Ludwig Binswanger

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Ludwig Binswanger

Ludwig Binswanger (April 13, 1881 – February 5, 1966) was a Swiss psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry and is certified in treating mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy....
and pioneer in the field of existential psychology. His grandfather (also named Ludwig Binswanger) was the founder of the "Bellevue Sanatorium" in Kreuzlingen

Kreuzlingen

Kreuzlingen is a Municipalities of Switzerland in the district of Kreuzlingen in the Cantons of Switzerland of Thurgau in Switzerland. It is the seat of the district....
, and his uncle Otto Binswanger

Otto Binswanger

Otto Ludwig Binswanger was a Swiss psychiatrist and neurologist who came from a famous family of physicians; his father was founder of the Kreuzlingen Sanatorium, and he was uncle to Ludwig Binswanger who was a major figure in the existential psychology movement....
was a professor of psychiatry

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is a Medicine Specialty devoted to the Treatment of mental disorders, Biomedical research and Prevention of mental disorder. The term was first coined by the German physician Johann Christian Reil in 1808....
at the University of Jena.

In 1907 Binswanger received his medical degree from the University of Zurich

University of Zurich

The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 24,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new Faculty of philosophy....
and as a young man worked and studied under some of the greatest psychologists of the era, such as Carl Jung

Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of Analytical psychology. Jung's approach to psychology has been influential in the field of depth psychology and in counterculture movements across the globe....
, Eugen Bleuler

Eugen Bleuler

Paul Eugen Bleuler was a Swiss psychiatry most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness and coining the term schizophrenia....
and Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

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Encyclopedia

Ludwig Binswanger (April 13, 1881 – February 5, 1966) was a Swiss psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

Kreuzlingen

Otto Binswanger

Psychiatry

University of Zurich

Carl Jung

Eugen Bleuler

Paul Eugen Bleuler was a Swiss psychiatry most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness and coining the term schizophrenia....
and Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalysis of psychology. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of Psychological repression and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for curing psychopathology through dialogue...
. Although he had differences with Freud regarding psychiatric theory, Binswanger remained friends with him until Freud's death in 1939.

From 1911 to 1956, Binswanger was medical director of the santatorium in Kreuzlingen. He was greatly influenced by existential philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
and the works of philosophers such as Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was an influential Germany Philosophy. His best known book, Being and Time, is generally considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century....
, Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosophy who is deemed the founder of phenomenology . He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, while at the same time he elaborated critiques of psychologism and historicism....
, and Martin Buber

Martin Buber

Martin Buber was an Austrian-Israeli-Jewish philosopher, translator, and educator, whose work centered on theism ideals of religious consciousness, interpersonal relations, and community....
. Binswanger is considered the first physician to combine psychotherapy

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is an intentional interpersonal relationship used by trained psychotherapists to aid a wiktionary:Client in problems of living. It aims to increase the individual's sense of health and reduce their subjective sense of discomfort....
with existentialism

Existentialism

Existentialism is a term that has been applied to the work of a number of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, took the human subject — not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual and his or her conditions of existence — as a starting point...
, a theory he expounds in his 1943 book; Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins. In his study of existentialism, his most famous subject was Ellen West

Ellen West

Ellen West was an anorexia nervosa patient who became one of the most famous examples of existential analysis. In 1944, her Swiss psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger , published a disturbing report of West's life....
, a deeply troubled anorexia nervosa patient.

Binswanger's Dream and Existence was translated from German into French by Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was a French philosophy, historian, intellectual, Critical theory and sociologist. He held a chair at the Coll?ge de France with the title "History of Systems of Thought," and also taught at the University of California, Berkeley....
, who added a substantial essay-introduction.

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