The Existential Analysis School of Thought by £udwig Binswanger I Existential Analysis-Its Nature and GoalsBY "EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS" we understand an anthropological 1 type of scientific investigation-that is, one which is aimed at the essence of being human. Its name as well as its philosophical foundation are derived from Heidegger's Analysis of Being, "Daseins Analytics." It is his-not yet properly recognized-merit to have uncovered a fundamental structure of existence and to have described it in its essential parts, that is, the structure of being-in-the-world. By identifying the basic condition or structure of existence with being-in-the-world, Heidegger intends to say something about the condition of the possibility for existence. The formulation "being-inthe-world" as used by Heidegger is, therefore, in the nature of an ontological thesis, a statement about an essential condition that determines existence in general. From the discovery and presentation of this essential condition, existential analysis received its decisive stimulation, its philosophical foundation and justification, as well as its methodological directives. However, existential analysis itself is neither an ontology nor a philosophy and therefore must refuse to be termed a philosophical anthropology; as the reader will soon realize, only the designation of phenomenological anthropology meets the facts of the situation. * Translated by ERNEST ANGEL from the original, "t)ber die daseinsanalytische Forschungsrichtung in der Psychiatrie/'

The World of the Compulsive* by V. £. von Qebsattel I The ProblemWHAT ALWAYS FASCINATES US in encountering the compulsive person is the unpenetrated, perhaps impenetrable, quality of his being different. Seventy years of clinical work and scientific research have not altered this reaction. Kept alive by the contradiction between the intimate closeness of the presence of a fellow man and the strange remoteness of a mode of being completely different from our own, the affect of psychiatric amazement never ceases. This excitement constantly thrusts upon us the question about the world in which the compulsive lives; for our world, in which he is found, does not seem to be his. Actually, the contradiction found in the phenomenon of the compulsive does not distinguish him from others encountered by the psychiatrist; but the lucidity with which the compulsive illuminates his own abnormality, without finding it out, and the consequently increasing paradox of his existence, only heightens, if possible, the acuity of the psychiatric affect and keeps it going with particular emphasis.The focus of our inquiry is the compulsive person in toto and primarily the special way of existing by which he is set into a specific world of being (Daseinswelt) different from our own. In this, we wish to go beyond the mere • Translated by SYLVIA KOPPEL and ERNEST ANGEL. [This article has been considerably abridged. The original paper contained three case histories. Only one is reproduced in this translation, the one which best illustrates the paper's concepts.-EDITORS] The bibliographic reference is Viktor E.

The Attempted Murder oj a Prostitute* by Roland XuhnIT IS ALWAYS MEANINGFUL to present the story of a criminal if we "care infinitely more about his thoughts than his deeds, and again far more about the sources of his thoughts than about the effects of those deeds*' (Friedrich Schiller). But there are men who cannot, themselves, realize either their thoughts or the sources of their thoughts. When such a person commits a crime without any apparent external cause, even our best intentions to understand him cannot solve the riddle. In such cases, psychology often enables us, if not to solve the psychic riddles, at least to throw some light upon them by teaching us to reconstruct the person's external and inner life history, to gain insight into his dream and phantasy life, and to see him within the frame of his predisposition and in interrelation with his family environment. Also, psychology makes use of an understanding description of all the attitudes of a person toward his fellow men, including his doctors. Furthermore, psychology examines him under experimentally simplified conditions and understands him in the terms of diagnostic-clinical psychiatry on the hs^is of classifying criteria which were found by comparing numerous cases with one another.However, it is possible to describe a person independently of any normative concept and, therefore, apart from the distinction between healthy and sick and, as far as this is possible, without passing any judgment. We are here referring to the phenomenologicai method of E. Husserl 1 which,• Translated by ERNEST ANGEL from the original, "Mordversuch eines depressiven Fetischisten und Sodomisten an einer Dime/* Monatsschrift fur Psychiatric und Neurologic,

Insanity as Dfe-TJistorkal Phenomenon and as !Mental Disease: The Case of 3Ise* by Cudwig Binswanger I Insanity as Life-Historical Phenomenon Life-historyOUR PATIENT is a thirty-nine-year-old intelligent woman. She was happily married, but not fully satisfied in her marriage, Protestant, religious, mother of three children, daughter of an extremely egotistical, hard and tyrannical father and an "angelic," self-effacing, touchingly kind mother who allowed herself to be treated by her husband like a slave and only lived for him.From the time she was a child Use suffered greatly under these conditions, feeling powerless to change them. For three years she had shown symptoms of overstrain and "nervousness." Following a performance of Hamlet, the idea came to her mind to persuade her father through some decisive act to treat her mother more considerately. During her boarding school period, the precocious girl had developed a somewhat ecstatic love for her father, and she believed she had great influence upon him. Use's resolution to carry out her plan was reinforced through that scene in which Hamlet plans to murder the king at his prayer but shrinks back from doing it. If at that particular time Hamlet had not missed his chance, he could have been saved, Use felt. She confessed to her husband that she planned something unusual and was only waiting for the right moment. Four months after the Hamlet performance, when asked for help against her father by her mother, she told her husband that she wanted to "demonstrate to her father what love can do." If he forbade her to do it, he would make her unhappy for the rest of her life; she had to "get rid of that."

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