May, rollo (ed ) existence (basic books, 1958)

It is precisely in this context that the existential approach may have a par-ticular andsignificant contribution.For this approach combines the basic scientific quest forunderstanding th

A 'New Dimension in

Psychiatry and

Psychology

TLollo 'May

Jienri $ Ellenberger

Editors

And to all those in the science ofman who have

opened new realmsin ourunderstandingofwhat

itmeans to bea human being

THIS BOOK represents the fruition of four years' labor most of it, tunately, a labor of love The idea of translating these papers, originating

for-withErnest Angel,was welcomed byBasicBooksbecause oftheirenthusiasm

for bringing out significantnew material in the sciences ofman. Iwas glad

toaccepttheir invitation to participateasoneof the editors since I,too, had long been convinced of the importance of making these works available inEnglish, particularly at this crucialmoment in the development ofmodern

psychiatry andpsychology.

We asked Dr Ellenbergertojoin us as the third editorbecause ofhistensiveknowledgeofthe literatureofphenomenological andexistential psy-chiatryandhisclinicalexperienceinusingthesemethodsin Switzerland He

ex-and Mr Angel are chiefly responsible for the selection of the particularpaperstranslated. In ourintroductory chapters, Dr Ellenberger and Ihave undertaken the task of making a bridge between these contributions and Americanpsychiatry and psychology, while Mr Angel hasborne themajor weightofthe translations themselves

But nosoonerhad we commenced work than we foundourselvesupagainstgravedifficulties. How could one render intoEnglish thekeyterms andcon-

cepts of this way of understanding man, beginning with even such a basic

wordasDaseinlWe were indeedfacingwhathas oftenbeencalled the genius

and demoniccharacter of the German language. Ivividly remembera

com-ment made byDr.PaulTillich, who ishimself a representative ofone wing

oftheexistentialmovement and who likewise possesses a penetrating standingof psychoanalysis.DrivingtogethertoEastHampton one day during

under-the early stages ofthis work, Tillich and I stopped at a "diner/' Over our

coffeeIhanded himalistofsomeofthekeytermsandtheirproposedlents in English

equiva-Suddenly he exclaimed, "Ach, it is impossiblel" I hoped he meant thecoffeeand notthe definitions! Butitsoon became clearhe meant thelatter

"It is impossible," he continued "But you must doit anyway/'

Thepresentvolumeis proofthatwekepttothe task,and we trust thatby and largewe have achieved success in renderinginto clear English the pro-

found andoftentimes exceedinglysubtlemeaningsin thesepapers.The most

severe obstacles arose in "The Case ofEllen West." This remarkable paper

by Binswanger was generally considered to be untranslatable into English,chieflybecause the keyterms in the analysis ofthe patient are builtup as

isso often the casein German philosophicalandscientificwritingout of a

complexinterrelation of concepts.We hadreluctantlydecidedinouroriginal

plans to omititfrom thisvolume Then we heard thatDr Werner Mendel

and Dr.Joseph Lyons inTopeka had had the courage to undertake a lation of Ellen West We warmly appreciated their willingness to offer ustheresults of their labors Sogreat arethe difficulties inherent in this paper

trans-that their draft was revised by Professor Bayard Morgan and reworked inpart by Dr Ellenberger and, in connection with special problems, by Dr.Straus Finally, Mr Angel and I worked through the ultimate version indetail.Despite the travailsinvolvedinsuch combined efforts,we are indeed happy forreasons thereader ofthis case will quickly see thatthe paperis

available in English Due to pressures of time, Dr Binswanger was unable

to study this translation in detail, and hence it is not termed authorizedalthoughit ispublishedwiththe author's permission Allofthe other trans-lations are authorizedversions

On completing such a labor, the moods of editors and translators are ofcourse complex But, for myself, may I say that time and again in working

onthesepapersduringthese yearsIhave hadthe experience of discovery thatKeatsso beautifully describes:

Whenanewplanetswimsinto hisken ."

This indeed is its own reward But we are also deeply gratified ifwe have

madeitpossible forour colleagues andothers to have this same experience

ofdiscovery.

Preface^, vii

PART I: INTRODUCTION

Existential Movement in Psychology

IV Findings in a Case of Schizophrenic Depression

VI The World of the Compulsive

by V. E. von Gebsattel, trans, by

PART III: EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS

by Ludwlg Binswanger, trans, by Ernest Angel, 191

and as Mental Disease: the Case of Use

by Ludwig Binswanger, trans, by Ernest Angel, 214

by Ludwig Binswanger, trans, by

Werner M Mendel and Joseph Lyons, 237

X The Attempted Murder of a Prostitute

by Roland Kuhn, trans, by Ernest Angel, 365

Biographical Notes of Translated Contributors, 429

Index, 435

Introduction

The Origins and Significance

of the Existential

by Rollo JAaj

IN RECENT YEARStherehas been agrowing awareness on the part o some

psychiatrists and psychologists that serious gaps exist in our way of standing of human beings. These gaps may well seem most compelling topsychotherapists, confronted as they are in clinic and consultingroom with

under-the sheer reality of persons in crisis whose anxiety will not be quieted by

theoretical formulae But the lacunae likewise present seemingly

unsur-mountabledifficultiesinscientificresearch Thus manypsychiatristsand

psy-chologistsin Europe and others inthis countryhave beenasking themselves

disquieting questions, and others are aware ofgnawing doubts which arise

fromthe samehalf-suppressed and unaskedquestions.

he really is, knowing him in hisown reality; or are we seeingmerely a jection of our own theories about him? Every psychotherapist, to be sure,has his knowledge of patterns and mechanisms of behavior and has at hisfingertips the systemofconcepts developed byhis particularschool. Suchaconceptual system isentirely necessaryifwe are to observe scientifically. But

pro-thecrucialquestion is always the bridgebetweenthesystem andthe patient

how can we becertain thatour system, admirable andbeautifullywrought

asitmay be inprinciple, has anything whatever to do withthis specific Mr.

Jones, aliving,immediaterealitysittingopposite us in the consultingroom?

May not just this particular person require another system, another quitedifferent frame of reference? And does not this patient, or any person forthat matter, evade our investigations, slip through ourscientific fingers likeseafoam,preciselytotheextentthatwerelyonthe logical consistency ofour

ownsystem?

*IwishtothankDrs.HenriEllenberger,LeslieFarber, Carl Rogers,Erwin Straus,Paul

Tillich,and Edith Weigert forreading and makingsuggestions for these two chapters.

Anothersuchgnawingquestionis: How can we know whether we areing the patientin his real world, the world in which he "lives and moves andhashisbeing/'and whichisforhimunique, concrete, anddifferentfrom ourgeneral theories of culture?Inall probabilitywe havenever participated

see-inhis world and do notknowit directly; yetwe must know it and tosome

extentmustbe ableto existinit ifweare tohave any chanceofknowing him. Such questions were the motivations of psychiatrists and psychologists in

Europe who later comprised the Daseinsanalyse, or existential-analytic,

movement The"existential research orientation in psychiatry/' writes wigBinswanger,itschiefspokesman, "arosefromdissatisfactionwiththepre-vailingefforts togainscientificunderstandingin psychiatry . Psychology andpsychotherapyassciences are admittedlyconcerned with 'man/ but not

Lud-atall primarilywithmentally illman, but with man as such The new

un-derstandingofman, which we owe to Heidegger's analysis of existence, has

itsbasisin thenewconceptionthatmanis nolongerunderstoodin terms of

some theory be it a mechanistic, a biologic or a psychological one ." x

I What Catted Forth This Development?

Before turningtowhatthisnewconceptionofmanis,letusnotethatthis

approachsprang up spontaneously in different parts ofEurope and among

different schools, andhas adiversebodyof researchers andcreative thinkers.There were Eugene Minkowski inParis, ErwinStraus in Germany and now

in this country, V E von Gebsattel in Germany, who represent chiefly the

first,or phenomenological,stageofthismovement There were Ludwigwanger, A Storch, M. Boss, G Bally, Roland Kuhn in Switzerland, J. H.

specifically the second, or existential, stage. These factsnamely, that the

movement emerged spontaneously, without these men in some cases

know-ing about the remarkablysimilarwork of their colleagues, and that, rather

than being the brain-child of one leader, it owes its creation to verse

di-psychiatrists and psychologiststestify that it must answer a spread need in our times in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. Von

wide-Gebsattel, Boss, and Bally are Freudian analysts; Binswanger, though inSwitzerland, became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society atFreud's recommendation when the Zurich group split off from the Inter-national Some of the existential therapists had also been under Jungian

influence

These thoroughly experienced men became disquieted over the fact that,although theywere effecting cures by the techniques they had learned, theycould not, so long as they confined themselves to Freudian and Jungian as-

l L.Binswanger,"ExistentialAnalysisandPsychotherapy,"in ProgressinPsychotherapy,

ed, Fromm-Reichmann and Moreno (NewYork: Grune

sumptions, arrive at any clearunderstanding of why these cures did ordid not occur or what actually was happening in the patients' existence. They

refused the usualmethods amongtherapists ofquieting such inner doubts namely, of turning one's attention with redoubled efforts to perfecting theintricacies of one'sownconceptualsystem.Another tendency amongpsycho-therapists, when anxiousor assailed by doubts asto what they are doing, is

to become preoccupied with technique; perhaps the most handy reducingagent is to abstract one's self from theissues by assuming awholly

anxiety-technical emphasis These menresisted this temptation They likewisewere

unwilling to postulate unverifiable agents, such as "libido," or "censor," as

"trans-ference," to explain what was going on And they had particularly strongdoubts aboutusing the theory of the unconsciousasacarte blancheon which

almostanyexplanation could be written.They wereaware, asStrausputsit,

that the "unconscious ideas ofthe patient are moreoften than not the scious theories of the therapist."

con-It was not with specific techniques of therapy that these psychiatrists and

psychologists took issue. They recognize, for example, thatpsychoanalysis is

validfor certain types ofcases, and some ofthem, bonafide members ofthe

Freudian movement, employ it themselves But they all had grave doubtsaboutits theoryofman And they believed these difficulties andlimitations

in the concept ofman not onlyseriously blockedresearch but wouldin the

long runalso seriously limit the effectivenessand developmentoftherapeutictechniques They soughtto understand the particularneuroses or psychosesand,forthatmatter,any humanbeing'scrisissituation,notasdeviationsfrom

the conceptualyardstick ofthis orthat psychiatristorpsychologistwho

hap-pened to be observing, but as deviations in the structure of that particularpatient's existence, the disruptionof his condition humaine "Apsychother-

apy on existential-analytic bases investigates the life-history of the patient

tobe treated, . butitdoesnotexplainthis life-history andits pathologicidiosyncrasies according to the teachings ofany school of psychotherapy, or

by meansof itspreferredcategories Instead,itunderstandsthis life-history asmodificationsofthetotal structureofthepatient's being-in-the-world. ."8

Ifthese phrasesseem confusing, we may onlyremarkthat itwillbe thetask

of theseintroductory chaptersto makeasclearaspossiblewhatthisapproach meansintheunderstandingof specificpersons Mostof thesucceeding chap-ters in the book, written by the pioneers in this movement themselves, will

exemplify the method in case studies

Binswanger'sown endeavortounderstand howexistential analysis throwslight on a given case, and how it compares with other methods of under-

2Personal communication from Dr Lefebre, an existential psychotherapist who was astudentofJaspersandBoss.

8 L.

standing,isgraphicallyshownin his"EllenWest."4Afterhe had completed

his book on existential analysis, in 1942,5

Binswanger went back into the

archives in the sanatoriumof which heis director to select the case history

of this young woman who had ultimately committed suicide The case is

rich not only in the respect that the eloquent diaries, personal notes, and poems of Ellen West were available but also in the respects that she had

beentreatedovertwoperiodsoftimebypsychoanalysts before heradmission

to thesanatorium and, while in the sanatorium, had receivedconsultations

byBleulerandKraepelin Binswangeruses thiscase asabasis fordiscussing

how Ellen West was diagnosed and understood first by the psychoanalysts,then by Bleuler and Kraepelin and the authorities at the sanatorium, and

finallyhowshewould now be understood onthebasisofexistential analysis

It is relevant here to note the long friendship between Binswanger and

Freud, a relationship which both greatly valued In his recent small book

givinghisrecollections ofFreud, which he publishedat theurging ofAnna

Freud, Binswanger recounts the many visits he made to Freud's home in

Vienna andthevisitof severaldaysFreud made tohimathissanatorium on Lake Constance Their relationship was the more remarkable since it was

the sole instance of a lasting friendship of Freud with any colleague who

differed radicallywith him There is apoignant qualityin amessage Freud

wrote to Binswanger in reply to the latter's New Year's letter: "You, quite

differentfrom so manyothers, have not letit happen that your intellectual

developmentwhich hastakenyou further and further away from my

influ-enceshoulddestroyourpersonalrelations, and you do not know how much

goodsuch fineness does to one."6 Whether the friendship survived because

the intellectual conflict between the two was like the proverbial battle

be-tween the elephant and the walrus, who nevermet on the same ground, orbecause of some diplomatic attitude on Binswanger's part (a tendency for

which Freudmildly chidedhimatonepoint)or becauseofthedepthof their

respect and affection for each other, we cannot of course judge What was

certainlyimportant, however,wasthefactthatBinswanger andthe others inthe existentialmovement intherapywere concerned not with arguing about

specific dynamisms as such but with analyzing the underlying assumptions about humannature and arrivingat astructure on which all specific thera-peutic systems could be based

It would be a mistake, therefore, simply to identify the existential ment inpsychotherapy asanother in the line of schools which have broken

move-offfrom Freudianism, from Jung and Adler on down Those previous ating schools, although called forthby blind spots in orthodox therapy and

devi-4Includedin thisvolume,publishedoriginally in 1945.

5Grundformen undErkenntnismenschlichenDaseins (Zurich: Niehans, 1942).

6 L.Binswanger, Erinnerungen an SigmundFreud,just publishedin this countryunderthe title, Sigmund Freud: Reminiscences of a Friendship, trans, by Norbert GutermanYork: Gruneand

typically emerging when orthodoxy hadstruck an arid plateau, werethelessformed undertheimpetusof the creativeworkofone seminalleader.

never-Otto Rank's new emphasis on the present time in the patient's experience

emerged in the early twenties when classical analysis was bogging down inunvital intellectualized discussion of the patient's past; Wilhelm Reich'scharacter analysis arose in the late twenties as an answer to the special

need to break through the "ego defenses" of the character armor; new tural approaches developed in the 1930*8 through the work of Horney and,

cul-in their distinctive ways, Fromm and Sullivan, when orthodox analysis was

missing the real significance of the social and interpersonal aspects of rotic andpsychoticdisturbances Nowthe emergenceof the existential ther-

namely, that itwasalso calledforth byblind spots, asweshall make clearerlater, in the existing approaches to psychotherapy But it differs from theother schools in two respects First, it is not the creation of any one leader,

but grew up spontaneously and indigenously in diverse parts of the tinent Secondly, it does notpurport to found a newschool as overagainstother schools or to give a new technique of therapy as over against othertechniques It seeks, rather, to analyze thestructure ofhuman existence an

con-enterprise which, ifsuccessful, should yield an understanding of the reality

underlying allsituations ofhuman beingsin crises.

When Binswanger writes, " existential analysis is able to widen and deepen the basic concepts and understandings of psychoanalysis," he is on sound ground, in my judgment, not only with respect to analysis butother

forms of therapy as well

It requires no brilliance, however, to predict that this approachwill counteragood deal of resistance inthis country, despite the fact thatithas

en-beenrapidlygrowinginimportance inEurope andis nowreportedby some

observerstobethedominant movement onthecontinent.Inthe earlyperiod

when they were colleagues, Freud once wrote to Jung that it was always

better to identifyand callforth openly the resistances of thatstill-Victorianculture to psychoanalysis Weshall take Freud's advice and name what we

believe willbe the chief resistances to this present approach

The first source of resistance, of course, to this or any new contribution

is the assumption that all major discoveries have been made in these fields

and we need only fill in the details This attitude is an old interloper, an

uninvited guest who has been notoriously present in the battles between

the schools in psychotherapy Its name is

"blind-spots-structuralized-into-dogma." And though it does not merit an answer, nor is it susceptible toany, it is unfortunately an attitude which may be more widespreadin thishistorical period than one would like to think

suspicion that existential analysis is an encroachment o philosophy intopsychiatry, and does not have much to do with science This attitude is

partly a hang-over of the culturally inherited scars from the battle o thelast of the nineteenth century when psychological science won its freedom from metaphysics. The victory then achieved was exceedingly important

but, asin theaftermath ofanywar, therefollowedreactions to opposite tremes which are themselves harmful Concerning this resistance we shall

ex-make several comments.

It is well to remember that the existential movement in psychiatry and

psychologyarosepreciselyout ofa passiontobe notlessbut moreempirical.Binswanger and the others were convinced that the traditional scientific

methods not only did notdojustice to the databut actually tended to hide

ratherthanrevealwhat was going onin the patient Theexistential analysis

movement is aprotestagainst the tendency to see the patient in forms

tail-ored to our ownpreconceptions or tomake him over into the image of our

own predilections. In thisrespectit stands squarely within thescientific dition inits widestsense Butitbroadens itsknowledge ofman byhistoricalperspective and scholarly depth, by accepting the facts that human beings

tra-reveal themselves in art and literature and philosophy, and by profiting

from the insights of the particular cultural movements which express the

anxietyandconflicts ofcontemporary man. Onehas only toread theing chapters to see with what intellectual probity and scholarly discipline

follow-these students of man explore their fields. To my mind they represent a

uniting of science and humanism.

It is also importanthere toremind ourselves that every scientificmethod

rests upon philosophical presuppositions These presuppositions determine

not onlyhow muchreality theobserver withthis particularmethod can seethey are indeed the spectacles through which he perceivesbut alsowhether ornotwhatis observedis pertinent to realproblems and therefore

whether the scientific work will endure It is a gross, albeit common, error

to assume naively thatone canobserve facts bestifhe avoids all

preoccupa-tionwithphilosophicalassumptions Allhe does, then,ismirroruncritically

the particular parochial doctrines of his own limited culture The result in

our day is that science gets identifiedwith methods of isolating factors and

observing them from an allegedlydetachedbaseaparticularmethod which

arose out of the split between subject and object made in the seventeenthcentury inWestern cultureandthendevelopedinto itsspecialcompartmen-

talized formin the late nineteenthand twentiethcenturies.7We inour day,

of course, are no less subject to "methodolatry" than are members of any

other culture But it seems especially a misfortune that our understanding

insucha crucialareaasthe psychological study ofman, withthe

understand-7 See

ing ofemotional and mentalhealth depending upon it, should be curtailed

by uncritical acceptance of limited assumptions Helen Sargent has sagelyand pithily remarked, "Science offers more leeway than graduate students

are permitted to realize."8

Isnottheessence of science theassumptionthatreality islawfulandforeunderstandable, andis itnotaninseparable

there-aspect ofscientificintegritythat any method continuously criticize its own presuppositions? The onlywayto widenone's "blinders" is to analyze one's philosophical assumptions

In my judgment it is very much to the credit of the psychiatrists and

psy-chologists in this existential movement that they seek to clarify their own

bases This enables them,asDr Ellenberger points out ina later chapterinthisbook, to see theirhumansubjects withafreshclarityand to shedorigi-nal light on many facets of psychological experience

The thirdsource ofresistance, and tomy mind the mostcrucial ofall, is

the tendency in this country to be preoccupied with technique and to be

impatient with endeavors to search below such considerations to find thefoundationsupon whichalltechniquesmust bebased Thistendencycan be

wellexplainedintermsofour Americansocialbackground,particularlyourfrontier history, and itcan bewell justifiedas our optimistic, activisticcon-cern for helping and changingpeople Certainly our genius in the field ofpsychology hasbeenin the behavioristic,clinical, andappliedareas,and our

special contributions in psychiatry have been in drug therapy and othertechnical applications GordonAllport has describedthe factthatAmerican and British psychology (as well as general intellectual climate) has been Lockean, thatis,pragmatic, a tradition fittingbehaviorism, stimulusandre-sponse systems, and animal psychology. The continental tradition, in con-

trast, has been Leibnitzian.9 Now it is very sobering to remind one's selfthat everynew theoretical contribution in the field ofpsychotherapy which

hashad the originality and germinating power to lead to the developingof

a newschool has come from continental Europe with only two exceptions

and, of these, one was grandsiredby aEuropean-born psychiatrist.10 Inthis

core ofits own

10Tosee this onehas only to namethe originators ofnew theory: Freud, Adler, Jung,Rank,Stekel,Reich,Homey, Fromm, etc. Thetwo exceptions, sofar as Ican see, are theschoolsofHarryStack Sullivanand Carl Rogers,and the former was indirectly related to

the work of the Swiss-born Adolph Meyer Even Rogers may partly illustrate our point,

for althoughhis approach has clear andconsistent theoretical implications about human

nature,his focus hasbeenonthe "applied" ratherthan the "pure"science side, ifwemay make thatdistinction, and his theory about humannature owes much to Otto Rank We

countrywe tendtobe anationof practitioners; butthe disturbingquestion

is, where shall we get what we practice? In our preoccupation with nique, laudableenoughinitself,we tendto overlook thefactthat technique emphasized by itself in the longrun defeats even technique. One of the rea-sons that European thought has been so much richer in yielding original

tech-and fresh discoveries in these fields is its tradition of broad historical and

philosophical perspective in science and thought. This is abundantly clear

in the specificareawith which weareconcerned inthisbook, the existentialpsychotherapy movement. Binswanger, Straus, Von Gebsattel and the otherfounders ofthismovement, though theirthought isrelated to real problems and patients, have the flavor of "pure" science. They search not for tech-niques assuchbutratherforan understanding ofthe foundationson which

all technique must stand

Theseresistanceswe have named, farfrom underminingthe contribution

of existential analysis, precisely demonstrate its potential importance toour thinking, in my judgment. Despite its difficulties due partly to its

language, partly to the complexity of its thought we believe that it is acontributionof significance andoriginalitymeritingserious study

psychology andpsychiatry.ProfessorWhitehead ofHarvard, in his inaugural address eral yearsagoasDirectoroftheHarvardSchoolof Economics,undertook to listthe twentyoutstanding contributors to the intellectual scientific development ofWestern civilization

sev-during the last three centuries, such as Einstein, Freud; every one of them came fromEuropeor the Near East; notone was born inAmerica One cannotexplain this simply

onthe basis ofthe longer timeEurope has beentraining scientists, saysWhitehead, for inAmericainthelastfour decadeswehave trained morescientistsand engineersthan in all

therest ofWestern civilizationputtogether.Since the sources of"pure"science inEurope

maybedrying up, this predilectionfor"applications" presents us with a serious problem

forthefuture.

We obviously havenodesire at all to setup any"Europevs. America" issue. We are all

part of modern Western culture, and for quite understandable historical reasons certain

aspects ofthe historical destiny ofWestern man fell moreheavily on Europe and others

on America It is precisely in this context that the existential approach may have a

par-ticular andsignificant contribution.For this approach combines the basic scientific quest

forunderstanding the underlyingstructure of human existence both with a suspicion of

abstractionperse and with an emphasis on truth produced in action It seeks theory not

inthe realm ofabstractionbut in the realm of the concrete, existinghuman being. Thus

ithas a profound, potential(though as yetunrealized)affinity fortheAmerican geniusfor

combining thought and action (asshown so beautifully in William James). The chapters

which follow, therefore, may yieldimportant help inourfinding the"pure" science bases

we need inthe man

everything fromthe posturingdefiant dilettantism ofsome membersof the

avant garde on the leftbankin Paris, to a philosophy of despair advocatingsuicide, to a system of anti-rationalist German thought written in a lan-

guage so esoteric as to exasperate any empirically minded reader tialism,rather,is anexpressionofprofound dimensionsofthemodern emo-

Existen-tionalandspiritualtemper andis showninalmostall aspects ofourculture

Itis found notonlyinpsychologyand philosophy butinart,videVan Gogh,

Cezanne, and Picassoand in literature,vide Dostoevski, Baudelaire, Kafka,

and Rilke Indeed, inmany ways it is the unique and specific portrayal ofthe psychological predicament ofcontemporary Western man. This culturalmovement, asweshall see later in detail, has itsroots in the samehistoricalsituationandthesamepsychologicalcriseswhichcalledforth psychoanalysis

and other forms of psychotherapy

Confusions about the term occur even in usually highly literate places,

The New York Times, ina report commenting on Sartre's denunciation of,

andfinalbreak with, theRussian Communists for their suppression of

free-domin Hungary, identified Sartre as a leader in "existentialism, a broadlymaterialisticformofthought."Thereportillustratestworeasonsforthecon-fusionfirst, theidentification of existentialism in thepopular mindin this

country withthewritings ofJean-PaulSartre Quite apartfromthefact thatSartre isknown here for his dramas, movies, andnovels ratherthan for hismajor, penetrating psychologicalanalyses,itmust be emphasizedthatherep-

resents anihilistic, subjectivist extreme in existentialismwhich invites understanding, andhispositionisby no means themostusefulintroduction

mis-to the movement But the second more serious confusion in the Times port is its definition of existentialism as "broadly materialistic.

re-1 '

Nothing could beless accurate nothing, unless itbe the exactopposite, namely, de-scribingit asan idealistic form of thinking For the veryessence of this ap-

proachis that itseeks to analyze andportray thehuman being whether inart or literature or philosophy or psychology on a level which undercutsthe old dilemma of materialism versus idealism

Existentialism, inshort,, is theendeavor to understand man by cutting

be-low the cleavage between subject and object which has bedeviled Western thought andscience since shortly after theRenaissance This cleavageBins-

wangercalls "the cancerofall psychologyup tonow the cancerof thedoctrine of subject-object cleavage of the world." The existential way of

understanding human beings has some illustrious progenitors in Western

history, suchas Socrates in his dialogues,Augustine inhis cal analysesof the self, Pascalin his struggle to find a placefor the "heart'sreasons which the reason knows not of." Butit arose specificallyjust overa hundred years ago in Kierkegaard's violentprotest against the reigningra-tionalism of his day, Hegel's "totalitarianism of reason," to use Maritain's

depth-psychologi-Kierkegaard proclaimedthat Hegel's identificationofabstract truth

withrealitywas anillusion and amounted to trickery. "Truthexists," wrote

Kierkegaard, "only as theindividual himselfproduces itin action/' He and

theexistentialists followinghimprotestedfirmlyagainst therationalists and

idealistswho wouldseemanonly asasubject thatis, ashavingreality only

as a thinkingbeing.Butjustas stronglytheyfoughtagainst the tendencytotreat man as an object to be calculated and controlled, exemplified in thealmost overwhelming tendencies in the Western world to make human

beings into anonymous units to fit like robots into the vast industrial and

political collectivisms of our day.

These thinkers sought the exact opposite of intellectualism for its own

sake.They would haveprotestedmoreviolentlythanclassicalpsychoanalysisagainst theuse ofthinkingasa defenseagainstvitalityoras asubstitute for

immediate experience. One of the early existentialists of the sociologicalwing, Feuerbach, makes this appealing admonition, "Do not wish to be a

philosopher incontrast to beinga man do not thinkas a thinker .

think asaliving, real being Thinkin Existence/*u

The term "existence," coming from the root ex-sistere, means literally tostand out, to emerge This accurately indicates what these cultural repre-sentatives sought, whether in art or philosophy or psychology namely, to

portray the human being not as a collection of static substances or

mecha-nisms or patterns but rather as emerging and becoming, that is to say, asexisting.For no matter how interesting or theoretically trueis the fact that

I am composed of such and such chemicals or actby such and such

mecha-nisms or patterns, the crucial question always is that I happen to exist atthis given moment in time and space, and my problem is how I am to be awareof thatfactand whatIshalldo aboutit.As weshall seelater, theexis-tential psychologists and psychiatrists do not at all rule out the study of

dynamisms,drives,andpatterns ofbehavior.Buttheyholdthat thesecannot

be understood inanygiven person except in the context ofthe overarchingfactthathereis apersonwho happens to exist,to be,and ifwe do not keep

this inmind,allelsewe know aboutthis personwill lose its meaning Thus

their approach is always dynamic; existence refers to coming into being,

becoming Their endeavor is to understand this becoming not as a

senti-mentalartifact butasthe fundamental structureof humanexistence.When

the term "being" isused inthe following chapters, asit often is, the readershould rememberthat it isnot a staticword buta verb form, theparticiple

of the verb "to be." Existentialism is basically concerned with ontology,

thatis, the science ofbeing (ontos, from Greek "being").

We canseemore clearly the significance ofthe term ifwe recall that ditionally in Western thought "existence" has been set over against "es-

tra-11Quoted by Paul Tillich, "Existential Philosophy," in the Journal of the History of

Ideas, 5:1,44-70, 1944.

sence." Essencerefers to the greenness of this stick of wood, letus say, and

itsdensity, weight, andothercharacteristics whichgiveit substance By and

large Western thought since the Renaissance has been concerned with

es-sences Traditional science seeks to discover such essences or

substances; it

assumes an essentialistmetaphysics, as Professor Wild ofHarvard puts it.12

Thesearchfor essences may indeed produce higly significant universal laws

in science or brilliant abstract conceptualizations in logic or philosophy

Butitcan do thisonlyby abstraction.Theexistence of thegiven individualthing hastobe leftoutofthepicture.For example, wecandemonstrate thatthree apples added to three make six. But this would be just as true ifwe

substitutedunicorns for apples; itmakes no difference to the mathematical

truth of the proposition whether apples or unicorns actually exist or not

Thatisto say,a proposition can be truewithoutbeingreal

Perhapsjust cause thisapproach hasworked so magnificentlyin certain areas ofscience,

be-we tend to forget thatit

necessarily involves adetachedviewpoint and thatthe living individual must be omitted.13There remainsthe chasm between

truthandreality.Andthe crucialquestionwhichconfrontsus in psychology

andotheraspectsof the science of manis

preciselythischasm between what

is abstractly true and what is existentially real for the given living person.Lest it seem that we are setting up an artificial, straw-man issue, let uspoint out that this chasm between truth and reality is openly and frankly

admitted by sophisticated thinkers in behavioristic and conditioning

psy-chology Kenneth W. Spence, distinguished leader of one wingofbehaviortheory, writes, "The question of whether any particular realm of behavior

pri-ority ininvestigation doesnot,oratleast shouldnot, arisefor the gist as scientist" Thatisto say, it does not primarily matter whether what

psycholo-is being studied is real or not What realms, then, should be selected forstudy? Spence gives priority to phenomena which lend themselves "to the

degrees of control and analysis necessary for the formulation of abstractlaws."14 Nowhere has ourpoint been put more unabashedly and clearly

12

JohnWild, The Challenge of Existentialism (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1955).Modernphysics,withHeisenberg, Bohr(seep.26),andsimilartrendshave changed

at this point, paralleling, as weshall see later, oneside of theexistentialistdevelopment

Wearetalkingaboveofthetraditional ideas ofWestern science.

13Reality makes a difference to the person who has the apples that is the existential side butit is irrelevant to the truth of the mathematicalproposition. For amoreserious

example, that all men die isa truth; and to say that such and such a percentage die at

such and such ages gives a statistical accuracy to the proposition. But neither of these

statements saysanything about the factwhichreally mattersmost to each of us, namely,

thatyou andImustalonefacethefact that at some unknownmomentin the futurewe

shall die.In contrast totheessentialist propositions, these latter are existential facts.

14KennethW.Spence,BehaviorTheory and Conditioning(NewHaven: Yale University

what can be reduced toabstract lawsis selected, and whether what you arestudyinghasreality or notis irrevelant to thisgoal On the basis of this ap-

proach many an impressive system inpsychology has been erected, with straction piledhigh upon abstraction the authors succumbing, aswe intel-lectuals are wont, to their "edifice complex" until an admirable and imposing structure is built The only trouble is that the edifice has more

ab-often thannot been separated from human reality in its very foundations

Now the thinkers in the existential tradition hold the exact opposite toSpence's view, andsodo the psychiatristsand psychologists in the existential

psychotherapy movement They insist that it is necessary and possible to

have ascience ofman whichstudieshumanbeings in theirreality.

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and those who followed them accurately foresawthis growing split between truth and reality in Western culture, and theyendeavored to callWestern man back from thedelusion that reality can be comprehended in an abstracted, detached way But though they protestedvehemently against arid intellectualism, they were by no means simple ac-

tivists. Nor were they anti-rational Anti-intellectualism and other ments in our day which make thinking subordinate to acting must not at

move-allbeconfusedwithexistentialism.Eitheralternativemaking mansubject or

object results in losing the living, existing person Kierkegaard and theexistential thinkers

appealed to a reality underlying both subjectivity and

objectivity.We must notonly study aperson'sexperienceas such,theyheld,

but even more we muststudythemantowhomtheexperience ishappening,

the one who is doing the experiencing They insist, as Tillich puts it, that

"Reality or Being is not the object of cognitive experience, but is rather'existence/ is Reality as immediately experienced, with the accent on theinner, personal characterofman's immediateexperience."15This comment,

as well as several above, will indicate to the reader how close the

existen-tialistsaretopresent-daydepth-psychology Itisby no meansaccidentalthatthegreatest of them in the nineteenth century, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche,

happenalsotobe amongthemost remarkable psychologists (inthe dynamic

sense) of all time and that one of the contemporary leaders of this school,Karl

Jaspers,wasoriginallyapsychiatristand wrotea notabletexton

psycho-pathology When onereads Kierkegaard's profound analyses ofanxiety and

despair or Nietzsche's amazingly acute insights into the dynamics of

resent-ment and the guiltandhostilitywhich accompanyrepressedemotional

pow-ers,one must pinchhimselfto realizethatheisreading workswrittenfiveand ahundredyears agoandnot some new contemporary psychological

seventy-analysis The existentialists are centrally concerned with rediscovering the

livingperson amid the compartmentalization and dehumanlzation of

mod-ernculture, andinorder todothis theyengagein depthpsychological

anal-ysis.Theirconcern is not with isolatedpsychologicalreactions in themselves

IBPaul

butratherwith the psychological beingof the livingman who isdoing the

experiencing.Thatistosay, they use psychological termswith anontologicalmeaning.16

Martin Heidegger is generally taken as the fountainhead of present-dayexistential thought His seminal work, Being and Time, was of radical im-portance in giving Binswanger and other existential psychiatrists and psy-

chologists the deep and broad basis they sought for understanding man.

Heidegger's thought is rigorous, logically incisive, and "scientific" in the

Europeansense of pursuing withunrelenting vigor and thoroughness

what-ever implicationshis inquiriesledhimto. Buthisworkis almostimpossible

16Forreaderswhowishmorehistoricalbackground,weappend this note. In the winter

of 1841,Schellinggavehisfamousseries of lectures atthe UniversityofBerlin "beforea

dis-tinguished audience including Kierkegaard, Burckhardt, Engels, Bakunin Schelling set

outtooverthrowHegel, whosevast rationalist system,including, aswehavesaid, the tification ofabstracttruthwithrealityandthe bringingof allofhistory into an "absolutewhole," held immenseand dominantpopularityin the Europeofthemiddle ofthe nine-teenth century. Though many of Schilling's listeners were bitterly disappointed in his

iden-answers to Hegel, the existentialmovementmaybesaid tohave begun there. Kierkegaardwent back to Denmarkandin 1844 published his PhilosophicalFragments, and two years

later he wrote the declaration of independence of existentialism, Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Also in 1844 there appeared the second edition of Schopenhauer's The World

asWilland Idea,aworkimportant inthenew movement because of its central emphasis

on vitality, "will," along with "idea." Two related works were written by Karl Marx in

1844-45.Theearly Marxis significantin thismovement in his attackuponabstract truth

as"ideology," again usingHegelas hiswhippingboy.Marx' dynamicview of history as the

arena in which men and groups bring truth into being and his meaningful fragmentspointingouthow themoney economy of modernindustrialism tends to turn peopleinto

thingsandworkstowardthedehumanizationofmodernmanare likewise significant inthe

existentialist

approach Both Marx and Kierkegaard took over Hegel's dialectical methodbut usedit forquitedifferentpurposes.More existentialelements werelatentlypresentin

Hegel,itmaybenoted,thanhisantagonistsacknowledged

In the following decades the movement subsided Kierkegaard remained completelyunknown, Schelling's work was contemptuously buried, and Marx and Feuerbach wereinterpretedasdogmaticmaterialists.Then anewimpetus cameinthe i88o'swiththework

of Dilthey, and particularlywith Friedrich Nietzsche, the "philosophy of life" movement,andtheworkofBergson,

Thethirdand contemporary phaseof existentialismcameaftertheshocktotheWesternworldcausedbyWorldWarI. Kierkegaard andtheearlyMarxwererediscovered, andthe

serious challenges to the spiritual and psychological bases of Western society given byNietzsche couldnolongerbecovered overbyVictorianself-satisfied placidity.The specific

form of this third phase owes much to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, whichgave to Heidegger,Jaspers, and the others the tool theyneeded to undercut thesubject-object cleavagewhichhad been such a stumbling-block in science as well as philosophy.Thereisanobvioussimilaritybetweenexistentialism,initsemphasis on truthasproduced

in action, with the process philosophies,such as Whitehead's, andAmerican pragmatism,

particularly asinWilliam James.

Those whowish to knowmore about the existential movementas such are referred to

Paul Tillich's classical paper, "Existential Philosophy." For most of the above historicalmaterialIamindebtedto Tillich's paper.

We mayaddthatpartofthe confusion in this fieldisdue tothe misleadingtitles whichbooksare given.Wahl's A Short History ofExistentialism isshort but byno means ahis- toryofexistentialism, just asthebook bySartrepublishedunderthetitleofExistentialPsy-

do with for that existential

to translate Only afew essays are available in English.17 Jean-Paul Sartre'sbest contribution to our subject are his phenomenological descriptions ofpsychological processes In addition to Jaspers, other prominent existentialthinkers areGabrielMarcelin France, Nicolas Berdyaev, originallyRussian

butuntilhis recent deatha resident of Paris, and Ortegay Gasset and

Una-munoin Spain.PaulTillichshows the existentialapproach inhiswork, and

inmany wayshisbook The Courage to Be is the best and most cogent

pre-sentation of existentialism as an approach to actual living available inEnglish.18

The novels of Kafka portray the despairing, dehumanized situation in

modernculturefrom which andtowhichexistentialism speaks TheStranger

and ThePlague, byAlbert Camus, representexcellent examples in modern

literature inwhich existentialism is partiallyself-conscious. But perhaps the

most vivid ofall portrayals ofthemeaning of existentialism is to be found

in modern art, partly because it is articulated symbolically rather than asself-conscious thought and partly because art always reveals with special

clarity the underlying spiritual and emotional temper of the culture. We

shallfrequentlyrefer to the relation ofmodernartand existentialism in thefollowingpages.Here letus only note thatsomeof thecommonelements inthe work of such outstanding representatives of the modern movement as

Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Picasso are, first, arevolt against the hypocritical

academic tradition of the late nineteenth century, second, an endeavor topierce belowsurfaces to grasp a newrelation to the realityof nature, third,

17Published, along with an introduction and a summary of "Being and Time," byWernerBrock,inExistenceandBeing(Chicago: HenryRegneryCo., 1949). Heideggerdis-

claimed the title "existentialist" after it became identified with the work of Sartre. He

wouldcall himself, strictly speaking,a philologist orontologist. But in anycase, we must

beexistential enough not to get twisted up in controversies over titles and to take themeaning andspirit ofeachman's workrather than theletter.MartinBuberlikewiseis nothappy at being called an existentialist, although his work has clear affinities with this

movement The reader who has difficulty with the terms in this field is indeed in goodcompany!

*&TheCouragetoBe (NewHaven:Yale UniversityPress, 195$) is existential asalivingapproach to crises in contrast to books about existentialism Tiilich, like most of the

thinkersmentioned above,is notto be taggedasmerely anexistentialist, for existentialism

is awayofapproaching problems anddoesnotin itselfgive answers ornorms.Tillichhasboth rational normsthe structure of reason is always prominent in his analysesand

religiousnorms Somereaderswill notfind themselvesin agreementwith thereligious

ele-ments in The Courage to Be It isimportant tonote the very significant point, however,

that these religious ideas,whether oneagreeswiththem or not, doillustrate an authentic

existentialapproach.Thisisseenin Tillich 'sconcept of"theGodbeyondGod" and

"abso-lute faith" as faith not in some content or somebody but as a state of being, a way of

relating to reality characterizedbycourage, acceptance,full commitment,etc.The theistic

argumentsfor the "existence ofGod"arenot only beside the pointbutexemplify themost

deteriorated aspect of the Western habit of thinking in terms of God as a substance or

object, existing in a world of objects and in relation to whom we are subjects- This is

"badtheology/' Tillichpoints out,andresults in"theGodNietzschesaidhad to bekilled

becausenobody can tolerate beingmade into a mere object of absolute knowledge andabsolutecontrol"

an endeavor to recover vitality and honest, direct aesthetic experience, and,fourth,the desperate attempt toexpress the immediate underlying meaning

of the modern human situation, even though this means portraying despairandemptiness.Tillich, forexample,holds thatPicasso'spainting"Guernica"

gives the most gripping and revealing portrayal ofthe atomistic, ized condition of European society which preceded World War II and

fragment-"shows what is now in the souls ofmany Americans as disruptiveness, tential doubt, emptiness and meaninglessness."19

exis-The fact that the existential approach arose as an indigenous and

spon-taneous answerto crises inmoderncultureis shownnot only inthefactthat

it emerged in art and literature but also in the fact that different ophers in diverse parts of Europe often developed these ideas withoutcon-

philos-scious relation to each other Though Heidegger's main work, Being and Time, was publishedin 1927, Ortegay Gasset alreadyin 1924had developed and partially published strikingly similar ideas without any direct knowl- edge of Heidegger's work.20

It is true, of course, that existentialismhad its birth in a timeof cultural

crisis, and it is always found in our day on the sharp revolutionary edge of

validity ofits insights rather than the reverse When a culture is caught in

the profound convulsions of a transitional period, the individuals in thesociety understandably sufferspiritual and emotionalupheaval; and finding

that the accepted mores and ways of thought no longeryield security, theytend either to sink into dogmatism and conformism, giving up awareness,

or are forced to strive for a heightened self-consciousness by which to

be-come awareof their existencewith new conviction and on newbases Thisis

oneofthemost importantaffinities ofthe existentialmovement withtherapybothare concerned with individuals incrisis. And farfrom saying

psycho-that the insights of a crisis period are "simply the product of anxiety and

despair," we aremore likely to find, aswe dotime andagain in

psychoanal-ysis, that a crisis is exactly whatis required toshock people outofunaware dependence upon external dogma and to force them to unravel layers ofpretense to revealnaked truth aboutthemselves which, however unpleasant,

will at least be solid Existentialism is an attitude which accepts man as

al-ways becoming, which means potentially in crisis. But this does not mean

itwillbedespairing Socrates, whose dialectical search for truth in the vidual is the prototype of existentialism, was optimistic. But this approach

indi-is understandably more aptto appearin ages of transition,when one age is

dying and the new one notyet born, and the individual is either homeless

19 "ExistentialAspects ofModernArt," in Christianity and theExistentialists,edited byCarl Michalson(NewYork: Scribners, 1956), p. 138.

20OrtegayGasset, TheDehumanizationof Art,andOther Writingson Artand CultureYork:

andlostorachieves anewself-consciousness.Inthe periodof transitionfrom Medievalism to the Renaissance, a moment of radical upheaval in Western

culture, Pascal describes powerfully the experience the existentialists later

were tocall Dasein: "When I consider the briefspan of my life, swallowed

up inthe eternitybefore and behindit, the small space that I fill, oreven

see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which knownotme, Iam afraid, and wonder tosee myself here ratherthan

there; for there is no reason why I should be here rather than there, now

ratherthan then ."21Rarely has the existentialproblem been put more

simplyor beautifully.Inthispassagewesee,first,theprofoundrealizationof

the contingency of human life which existentialists call "thrownness." ond,we seePascal facing unflinchinglythe question of being there ormore

Sec-accurately"beingwhere?" Third, weseethe realization thatone cannottakerefuge in some superficial explanation of time and space, which Pascal, sci-

entist that he was, could well know; and lastly, the deep shaking anxietyarising fromthis starkawareness of existence in such auniverse.22

Itremains,finally,in thisorientation section to note therelationbetween

existentialism and oriental thought asshown in the writings of Laotzu and Zen Buddhism The similarities are striking. One sees this immediately in

glancingat some quotations from Laotzu's The Way of Life: "Existence is

beyondthe power ofwords to define: terms may be used but none of them

is absolute." "Existence, by nothing bred, breeds everything, parent of theuniverse." "Existence is infinite, not to be defined; and though it seem but

a bit of wood inyour hand, to carve as you please, it is not to be lightly

played withandlaiddown." "The way todo is to be." "Ratherabideat thecenter ofyourbeing; for themore youleaveit,the lessyoulearn."2S

Onegetsthesameshockof similarity inZen Buddhism.24Thelikenesses

be-tween these Eastern philosophies and existentialism go much deeper than

thechance similarity ofwords Both are concerned with ontology, thestudy

of being Both seek arelation to reality which cuts below the cleavage

be-tween subject andobject. Both wouldinsistthat the Westernabsorption in

21Pensdes ofPascal (NewYork: Peter Pauper Press, 1946), p 36. Dasein is defined on

22itisnotsurprising, thus, that thisapproachto lifewouldspeakparticularly to many

modern citizens whoare awareoftheemotional and spiritual dilemmas in which we find ourselves. Norbert Wiener, for example, though the actual implications of his scientific

workmayberadically different fromtheemphases of theexistentialists, has stated in his

autobiography that his scientific activity has led him personally to a "positive" tialism, "Wearenotfighting foradefinitive victory in theindefinite future,"hewrites* "It

existen-is the greatest possible victory to be, and to have been [ITALICS MINK.] Nodefeat can

de-prive us ofthesuccess ofhavingexisted forsomemomentoftimein a universe thatseems

indifferent to us/' 1Am aMathematician (NewYork: Doubleday).

nWitter Bynner, The Way of Life,

according to Laotzu, an American version (NewYork: John Bay Company, 1946).

24 SeeWilliam Barrett, ed.,Zen Buddhism, the Selected Writings ofD, T.Suzuki (NewYork:

conquering and gainingpower over nature has resulted not only in the

es-trangement of man from nature but also

indirectly in the estrangement of

man from himself The basic reason for these similarities is that Eastern

thought never suffered the radical

split between subject and object that

has characterized Western thought, and this

dichotomy is exactly what istentialism seeks to overcome

ex-The two approaches are not atall to be identified, of course; theyare on

different levels Existentialism is not acomprehensive philosophy orway of

life, but an endeavor to grasp reality The chief specific difference between

the two, for our purposes, is that existentialism is immersed in and arisesdirectly out of Western man's anxiety, estrangement, and conflicts and is

indigenous to our culture Like psychoanalysis, existentialism seeks not to

bringinanswersfromotherculturesbuttoutilizetheseveryconflictsin

con-temporary personality as avenues to the more profound self-understanding

ofWestern man andtofind the solutions to our problems in direct relation

to the historical andcultural crises which gave the problems birth In thisrespect, the particularvalue of Eastern thought is not that it can be trans-ferred, ready-born like Athena, to the Western mind, but rather that it

serves asa corrective toour biasesandhighlights the erroneous assumptionsthat have led Western development to its present problems The present

widespread interest in oriental thought in the Western world is, to my

mind, areflectionof thesameculturalcrises,thesamesense ofestrangement,thesame hungerto getbeyondthe viciouscircleofdichotomies whichcalledforththe existentialistmovement.

Ill How Existentialism and Psychoanalysis Arose

Out of the Same Cultural Situation

We shall now look at the remarkable parallel between the problems of

the other devote themselves From different perspectives and on differentlevels, both analyze anxiety, despair, alienation of man from himself and

his society.

Freud describes the neurotic personalityof the latenineteenth century as

one suffering from fragmentation, that is, from repression of instinctualdrives,blockingoffofawareness,loss ofautonomy, weakness andpassivityofthe ego, togetherwith the various neuroticsymptoms whichresultfromthis

fragmentation Kierkegaard who wrote the onlyknown bookbeforeFreud

specificallydevotedto theproblemof anxiety analyzesnotonly anxietybut

particularly the depression and despair whichresult from the individual'sself-estrangement, an estrangement he proceeds to classify in its different

forms anddegreesofseverity.25Nietzsche proclaims, tenyearsbefore Freud's

25S6ren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, trans,by Walter Lowrie (NewYork:

&

first book, that the disease of contemporary man is that "his soul had gone

stale," heis"fed up,"andthatallabout thereis "abadsmell . thesmell

offailure . The levelingand diminutionofEuropean man is our

great-estdanger/'Hethen proceeds to describe, intermswhich remarkablypredict

the later psychoanalytic concepts, how blocked instinctual powers turn

within the individual intoresentment, self-hatred, hostility, and aggression.Freud did notknow Kierkegaard'swork, but he regarded Nietzsche as one

of the authentically great men of all time

What istherelation between these three giants ofthe nineteenth century,

none ofwhom directly influenced either of the others? And what is the lationbetween thetwo approaches tohuman nature they originated exten-tialismandpsychoanalysis probablythetwo most importanttohaveshaken,

re-andindeedtoppled, the traditional concepts ofman? To answerthese tions we must inquire into the cultural situation of the middle and latenineteenth century outofwhich both approaches tomanaroseandto which both sought to give answers The real meaning of a way of understanding

in abstracto,detachedfromitsworld, butonly in thecontextofthehistoricalsituation which gave it birth Thus the historical discussions to follow inthis chapter are not at all detours from our central aim Indeed, it is pre-cisely thishistorical approach which may throwlight on ourchief question,namely, how the specific scientific techniques that Freud developed for theinvestigation of thefragmentation of theindividual in theVictorian period

are related to theunderstandingofman andhis crises towhich Kierkegaard and Nietzsche contributed so much and which later provided a broad and deepbasefor existential psychotherapy

Compartmentalization and Inner Breakdown

in the Nineteenth Century

Thechief characteristic of the last half of the nineteenth century was thebreakingupof personality intofragments.Thesefragmentations,aswe shall

see, were symptoms of the emotional, psychological, and spiritual grationoccurringinthecultureandinthe individual One canseethissplit-ting up of the individual personality not only in the psychology and thescience of the period but in almost every aspect of late nineteenth-centuryculture.One can observethe fragmentation in family life,vividly portrayed and attacked in Ibsen's A Doll's House The respectable citizen who keeps

disinte-his wife and family in one compartment andhisbusiness and otherworlds

in others ismaking his home a doll's house and preparing itscollapse One

canlikewise see the Compartmentalization in the separation of art from therealities of life, the use of art in its

prettified, romantic, academic forms as

a from existenceandnature, the artas artificiality

which Cezanne, Van Gogh, the impressionists, and othermodern art mentssovigorouslyprotested One can furthermoreseethefragmentationinthe separating of religion from weekday existence, making it an affair of

move-Sundays and special observances, and the divorce of ethics from business

The segmentation was occurring also in philosophy and psychology when

Kierkegaard fought so passionately against the enthronement of an arid,

abstract reason andpleaded for a returnto reality,he was by no means

tilt-ing atwindmills. The Victorianman sawhimself as segmented into reason,will, and emotions and found the picture good.His reason was supposedto

tell him what to do, then voluntaristic will was supposed to give him the

means to do it, and emotions well, emotions could best be channeled into

compulsivebusinessdrive andrigidly structuralized inVictorian mores; and

the emotions which would reallyhave upset the formal segmentation, such

as sex and hostility, were to be stanchly repressed or letout only in orgies

of patriotism or on well-contained week-end "binges" in Bohemia in orderthat one might, likea steamenginewhich haslet offsurplus pressure, work more effectively on returning to his desk Monday morning. Naturally, this

kindof man had to putgreat stress on "rationality." Indeed, thevery term

"irrational"meansa thing not tobe spokenofor thoughtof; andVictorian

man'srepressing,or compartmentalizing, what wasnottobe thoughtofwas

a precondition for the apparent stability of the culture Schachtel has

pointed out how the citizen of the Victorian period so needed to persuadehimself ofhisown rationality thathe denied thefact thathe had everbeen

a child or had a child's irrationality and lack of control; hence the radicalsplit between the adult and the child, which was portentous for Freud'sinvestigations.26

Thiscompartmentalizationwent handinhand withthe developingtrialism,asbothcauseandeffect.A man who can keepthe differentsegments

indus-of his life entirely separated, who can punch the clock every day at exactlythesame moment, whose actions are always predictable,who is nevertrou-bledby irrational urges orpoeticvisions, who indeed can manipulate him-

self the same way he would themachine whose levers he pulls, is of coursethe most profitableworker notonly on the assembly line but even onman^l

of the higher levels ofproduction. As Marx andNietzsche pointed out, thecorollary is likewise true: the verysuccess of the industrial system, with its

accumulation of money as a validation of personal worth entirely separatefrom the actualproduct of aman's hands, had a reciprocal depersonalizing

and dehumanizing effect upon man in his relation to others and himself

Itwas against these dehumanizingtendencies to make man into amachine,

thattheearlyexistentialistsfoughtso strongly.Andtheywere awarethatthe

most serious threat ofall was that reasonwouldjoin mechanics in sapping

26 On thePleasure tobe

the individual's vitality and decisiveness Reason,, they predicted, was

be-coming reduced to a new kind of technique.

Scientists in our day are often not aware that this compartmentalization,finally, wasalso characteristic of thesciences of the century ofwhich we areheirs This nineteenth centurywas theera of the "autonomous sciences," asErnestCassirerphrases it.Eachsciencedeveloped initsown direction; there

was no unifyingprinciple, particularly with relation to man The views of

man in the period were supported by empirical evidence amassed by the

advancingsciences,but"each theorybecame aProcrusteanbed on whichtheempirical facts were stretched to fit a preconceived pattern . Owing tothisdevelopment our modern theory ofman lost itsintellectual center We

acquired instead a complete anarchy of thought . Theologians,

scien-tists, politicians, sociologists, biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, mists all approached the problem from their own viewpoints . everyauthor seems in the last countto be ledbyhis own conception and evalua-tion of human life."27 It is no wonder that Max Scheler declared, "In no

econo-other period ofhuman knowledge has man ever become more problematic

to himself than in our own days. We have a scientific, a philosophical, and

a theological anthropology that know nothing of each other Therefore we

no longer possess any clear and consistent idea ofman The ever-growing

multiplicity of the particular sciences that are engaged in the study of men

has much more confused and obscured than elucidated our concept of

man."28

Onthesurface,of course, theVictorian periodappearedplacid,contented,ordered; but this placidity was purchased at the price of widespread, pro-found, and increasingly brittle repression. As in the case of an individualneurotic, the compartmentalization became more and more rigid as it ap-

proachedthepoint August i, 1914 whenitwas to collapse altogether

Now it is to be noted that the compartmentalization of the culture had

its psychological parallel in radical repression within the individual sonality Freud's genius was in developing scientific techniques for under-standing, and mayhapcuring, this fragmentized individual personality; but

per-fiedid not see oruntil muchlater, when he reacted to the factwith

pessi-mism and some detached despair2d that the neuroticillness in the ual was only one side of disintegrating forces which affected the whole ofsociety Kierkegaard, for his part, foresaw the results of this disintegration

individ-upon the inneremotional andspiritual life of the individual: endemic

anx-iety, loneliness, estrangement ofone man from another, and finally the dition that would lead to ultimate despair, man's alienation from himself

con-But it remained for Nietzsche to paint most graphically the approaching

27Ernest Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944), p. 21.

28MaxScheler,DieStellung desMenschenim Kosmos(Darmstadt: Reichl, 1928),pp. ig*

situation: "We live in a period of atoms, of atomic chaos," and out of thischaos he foresaw, in a vivid prediction of collectivism in the twentieth cen-ury, "the terrible apparition . the Nation State . and the hunt forhappiness will never be greaterthan when itmust be caughtbetweentodayand tomorrow; because the day after tomorrow all hunting time may have come to an end altogether. ." 30 Freud saw this fragmentation of per-sonality in the light ofnatural science and was concerned withformulating

its technical aspects Kierkegaard and Nietzsche did not underestimate the

importance of the specific psychological analysis; but they were much more concerned with understanding man as the being who represses, the being

who surrendersself-awareness asaprotection againstrealityand thensuffersthe neurotic consequences The strange questionis: Whatdoesitmean that

man, the being-in-the-world who can be conscious that he exists and can

know his existence, should choose or be forced to choose to block off thisconsciousness and should suffer anxiety, compulsions for self-destruction,

anddespair? Kierkegaard andNietzschewerekeenlyawarethat the "sickness

of soul" of Western man was a deeper and more extensive morbidity than could be explained by thespecific individual orsocial problems Something was radically wrong in man's relation to himself; man had become funda-

mentally problematic to himself. "This is Europe's true predicament/' clared Nietzsche; "together with the fear of man we have lost the love of

de-man, confidence inman, indeed, the will toman!'

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud

We turn now to a more detailed comparison of the approach to

under-standingWestern man given by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, with the hope

ofseeingmore clearlytheir interrelationshipwith theinsights and methods

of Freud

Kierkegaard's penetratinganalysis ofanxiety which we have summarized

in another volume81 wouldalone assure himof aposition among the chologicalgeniuses ofall time. His insights into thesignificance of self-con-sciousness, his analysis of innerconflicts, loss ofthe self, and evenpsychoso-matic problemsarethemoresurprisingsincethey antedate Nietzschebyfour

psy-decades and Freud by half a century. This indicates in Kierkegaard a

re-30Walter A Kaufmann, Nietzsche, philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1950), p 140.

31The MeaningofAnxiety (NewYork:RonaldPress, 1950),pp 31-45.Thosepagesmay

be recommended as a short survey of the importanceof Kierkegaard's ideas for the

psy-chologicallyminded reader.His two most importantpsychologicalbooks are The Concept

ofAnxiety (translated into English as theConceptofDread, a term whichmay inliterarytermsbe closer to the meaningbut is notpsychologically), and The Sickness UntoDeath.For furtheracquaintance with Kierkegaard, A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. by Bretall, is

markable sensitivity to what was going on under the surface o Western man's consciousness in his day, to erupt only half a century later He died

just overahundredyearsagoat the early age offorty-four, afteran intense,passionate, and lonely period of creativity in which he wrote almost two dozen books in the space of fifteen years Secure in the knowledge that he would become important in decades to come, he had no illusions about hisdiscoveriesandinsightsbeing welcomedin his day."Thepresentwriter/' he

saysin onesatiricalpassage abouthimself, "is nothing of aphilosopher; he

is an amateurwriter who neither writes the System nor promises theSystem nor ascribesanything to it. He can easily foresee his fate in an

agewhen passion has been obliterated in favor of learning,in an age when

an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such away

thatthebookcaneasilybe perused duringthe afternoon nap . Hesees hisfate, thathewillbeentirelyignored."True to his prediction,he was

fore-almost unknown inhis day except forsatirical lampooning in Corsair, the

and was then rediscoveredin the seconddecade of this century, notonly to

have a profound effect on philosophy andreligion but also to yieldspecific

andimportant contributions to depth-psychology Binswanger,for example,

statesinhispaper onEllenWestthat she "sufferedfrom that sickness ofthe

mind which Kierkegaard, with the keen insight of genius, described and

il-luminated fromallpossible aspectsunderthenameof 'SicknessUnto Death/

I knowof no document which could more greatly advance the analytic interpretation ofschizophreniathanthat. One mightsay that inthis

existential-document Kierkegaard had recognized withintuitive genius the coming ofschizophrenia ."

Binswangergoes on to remark that the psychiatrist orpsychologistwho does not concur in Kierkegaard's religious interpretationsnevertheless remains "deeply indebted to this work of Kierkegaard/'32Kierkegaard, like Nietzsche, did not set out to write philosophy or psy-chology.Hesought onlytounderstand, to uncover, to disclosehumanexist-ence With Freud and Nietzsche he shared a significant fact: all three of

thembasedtheirknowledgechieflyon the analysis ofonecase,namely,

them-selves Freud'sgerminalbooks, suchasInterpretation ofDreams, were based

almost entirely on his own experience and his own dreams; he wrote in so

many wordstoFliess that the casehestruggledwith andanalyzed continuallywas himself Every system of thought, remarked Nietzsche, "says only: this

isa pictureofall life, and fromit learn the meaningofyour life. Andversely; read only your life and understand from it the hieroglyphics ofuniversal life."33

con-The central psychological endeavor of Kierkegaard may be summed up

under the heading of the question he pursued relentlessly how can you

aa

chap.IX

83

become an individual? The individual was being swallowed up on the

ra-tional side by Hegel's vast logical "absolute Whole," on the economic side

bythe increasingobjectificationof the person,and onthemoral andspiritua

side by the soft and vapid religion of his day. Europe was ill, and was tc

become more so, not because knowledge or techniques were lacking buibecause of the want of passion, commitment.^ "Away from Speculationaway from the System," he called, "and back to reality!" He was convinced

not only that the goal of "pure objectivity" is impossible but that even ii

it were possible it would be undesirable And from another angle it is moral: we are so involved in each other and the world that we cannot becontent toview truth disinterestedly.Like allthe existentialists,hetook the

im-term "interest" (inter-est) seriously.35

Everyquestionis the "questionfor theSingleOne," thatis, for the aliveandself-aware individual; andifwedon'tstartwith thehuman being there, weshallhave spawned, with allour tech-nicalprowess, a collectivismofrobotswho willend up notjust inemptinessbutin self-destructive despair

One of the most radical contributions of Kierkegaard to later dynamic

psychology is his formulation of

truth-as-relationship In the book which was later to become the manifesto for existentialism, he writes:

When thequestion of truthis raised in an objectivemanner, reflection isdirectedobjectively tothetruth,asanobject towhichtheknowerisrelated.Reflectionisnotfocusedupon therelationship,however, butupon thequestion ofwhether it is thetruth towhichtheknowerisrelated.If onlythe object towhich he isrelatedisthetruth, the subjectis accountedto be inthe truth When thequestion of the truthis

raised subjectively, reflectionisdirected subjectivelyto thenatureof the individual'srelationship; ifonly the mode ofthis relationship isin the truth, the individual is

in the truth, even if he should happen to be thus related to what is not

34Thus the veryincrease of truth may leave human beings less secure, if

theylet the

objective increase oftruthact as asubstitute for theirowncommitment,theirownrelating

tothe truth intheirownexperience. He"whohasobserved thecontemporarygeneration/'wroteKierkegaard, "will surelynot denythat the incongruityin itand thereason forits

anxiety andrestlessness is this, that in one direction truth increases in extent, in mass,partlyalso in abstract clarity,whereas certitude steadily decreases."

35SeeWalterLowrie,AShort LifeofKierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 194*)-

36Quoted from the"Concluding Unscientific Postscript/' in A Kierkegaard Anthology,RobertBretall, ed (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1951),pp 210-211 (Kierkegaardhas thewholepassageinitalics; wehavelimited them,forpurposesof contrast, tothenewelement, namely, thesubjective relationto truth.) Itishighlyinteresting thatthe exampleKierkegaardgoesonto cite, aftertheabovesentences, istheknowledgeofGod,andpoints

outa consideration thatwould havesaved endless confusions and futile bickeringsthattheendeavor to proveGod as an "object" is entirely fruitless, and that truth ratherlies

in the nature of the relationship ("even ifhe should happen to be thus related to what

is not true"!). It should certainly beself-evident that Kierkegaard is not in the slightestimplyingthatwhetherornot somethingis objectivelytrue doesn'tmatter. That wouldbeabsurd He is referring, ashe phrases it in a footnote, to "the truth which is essentially

It would be hard to exaggerate how revolutionary these sentences were andstillare formodern cultureasawhole and forpsychology inparticular.

Here is theradical, original statement of relational truth Here is thetainhead of the emphasis in existential thought on truth as inwardness or,

foun-asHeideggerputsit, truthasfreedom.37

Here, too, is the prediction ofwhat waslaterto appear in twentieth-centuryphysics, namely, thereversal of the

principle of Copernicus that one discovered truth most fully by detachingman, the observer.Kierkegaard foretellsthe viewpoint ofBohr, Heisenberg,

andothercontemporaryphysicists that theCopernican view thatnature can

be separated from manisno longertenable The"ideal of asciencewhichis

completely independent of man [i.e., completely objective] is an illusion,"

in Heisenberg's words.38 Here is, in Kierkegaard's paragraph, the nerofrelativityandtheother viewpointswhichaffirm thatthehuman being

forerun-who is engaged in studying the natural phenomena is in a particular and

significant relationship to the objects studied and he must make himselfpartofhisequation Thatistosay, the subject,man, canneverbeseparatedfrom the object which he observes It is clear that the cancer of Western

thought, the subject-object split, received a decisive attack in this analysis

of Kierkegaard's

But the implications of this landmark are even more specific and more

incisive in psychology It releases us from bondage to the dogma that truthcan be understood only in terms of external objects. It opens up the vastprovinces of inner, subjective reality and indicates that suchreality may be

true eventhoughit contradicts objectivefact. This was the discovery Freud waslatertomake when, somewhat to his chagrin,he learnedthat the "child-

hood rape" memories so many of his patients confessed were generally lies

from a factual pointof view, the rape never having in fact occurred But it

turned outthat theexperience ofrape was as potent even if it existed only

in phantasy, and that in any case the crucial question was how the patientreacted to therape ratherthan whetheritwastrue orfalseinfact. Wehave,thus, the opening of a continent of new knowledge about inner dynamics

iswhatissignificant forthe patient or personwe arestudyingandthe tiono whetherornot somethingobjectivelyoccurred ison a quitedifferentlevel Let us, to avoid misunderstanding, emphasize even at the price ofrepetition that this truth-as-relationship principle does not in the slightest

ques-implya sloughingoffof the importanceof whetheror not something is jectively true. This is not the point Kierkegaard isnot to be confused with

ob-thesubjectivistsoridealists; he opens upthe subjectiveworld withoutlosing

37See theessay"Onthe Essence ofTruth"inExistenceandBeing,by MartinHeidegger,editedbyWernerBrock,op cit.

38From mimeographedaddressbyWernerHeisenberg,Washington University,St.Louis,

objectivity Certainly one has to deal with thereal objective world; gaard, Nietzsche, and their ilk took nature more seriously than many who

Kierke-call themselves naturalists The point rather is that the meaning for theperson of the objective fact (or phantasied one) depends on how he relates

to it; there is no existential truth which can omit the relationship. An jective discussion of sex, for example, may be interesting and instructive;

ob-but once one is concerned with a given person, the objective truth depends

for its meaning upon the relationship between that person and the sexualpartnerand to omit this factor not only constitutes an evasion but cuts usofffrom seeingreality.

The approachstated in Kierkegaard's sentences is, furthermore, the

fore-runner of concepts of "participant observation" of Sullivan and the other

emphases upon thesignificance of the therapist in the relationship with thepatient The fact that the therapist participates in a real way in the rela-tionship and is an inseparable part of the "field" doesnot, thus, impairthesoundness of his scientificobservations.Indeed, can we notassert that unlessthe therapist is areal participant in the relationship and consciouslyrecog-

nizes this fact,hewill notbeableto discernwith claritywhatis infactgoing on? Theimplication ofthis "manifesto" ofKierkegaardis thatwe are freed

from the traditional doctrine, so limiting, self-contradictory, and indeed

often so destructive in psychology, that the less we are involved in a givensituation, themoreclearly wecan observe the truth.Theimplication ofthatdoctrine was, obviously enough, that there is an inverse relation between involvement and our capacity to observe without bias And the doctrine

became so well-enshrined that we overlooked another one of its clear plications, namely, that he will most successfully discover truth who is not

im-the slightest bit interested in itl No one, of course, would argue againsttheobvious fact that disruptive emotions interfere with one's perception Inthis sense it is self-evident that anyonein a therapeuticrelationship, orany person observing others, for that matter, must clarify very well what hisparticular emotions and involvement are in the situation But the problem cannot be solvedby detachment and abstraction That way we end up with

a handful of sea foam; and the reality of the person has evaporated before

oureyes. The clarification of thepole in the relationshiprepresentedby the

therapist can only be accomplished by a fuller awareness of the existentialsituation, that is, the real, living relationship.39 When we are dealingwith

humanbeings,no truth hasrealitybyitself; it is alwaysdependent uponthereality of the immediate relationship.

39 Itshould bepossibletodemonstrate possiblyithas alreadybeendonein perception

experiments that the interest and involvement of the observer increase the accuracy of

hisperception. There are indications already in Rorschach responses that in the cardswherethe subjectbecomesemotionally involved,hisperceptionofform becomes more, not

less,sharp andaccurate. (Iamof course speakingnotofneurotic emotion; that introduces

A second important contribution of Kierkegaard to dynamic psychology

liesinhisemphasis uponthe necessity ofcommitment Thisfollows fromthepoints already made above Truth becomes reality only as the individualproduces itin action, whichincludes producing itin his ownconsciousness.Kierkegaard's point has the radical implication that we cannot even see aparticular truth unless we already have some commitment to it It is well

academi-cally from now till doomsday about their problems and not really be

af-fected; indeed, particularly in casesof intellectual andprofessional patients,

this very talking, though it may masquerade under the cloak of unbiased andunprejudiced inquiryinto what is goingon, is often thedefense againstseeing the truth and against committingone's self, a defense indeed against

one's own vitality. The patient's talking will not help him to get to thereality untilhe can. experience somethingor some issue in which he has an immediate and absolute stake This is often expressed under the rubric of

"the necessity of arousing anxiety in the patient." I believe, however, thatthis puts the mattertoo simply andpartially. Isnot the more fundamental

principle that thepatient mustfind or discover some point in hisexistence

where hecan commit himself beforehe can permit himself even to see thetruth ofwhathe isdoing? Thisis what Kierkegaard means by "passion" and

"commitment"asoveragainst objective disinterestedobservation Onelary of this need for commitment is the commonly accepted phenomenon

corol-thatwe cannotgettothe underlyinglevelsofa person'sproblems by

labora-tory experimentation; onlywhen the person himself has some hope of ting relief from his suffering and despair and of receiving some help in his

get-problemswill he undertakethe painful processof investigating his illusions

and uncoveringhis defenses and rationalizations

We turn now to Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). He was very different

from Kierkegaard in temperament, and, living four decades later, he flectednineteenth-century culture atadifferent stage Heneverread Kierke-gaard; his friend Brandes called his attention to theDane two years beforeNietzsche's death, toolate forNietzschetoknowtheworksof his predecessor,

re-who was superficially so differentbut inmany essentials so alike Both

rep-resent in fundamental ways the emergence of the existential approach to

most profoundly and predictedmost accurately the psychological and

spirit-ual state of Western man in the twentieth century. Like Kierkegaard,

Nietzsche was not anti-rational, nor is he to be confused with the ophers of feeling" or the "back to nature" evangelists. He attacked not rea-son but mere reason, and he attacked it in the arid, fragmentized rational-

"philos-istic form it assumed in his day. He sought to push reflection again like

Kierkegaardto its uttermost limits to find the realitywhich underlies both

reason and unreason For reflection after a turning in on a

mirroring, and the issue for the living existential person is what he is flecting; otherwisereflectingempties the person ofvitality.

re-40 Like the depth

psychologists to follow him, Nietzsche sought to bring into the scope ofexistence the unconscious, irrational sources of man's power and greatness

as well as his morbidity and self-destructiveness

Another significant relationship between these two figures and depth

psychology is that they both developed a great intensity of ness They werewellaware that themostdevastatingloss in theirobjectivat-ing culture was the individual's consciousness of himself a loss to be ex-pressedlater in Freud'ssymbol ofthe ego asweak andpassive, "lived by theId/' having lost its own self-directive powers.41 Kierkegaard had written,

self-conscious-"the more consciousness, the more self," a statement which Sullivan was to

make in a different context a century later and which is implied inFreud's

description of the aim of his technique as the increasing of the sphere ofconsciousness: "Where Id was, there ego shall be." But Kierkegaard and

Nietzsche could not escape, in their special historical situations, the tragicconsequences of their own intensity of self-consciousness. Both were lonely,

anti-conformist in the extreme, and knew the deepest agonies of anxiety,despair, isolation. Hence they could speak from an immediate personalknowledge of these ultimate psychological crises.42

Nietzscheheld that one should experiment onall truth notsimplyin thelaboratory but in one's own experience; every truth should be faced with

the question, "Can one live it?" "All truths," he put it, "are bloody truthsforme." Hence his famous phrase, "error is cowardice." In takingreligious

leaders to task for their beingalien to intellectual integrity, he charges that

40Both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche knew that "man cannot sink back into unreflective

immediacy without losing himself;buthecango thiswayto the end,notdestroying tion,butrathercomingtothebasis inhimselfin which reflection isrooted." ThusspeaksKarl Jaspersin hisenlighteningdiscussion ofthesimilarities of NietzscheandKierkegaard,

reflec-whom he regards as the two greatest figures of the nineteenth century. See his book,Reason andExistence,Chapter I,"Origin of theContemporary Philosophic Situation (the HistoricalMeaning of Kierkegaardand Nietzsche)" (TheNoonday Press, 1955, trans,fromthe German edition of 1935 by William Earle), This chapter is reprinted in the paper-bound Meridian book, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Walter Kaufmann, ed., 1956.

41The existential thinkers as a whole take this loss of consciousness as the centrally

tragicproblemofourday,notat all tobelimitedto thepsychological contextof neurosis.Jaspers indeed believes that theforces which destroy personal consciousness in our time,

the juggernaut processes of conformityand collectivism, may well lead to a more radical loss ofindividual consciousnesson the part ofmodern man

42Both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche also share the dubious honor ofbeing dismissed insomeallegedlyscientific circles as pathological! Iassume this fruitless issueneedsnolonger

tobediscussed; Binswangerquotes Marcelin a followingpaperconcerning those who

dis-miss Nietzsche because of his ultimate psychosis, "One is free to learn nothing if one

wishes."A morefruitful line of inquiry, ifwe wish to consider the psychologicalcrises of

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, is to askwhether any human being can support an intensity

of self-consciousnessbeyondacertain point,andwhetherthecreativity(whichisone

mani-not