Psychoanalytic peregrination. V: The Zollikon Lectures.

Abstract

This article is to prepare the reader, along with the previous peregrination, for the article that follows by Professor Lang. It introduces the thinking of Heidegger at the Zollikon Seminars, conducted by the Swiss psychoanalyst Medard Boss, founder of Daseinanalyse and presented to a group of Swiss psychiatrists. Heidegger opposed Freud's scientific Weltanschauung and his hydraulic system of metapsychology, objecting that it dehumanizes the patient. He emphasized the importance of the therapist's "presence" and openness to the patient. He utilized phenomenology to prevent relating to the patient as an "other" or "thing" and advocated a hermeneutic approach instead. This approach involves the use of questions and answers to gain a gradual explicit understanding of the unique communications from the individual patient. He opposed the approach of the drug companies that impel psychiatry to use classification of disorders through manuals such as DSM-IV and then subject the patient to the recommended drug for that disorder, which he maintained was a form of domination of the patient as the "other."