Susan Lanzoni's Analysis

1536 Words7 Pages
Susan Lanzoni resuscitates Ludwig Binswanger’s important work within the psychiatric community in “An Epistemology of the Clinic: Ludwig Binswanger’s Phenomenology of the Other” by comparing Binswanger’s ideologies with those of Sigmund Freud (depth psychologist) and Karl Jaspers (pioneer of phenomenological psychiatry). Both Jaspers and B created a new paradigm of the intuitive, which entails using “phenomenological intuition and empathy [to] provide a direct pathway to understanding the psychotic person holistically” (L 164). In her composition, Lanzoni focuses her scholarly essay on Binswanger’s unexamined epistemology of the clinic that he produced in the early twentieth century. Lanzoni reveals that Binswanger used intuitive methods to…show more content…
At a time when the psychiatric field relied on treating symptoms, B developed an interest in “seeking a science of the person (Person-wissenschaft) based on the possibility of direct, intersubjective understanding” (171). To accomplish this, the phenomenological therapist uses intuitive methods that consist of attaching perception with sensitivity. In opposition, Sigmund F believed that it was the psychoanalyst’s responsibility to treat patients with a level of detachment – apparently, this detachment would provide an emotional coldness that Freud believed would “[create] the most advantageous conditions for both parties: for the doctor a desirable protection for his own emotional life and for the patient the largest amount of help that we can give him to-day” (Lanzoni 170-71). He believed that not only should doctors remain detached, but he also accepted that doctors should treat patients without any feeling, a step beyond detachment, a state of being objective or levelheaded and aloof, which Binswanger rejected. He rejected the idea that it is best to view “patients’ disorders by invoking flows of libido or unconscious mechanisms, both because they did not apply to his psychotic patients and because Binswanger questioned the speculative quality of these explanations” (Lanzoni 171). In other words, Binswanger’s complaints about Freud’s libido were what he considered…show more content…
To accomplish this, Binswanger uses intuitive methods of inner perception. According to Binswanger, two individuals could “[exist] between conscious minds” without anything intervening (such as biases or preconceptions, perhaps?) and through this experience identify with each other. By using what he felt to be right without conscious reasoning, Binswanger believed one could gain insight into a person’s inner awareness and/or mental impression. In focusing on Binswanger’s systematic study of a person, Lanzoni analyzes how psychiatrists can practice psychoanalysis through categorical intuition, revealing a shift in cultural

    More about Susan Lanzoni's Analysis

      Open Document