Ludwig Binswanger´s Contributions to a Phenomenological Anthropology

Abstract

Ludwig Binswanger’s relations with phenomenology can be described as consisting of an initial approximation to Husserl’s thought, followed by a partial departure as the outcome of a contact with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and a final rapprochement. In this long journey, spanning more than 45 years, two ideas have remained constant: 1) phenomenology frees the psychotherapist’s gaze, allowing him to observe domains of human reality that the conceptualization of “official” psychiatry tends to hide; 2) phenomenology allows placing man in his own world and understanding the meaning of lived experiences in that same world. In this order of ideas, we intend, in this paper, to show how, for Binswanger, in a phenomenological psychopathology, the human psyche is seen as the place of a permanent task, which prevents the establishment of rigid boundaries between the normal and the pathological: namely, the task of restructuring itself to deal with reality, fighting the forces of disintegration that threaten it, coming both from the world and from within itself.