Ludwig Binswanger was introduced to Freud in 1907 and they remained close until Freud’s death despite significant differences in their ages and theoretical perspectives— a friendship that is a tribute to Binswanger’s generous and warm personality. Indeed, Martha Freud, after Freud’s death, confessed to him that “It is small comfort for me to know that in the fifty-three years of our married life not one angry word fell between us.” This friendship is recorded in Binswanger’s Sigmund Freud: Reminiscences of a Friendship (1957). The Freud-Binswanger Correspondence makes fascinating reading.
Binswanger, a Swiss who came from a distinguished family of psychiatrists and physicians was influenced not only by Jung but also by Husserl, Heidegger, and Buber. After receiving his MD from the University of Zurich, he became the medical director at the Bellevue Sanitarium in Kreuzlungen where he remained for 45 years.
With Medard Boss, he is the major figure in existential analysis and phenomenological psychiatry. His two famous cases are “The Case of Lola Voss” reprinted in Being in the World: Selected Papers of Ludwig Binswanger (1963) and “The Case of Ellen West” in Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology edited by Rollo May, et al. (1958). Binswanger’s other works have not been translated from the German but include such titles as (English translations) On the Flight of Ideas (1933), Basic Forms and Cognition of Human Existence (1953), and Schizophrenia (1957).
Selected primary source material:
- 1922 : Einführung in die Probleme der allgemeinen Psychologie (Introduction to the Problems of General Psychology), Berlin
- 1928 : Wandlungen in der Auffassung und Deutung des Traumes (Transformations in the View and Interpretation of the Dream), Berlin
- 1930 : Traum und Existenz (Dream and Existence)
- 1933 : Über Ideenflucht (On "Idea Escape"), Zurich
- 1942 : Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins (Basic Forms and Realization of Human Existence), Zurich (3rd édition, Munich/Bâle, 1962)
- 1946 : Über Sprache und Denken (On Language and Thinking), Bâle
- 1949 : Henrik Ibsen und das Problem der Selbstrealisation in der Kunst (Henrik Ibsen and the Problem of Self Realization in Art), Heidelberg
- 1956 : Erinnerungen an Sigmund Freud (Memories of Sigmund Freud), Berne
- 1956 : Drei Formen missglückten Daseins: Verstiegenheit, Verschrobenheit, Manieriertheit (Three Forms of Failed Existence), Tübingen
- 1957 : Schizophrenie (Schizophrenia), Pfullingen
- 1957 : Der Mensch in der Psychiatrie (Humans in Psychiatry), Pfullingen
- 1960 : Melancholie und Manie: Phänomenologische Studien (Melancholy and Mania. Phenomenological Studies), Pfullingen