SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

Existential Therapy (New York: New York University Press, 1997). The reader may note that Spinelli
has abandoned use of the term ‘case’.
[9]. The term ‘exister’ is Walter Lowrie’s translation of Kierkegaard’s Existierende in his Concluding
Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments: A Mimical-Pathetical-Dialectical Compilation,
An Existential Contribution [Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de philosophiske Smuler.
Mimisk-pathetisk-dialektisk Sammenskrift] (1846). For Kierkegaard, the exister is “the existing
thinker,” the one “who is thinking existence.” See Agnes Heller, “Living with Kierkegaard,” in
Enrahonar 29, 1998, pp. 73-74. Heidegger acknowledges the influence of Kierkegaard’s ontic
(existentiell) account of existence in a note to the opening section of the second major division
of Sein und Zeit published. See Being and Time (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 494. As we
know, for Heidegger, the trail leads back via Kierkegaard to Augustine. See Martin Heidegger,
The Phenomenology of Religious Experience (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004),
especially the course “Augustine and Neo-Platonism” [1921]. Augustine’s starting point could be
that of anyone entering into existential analysis: Quaestio mihi factum sum: I have become a
question to myself.
[10]. See Martin Heidegger, Plato's Sophist ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), based
on a lecture course at the Marburg University, Winter Semester 1924-25; The Essence of Truth. On
Plato’s Cave Allegory and the Theaetetus (New York: Continuum, 2002), based on a lecture
course at Freiburg University, Winter Semester 1930-21; and "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," a lecture
from 1940, in William Barrett and Henry D. Aiken (eds.), Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. An
Anthology, Vol. 3 (New York: Random House, 1982), pp. 251-270.
[11]. For Binswanger, see Being-in-the-World (New York: Basic Books, 1963). Evidence of the
intellectual partnership between Boss and Heidegger is now available in Zollikon Seminars:
Protocols–Seminars–Letters (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001). See the forthcoming
complete bibliography of Boss’s work in Medard Boss and Miles Groth, “An International
Bibliography of the Writings of Medard Boss 1929-2002,” Review of Existential Psychology and
Psychiatry (2007), and the author’s “Medard Boss and Martin Heidegger. The Existential Analyst
as ‘a Western Kind of rishi’”, also in the Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry (2007).
[12]. The classic review of these important figures is Herbert Spiegelberg’s Phenomenology in
Psychology and Psychiatry, A Historical Introduction (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1972). The reader may also consult the author’s “Existential Psychotherapy Today,” in the Review
of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry 25(1-3), 2000, pp. 7-27 (esp. 13-15). An interesting
historical note: In the spring of 1946, Heidegger himself was treated for several weeks by Viktor
von Gebsattel (1883-1974) in his clinic. See Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger. Between Good
and Evil (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 351. Regrettably, only three brief texts by
von Gebsattel have been translated into English. See J.V. Welie, “Viktor Emil von Gebsattel on
the Doctor-Patient Relationship,” in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 16(1), 1995, pp. 41-58,
which is followed (pp. 59-82) by a translation of Gebsattel’s last paper, “Meaning of Medical
Practice.” In my view Gebsattel is perhaps the psychiatrist who comes closest to Heidegger’s
way of thinking. He was the advisor on psychology and psychiatry to the Görres Gesellschaft, a
Catholic studies organization that accepted Heidegger’s first published paper, “The Problem of
Reality in Modern Philosophy” (1912). See "Das Realitätsproblem in der modernen Philosophie,"
now in the Heidegger Gesamtausgae 1 (Early Writings), pp. 1-15. First translated in 1973, it is now
available in Heidegger’s Supplements. From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond ,
edited by John van Buren (Albany: SUNY Press,1002), pp. 39-48. Gebsattel’s Catholicism, his
aesthetic sensibility, and his concept of the “doctor-patient” relationship in its third “personal”
stage made him the ideal therapist for Heidegger. Gebsattel’s views presages my own view of
the therapeutic relationship as a partnership. See von Gebsattel (1995), p, 71. Gebsattel’s other