Existential Analysis

Psychiatric phenomenologists and existential analysts are psychiatrists utilizing certain new philosophical concepts as tools for psychiatric investigation. The meaning and purpose of these new approaches are discussed. The impetus for phenomenology was the growing awareness of certain psychiatrists that the classical psychological frame of reference, inherited from the eighteenth century, was no longer adequate for the exploration of many psychopathological conditions. Phenomenologists believe that they have found a new approach, which enables them to grasp the subjective experience of the patient more fully than could be done within the older, classical frame of reference. The impetus for existential analysis was the same as for psychiatric phenomenology. It occurred to several psychiatrists, who had started to work with the phenomenological method, that existentialist philosophy (above all Heidegger's philosophy) was able to provide them with a frame of reference that was broader than that of phenomenology. Existential analysis does not supersede phenomenology; it integrates phenomenology as a part of its total system. The main emphasis of psychiatric phenomenology lies, however, on the investigation of the patient's subjective states of consciousness.
Three main methods have been applied to that effect:

1. Descriptive phenomenology relies entirely on descriptions given by the patients of their subjective experiences.
2. The genetic-structural method postulates a fundamental unity in an individual's state of consciousness and tries to find a common denominator, i.e., a "genetic factor," with the help of which the rest can be made intelligible and reconstructed.
3. Categorical analysis takes a system of phenomenological coordinates, the most important of which are time (or rather "temporality"), space (or rather "spatiality"), causality, and materiality. The investigator analyzes how each of them is experienced by the patient, in order to achieve, on this basis, a thorough and detailed reconstruction of the patient's inner universe of experience.

These methods are examined in some detail. The reconstruction of the inner world of the patient may be an aim in itself for the phenomenologist, but if he is an existential analyst, it is a part of a broader task. The broader task is discussed after the distinction between existentialist philosophy, existentialist psychotherapy and Binswanger's existential analysis is clarified, since there is so much confusion concerning these three areas.
In regard to the implications of existential analysis for psychotherapy, several points must be distinguished:

1. It should be understood that the activity of an existential analyst does not usually differ seemingly from what the ordinary psychiatrist or psychoanalyst does.
2. Phenomenology opens the path to a new type of psychotherapy which is still in its early stages of development.
3. Reconstruction of the subjective world of a patient is more than an academic exercise.

Written by:
Ellenberger, Henri F.

Link: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=main.doiLanding&uid=2006-20816-003