An Epistemology of the Clinic: Ludwig Binswanger’s Phenomenology of the Other

Abstract

160 The writing of this paper was made possible by the support of an NSF postdoctoral fellowship in Science and Technology Studies based at Boston University’s Center for Philosophy and History of Science. I am indebted to Dr. Dieter Binswanger for giving me access to Bellevue’s patient records and the University Archive in Tubingen, especially Irmela Bauer-Kloden, for help locating source material. I am also grateful for critical commentary from Arnold Davidson, the members of the editorial board at Critical Inquiry, and to Anne Harrington, Peter Galison, Alfred Tauber, Bettina Bergo, Debbie Weinstein, and Bruce Fischl. All translations, unless otherwise cited, are my own. 1. The passage continues, “For the mental datum present to the individualmust not only be identifiable throughout a multiplicity of acts on his own part, but by many other people as well” (Max Scheler,The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath [NewHaven, Conn., 1954], p. 221). See also Scheler, “Die Idole der Selbsterkenntnis,”Abhandlungen und Aufsatze, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1915), 2: 3–168. 2. WilhelmDilthey and those in the hermeneutic traditionmade a concerted effort to formulate a methodological basis for the human sciences based in great part on a psychology of understanding (Verstehen).Dilthey’s classic work on a descriptive psychology that employed the method ofVerstehen in distinction to an analytic psychology utilizing explanationwas originally published in 1894; seeWilhelmDilthey, “Ideen uber eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie,”Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Karlfried Grunder and Frithjof Rodi, 23 vols. to date (Stuttgart, 1961–), 5:139–240. See alsoMichael Ermarth,WilhelmDilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason (Chicago, 1978), pp. 171–76. An Epistemology of the Clinic: Ludwig Binswanger’s Phenomenology of the Other