Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins (Basic Forms and the Realization of Human "Being-in-the-World")

Zurich: Max Niehans Verlag, 1942. First printing. Hardcover. Very Good/good. Large 8vo, cloth in dust jacket, book very good, owner's name in pen on flyleaf, light tanning to contents, jacket good and mainly complete but with some soil and chipping. 726 pp. The pioneering work of existential phenomenological psychology, drawing on the work of Husserl and others, and a major influence on phenomenological psychology, Foucault, Lacan and others. In this work, he explains existential analysis as an empirical science that involves an anthropological approach to the individual essential character of being human. Binswanger saw Husserl's concept of lifeworld as a key to understanding the subjective experiences of his patients, considering that "in the mental diseases we face modifications of the fundamental structure and of the structural links of being-in-the-world". For Binswanger, mental illness involved the remaking of a world - including alterations in the lived experience of time, space, body sense and social relationships. Where for example the psychoanalyst might only see "an overly strong 'pre-oedipal' tie to the mother", Binswanger would point out that "such overly strong filial tie is only possible on the premise of a world-design exclusively based on connectedness, cohesiveness, continuity." (wiki).