science · 13 April 1881 · 143 years ago
birth
Born 13 Apr 1881; died 5 Feb 1966 at age 84.
Swiss psychiatrist who founded existential analysis. He was born into a family of noted psychiatrists, including his father Ludwig, his grandfather Robert and his great-uncle Otto. He first met Carl Jung while working at the psychiatric hospital in Zurich. Their visit together with Sigmund Freud in Vienna (1907) led to Binswanger taking up psychoanalysis. He developed an interest in the ideas of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber, and his perspective evolved more along existential than Freudian lines. He applied the principles of existential phenomenology, especially as expressed by Heidegger, to psychotherapy, and can be said to have been the first truly existential therapist.
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