a more personable way
with the spirit and basic ideas of Boss' work, as well as with the sources of
Boss' inspiration, most notably Freud, Jung, Heidegger, and Swami Govin-
da Kaul. This piece is followed by an article by Boss himself which, although
at times "preachy," amounts to a primer in daseinsanalysis that succeeds in
illuminating the early, as well as later, thought of Heidegger and in drawing
cogent implications for psychological theory and psychotherapeutic strategy.
A selection of excerpts from Heidegger's teaching seminars with Boss and
his colleagues completes the first section.
Part T\vo contains four pieces on psychotherapy by current directors and
diplomates of the Daseinsanalytic Institute in Switzerland. The articles by
Alois Hicklin, Heidy Brenner, and especially Gion Condrau serve to
recapitulate and reinforce the essentials of daseinsanalysis already presented
Daseinsanalysis 53

in the earlier articles by Craig and Boss. Perikles Kastrinidis' presentation

of an existential approach to therapy with the elderly is particularly noteworthy
for its breaking new ground in extending Heidegger's "existentials" to a reflec-
tion upon the ontically unique condition of human beings nearing death.
Part Three's "analytic inquiries" include two clincial expositions (by Perikles
Kastrinidis and Alice Holzhey-Kunz) summing up the actors' individual con-
siderations of narcissism in the light of Heidegger, and a third piece by the
editor, presented as "a concrete example of a daseinsanalytic consideration
of a specific phenomenon"—an existential "unraveling" of Freud's Irma dream.
The fourth and final part of the book consists of an appendix (five pages
of marvelously abstruse "marginalia on phenomenology" by Heidegger), an
epilogue in which the editor critiques the current status of daseinsanalysis,
a particularly well-composed annotated bibliography, and special reports
describing the activities of the Daseinsanalytic Institute and of the Swiss Socie-
ty for Daseinsanalysis.
Notwithstanding the volume's merits in bringing the editor's labor of love
to the English reader, there remain some questions with regard to the text's
rather pointed criticism of Binswanger and its ultimately falling short of the
mark of demonstrating the research potential of daseinsanalytic inquiry. With
regard to the first issue, it seems rather curious that of all the transcripts of
Heidegger's seminars held over a 17 year period in Zollikon, Switzerland with
members and associates of the Daseinsanalytic Institute, the only ones selected
for inclusion in this volume are four fragments (two of which are actually
Boss' own post hoc recollections of private conversations with Heidegger)
in which Heidegger discusses and ultimately dismisses Binswanger's self-
described "productive misunderstanding" of Heidegger. Still, anyone who has
been influenced by Heidegger's thought would surely welcome the opportunity
to read transcripts of his candid remarks concerning psychiatric dasein-
sanalysis, especially if they were to offer guidance or new insights to the reader.
Alas, the thrust of Heidegger's critique centers around but two issues:
Binswanger's claim to a phenomenological method derived from Heidegger's
own Sein und Zeit, and his effort to "complement" Heidegger's care-paradigm
with the notion of love (the latter developed extensively in Bisnwanger's [1942]
magnun opus). Referring to himself in the third person, much as he might
refer to Plato or Kant, Heidegger borders on sarcasm in his sometimes hair-
splitting criticisms of Binswanger. First, because Binswanger has credited
Heidegger's ontological treatise Sein und Zeit as the inspiration for his own
method of psychiatric daseinsanalysis, Heidegger accuses Binswanger and his
followers of not recognizing the important difference between ontical and
ontological modes of inquiry: "When Haefner claims that the psychiatric da-
seinsanalysis takes its method from Heidegger, he thereby claims something
impossible, because Heidegger's fundamental-ontology is an ontological
method whereas psychiatric daseinsanalysis is not an ontology" (Heidegger,
p. 87). This is, to be sure, an important distinction, analogous to Husserl's
differentiation between "the transcendental-philosophical point of view" and
"psychological-scientific reflection" (1939/1970, p. 208). For Heidegger, "on-
54 Theor. & Philo. Psych. Vol. 9, No. 1, 1989

tological inquiry is indeed more primordial, as over against the ontical in-
quiry of the positive sciences" (1927/1962, p. 31). Accordingly, the ontological
pertains to the essentials of an entity's Being, while the ontical pertains to
the affairs of everyday life as well as to the factual realm of scientific inquiry.
Heidegger also states that "the question of existence is one of Dasein's on-
tical 'affairs' " and that, moreover, "this does not require that the ontological
structure of existence should be theoretically transparant" (1927/1962, p. 33).
Psychotherapy (as well as psychopathology) would therefore always remain
an ontical endeavor, presupposing, perhaps, but never presuming to be, a more
fundamental ontology. Indeed, it was on this basis that Heidegger once made
the bold assertion: "When it comes to saving man's essential nature,
psychology—whether as such or in the form of psychotherapy—is helpless"
(1954/1968, p. 89). Psychiatric daseinsanalysis —whether Binswanger's or
Boss'—thus can never be more than an ontical inquiry into the existence of
this or that person, or this or that kind of person, even though it may be
guided in its interpretive framework by Heidegger's existential analytic. Not-
witstanding this clear distinction, Heidegger admonishes Binswanger's col-
eague Blankenburg for speaking of an "extremely strained relationship" bet-
ween the realms of science and ontology: "there can in reality be no talk of
such an extremely strained relationship"; "the ontological difference is not
a division at all, it is precisely the opposite"; "when I say that it [the on-
tological] is inaccessible for science, it remains nevertheless that which can-
not be evaded. . . . One could say it more clearly: Science has the possibility
of viewing ontological structures from its own standpoint, but it cannot grasp
them as such nor think them" (p. 88). Heidegger concludes that "Binswanger
did not respect [the line of demarcation between science and ontology]; rather,
he reinterpreted the ontological ontically" (p. 88). For Heidegger, Binswanger's
lack of clarity with respect to the ontological difference amounted to nothing
less than a "complete miscomprehension" of Heidegger's thought (p. 92). Hav-
ing thereby discredited Binswanger and his school of psychiatric daseins-
analysis, Boss alone is left in the limelight, blessed with Heidegger's endorse-
ment of his Daseinsanalytik which apparently respects the ontological dif-
ference to Heidegger's satisfaction.
Binswanger's (1942) misguided (though fruitful and enlightening) effort to
complement Heidegger's notion of "care" can be seen to follow from his failure
to appreciate the ontological meaning of the term. Heidegger observes of
Binswanger: "in his gigantic book. . . . he merely announces that he mis-
understands the fundamental existential called care as an ontic mode of
behavior in the sense of gloomy or trouble-caring way of acting of a par-
ticular person" (p. 92). Heidegger reminds us that the term "care" is rather
"the name for the entire essence of Dasein insofar as it is always already depen-
dent on something which reveals itself to it, and insofar as it always, from
the beginning, immerses itself in an individual relation to this something, no
matter what form this relation takes" (p. 92). From his perspective, Heideg-
ger believes that his own thinking in Sein und Zeit needs no complement,
and that Binswanger's "treatise on love, which Heidegger himself is supposed
Daseinsanalysis 55

to have forgotten" (p. 82), is a vain effort caught up in an elaboration of one

among many ontical states.
Indeed, the application of phenomenology to psychology has always fared
better when used in articulating an approach to psychotherapy than in for-
mulating theoretical advances in our understanding of specific phenomena.
This is because the very idea of phenomenology—the "letting be" and "let-
ting be seen" of that which shows itself from itself (Heidegger, 1927/1962)-is
immediately apparent to be conducive to caring for others, particularly those
in need of help. In this respect, the articles in Part Two of Psychotherapy
for Freedom, each in their own way, succeed in demonstrating the value of
a daseinsanalytic approach to psychotherapy. It is in Part Three, where the
fruits of daseinsanalytic "research" are presented, that we confront the Achilles
heel of the book and, indeed, of the daseinsanalytic literature in general. We
find that all too often such research fails to live up to the phenomenological
credo "to the things themselves!" Instead, as Craig himself admits later in
his epilogue, Heidegger's existentials are "used to formulate almost standar-
dized responses to phenomena and events which, afterwards, are still crying
out for a fresh and original understanding" (p. 230). Kastrinidis' essay on
narcissism, for example, does not discover the improtance of mood or at-
tunement in narcissistic individuals—it presupposes this importance, then pro-
ceeds to characterize the narcissist in terms o/this and other of Heidegger's
existentials. Likewise, in Craig's analysis of Freud's famous "Irma dream,"
rather than staying with the dream content itself, the researcher moves right
into a reduction of the dream content to ontical variations of Fursorge,
Zeitlichkeit, Befindlichkeit, and so on. Thus, far from encountering the dream
"precisely as it stands" (p. 212), Craig's analysis interprets the dream only as
it stands in relation to Heidegger's existentials. As Heidegger himself might
say, Craig's insight into Freud's dream has been guided in advance by a par-
ticular "fore-conception" that directs his "fore-sight" toward correlative dimen-
sions of the dream. This is, in fact, what differentiates Heidegger's own
existential-hermeneutic phenomenology from the purely descriptive
phenomenology of Husserl. Thus, if Craig has strayed from "the things
themselves", he has at least done so, it would seem, in Heideggerian fashion.
On second examination, however, we find that Craig's dream analysis strays
from Heidegger in a more profound and fundamental way. He presents the
second half of his reading of Freud's dream emphatically as "an ontological
analysis, that is, an attempt to penetrate the immediate appearance of things
in order to grasp their essential, underlying (i.e., ontological) structrue of
meaningfulness" (p. 208). In the very next sentence he states: "Apprehending
such concealed or 'hidden' meaning was, of course, Freud's own primary con-
cern" (ibid.). First, it is doubtful that Freud ever had any intention of carry-
ing his analyses of hidden meaning from the ontical domain to the ontological.
Secondly, what Craig presents as his "ontological analysis" remains entirely
within the domain of the ontical (although this by no means compromises
the psychological significance of his analysis): In discussing the "kinds of
caring" and "kinds of knowing" revealed in the dream, Craig is dwelling within
56 Theor. & Philo. Psych. Vol. 9, No. I 1989

the realm of typifications and variations, and thus is interested not in the
invariant "essentials" of care and understanding, but in specific (ontical) modes
of these existentials. It is here that the books's inclusion of Heidegger's criti-
que of Binswanger (both in his seminars and in his marginalia) becomes ironic
The very faux pas that led both Heidegger and Boss to reject Binswanger's
claim to an appropriation of Heidegger's own Daseinsanalytik is committed
in the book itself. Notwithstanding Craig's own admission in his epilogue,
it remains a slight disappointment that Psychotherapy for Freedom does not
deliver more fully with respect to its aim of demonstrating a faithfully da-
seinsanalytic approach to research.
The above criticisms, however, should not deter the prospective reader from
benefiting from the rich and thought-provoking inquiries, interviews, and in-
terpretations presented in this bountiful and unassuming text. It exhibits a
cohesiveness not often found in edited volumes, and it manages to be inspir-
ing to the more advanced reader while remaining accessible to the introduc-
tory student.

References
Binswanger, L. (1942). Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins
[Basic forms and knowledge of human existence]. Zurich: Niehans.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. MacQuarrie & E. Robinson, TVans.).
New York: Harper & Row. (Original work published 1927).
Heidegger, M. (1968). What is called thinking? (J. G. Gray, Ihms.). New York:
Harper & Row. (Original work published 1954).
Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental
phenomenology (D. Carr, TVans.). Evanston: Northwestern University
Press. (Original work published 1939).
May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. F. (Eds.). (1958). Existence: A new
dimension in psychiatry and psychology. New York: Basic Books.
Spiegelberg, H. (1972). Phenomenology in psychology and psychiatry: A
historical introduction. Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
van den Berg, J. H. (1972). A different existence: Principles of
phenomenologicalpsychopathology\ Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press.

* * * * *

Dr. Margaret E. Donnelly, our Student Affiliate Chair, has requested

that all members encourage students to join the division. Anyone
interested may write Dr. Donnelly at the address listed inside the
back cover.