Ludwig Binswanger facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Ludwig Binswanger
Portrait of Dr Ludwig Binswanger by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Born	13 April 1881 Kreuzlingen, Switzerland
Died	5 February 1966 (1966-02-06) (aged 84) Kreuzlingen, Switzerland
Known for	Daseinsanalysis
Scientific career
Fields	Psychiatry
Influences	Martin Heidegger Edmund Husserl Martin Buber
Influenced	Eugène Minkowski Laurence A. Rickels Medard Boss Franco Basaglia Jürgen Habermas

Ludwig Binswanger (born April 13, 1881 – died February 5, 1966) was a Swiss psychiatrist. He was a very important person in the early days of existential psychology. His family had a history in psychiatry; his grandfather founded a special hospital called the "Bellevue Sanatorium" in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, in 1857. His uncle, Otto Binswanger, was also a well-known professor of psychiatry.

Ludwig Binswanger is seen as one of the most important phenomenological psychologists. He helped make the ideas of existential psychology known across Europe and the United States.

Life and Work

In 1907, Ludwig Binswanger earned his medical degree from the University of Zurich. When he was young, he worked and learned from some of the most famous psychiatrists of his time. These included Carl Jung, Eugen Bleuler, and Sigmund Freud.

He visited Freud in 1907 and they became lifelong friends. Freud even called Binswanger's illness in 1912 "particularly painful." Later, in 1938, Binswanger offered Freud a safe place to stay in Switzerland.

Binswanger was part of an early group of thinkers led by Jung in Switzerland. He spent his life thinking about how psychoanalysis fit into his own ideas.

After World War I, Binswanger was also influenced by existential philosophy. He studied the works of thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Buber. From these ideas, he developed his own special type of existential-phenomenological psychology.

From 1911 to 1956, Binswanger was the medical director of the sanatorium in Kreuzlingen.

Binswanger's Ideas

Binswanger was the first doctor to combine psychotherapy with existential and phenomenological ideas. He wrote about this in his 1942 book, Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins (which means Basic Forms and Knowledge of Human Existence). In this book, he explained that existential analysis is a way to understand what it means to be human.

He believed that understanding a patient's lifeworld (their personal experience of life) was key. He thought that mental illnesses changed how people experienced their world. This included changes in how they felt about time, space, their body, and their relationships with others.

Binswanger also wrote about dreams in his work Dream and Existence. He stressed how important it was to look closely at the actual story of a dream. He felt that this part had been overlooked since Freud's time.

One of his most famous patient studies was about a woman named Ellen West. Her story was translated into English in 1958. Binswanger wrote about her struggles in his 1957 book Schizophrenie. She had a strong desire to lose weight.

Binswanger also learned from Martin Buber about the importance of talking and sharing ideas (dialogue). This idea helped shape how therapy is done today, focusing on how people recognize and understand each other.

Understanding Existence

Ludwig Binswanger added a lot to the idea of "existence" in existential psychology. He believed that human existence is complex because people have control over how they live. He said that humans can choose how they want to be, like "being a hunter, of being romantic, of being in business." This means we are free to shape ourselves in many different ways. He thought that this ability to choose "goes beyond just being," allowing us to reach many different life outcomes based on the path we pick.

Modes of Existence

Binswanger said there are different ways of existing. He believed these ways help us understand the difference between humans and animals. These ways include:

• the Umwelt (the "around world")
• the Mitwelt (the "with world")
• the Eigenwelt (the "own world")

The Umwelt is about the relationship between a living thing and its environment. Both animals and humans have an Umwelt. However, Binswanger believed that animals cannot understand their world in the same deep way humans can. Humans can "climb above it (the world) in care and of swinging beyond it in love." This means humans can think about and change their world in ways animals cannot.

The Mitwelt is about how we relate to others, especially other people. It's about the "shared world" we have with others. This means seeing our lives based on our relationships with other humans.

The Eigenwelt is about a person's own feelings and experiences, or their "self world." It's the relationship a person has with themselves. This idea can be a bit hard to understand because it's very personal.

Binswanger believed that to truly understand someone, you need to look at all three of these ways of existing.

World-Design

Your Weltanschauung (world-design) also affects how you exist. This is basically how you see and understand the world around you. Everyone experiences the world through their own unique world-design.

Being-in-the-World vs. Being-Beyond-the-World

Binswanger also talked about two other ideas related to how humans connect with the world. Being-in-the-world is how we normally interact with our surroundings. It's how we understand and react to things around us. When we are "being-in-the-world," we usually do three things:

1. Figure out what's happening based on things we know.
2. Apply general rules to that situation.
3. Use logic to decide what to do.

Being-beyond-the-world is the second idea. This refers to how people can change their situation using their own free will. Like "being-in-the-world," this idea means a person can go beyond their current state and change their world based on what they want. Binswanger connected this idea to love, saying that love "takes us beyond the world of one's own self to the world of we-hood."

Criticism

Some other thinkers had different ideas. R. D. Laing thought Binswanger didn't fully explain how other people shape our sense of space.

Fritz Perls felt that Binswanger's existential therapy relied too much on psychoanalysis.

Works

Binswanger wrote many books and articles throughout his career. Here are some of his important works:

• 1907: On the behavior of the psycho-galvanic phenomenon in association experiments.
• 1910: Origin and prevention of mental disorders.
• 1922: Introduction to the problems of general psychology
• 1930: Dream and existence
• 1942: Basic forms and knowledge of human existence
• 1956: Memories of Sigmund Freud
• 1957: Schizophrenia
• 1960: Melancholy and mania: Phenomenological studies

See also

In Spanish: Ludwig Binswanger para niños