Medard Boss

Medard Boss(October 4, 1903,St. Gallen– December 21, 1990,Zollikon) was aSwisspsychoanalyticpsychiatrist who developed a form ofpsychotherapyknown asDaseinsanalysis,which united the psychotherapeutic practice of psychoanalysis with theexistential phenomenologicalphilosophy of friend and mentorMartin Heidegger.

Work

During his medical studies in Vienna, he initiated his psychoanalytic training by undergoing some psychoanalytic sessions withSigmund Freud,an analysis he later continued at length in Zurich with Swiss psychoanalystHans Behn Eschenburg.

Also upon his return to Zurich, he trained at Burghölzli Hospital under the supervision of thepsychiatristEugen Bleuler.He then went on to formal psychoanalytic training at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute where his supervisory analyst wasKaren Horney.While at BPI he studied withHanns Sachs,Otto Fenichel,Wilhelm Reich,andKurt Goldstein.

He later went to London, where he worked closely withErnest Jonesfor six months at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases. Back in Zurich he was invited byCarl Gustav Jungto join a workshop with other medical doctors to study analytical psychology, an experience that lasted nearly ten years and helped Boss to see that psychoanalysis need not be limited to Freudian interpretations. It was during the 1930s that Boss also became acquainted withLudwig Binswanger,who introduced Boss to the works of philosopherMartin Heidegger.

During World War II, while serving in the Swiss Army, Boss began studying Heidegger'sBeing and Timeand, upon the conclusion of the war, Boss contacted Heidegger, initiating a 25-year mentoring friendship. Through his study with Heidegger, Boss came to believe that modern medicine and psychology, premised onCartesianphilosophy andNewtonian physics,made incorrect assumptions about human beings and what it means to be human. He addressed an existential foundation for medicine and psychology two classic texts:Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis(English version, 1963) andExistential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology(English translation, 1979).

Whereas Boss's older colleague Ludwig Binswanger, is recognized as the founder of the first systematic existential approach to psychiatry and psychopathology, Boss is regarded as having founded the first systematic approach to existential psychotherapy. Other significant contributions Boss made to the literature inexistential psychotherapyincludeThe Meaning and Content of Sexual Perversions(English Translation, 1949),The Analysis of Dreams(English Translation, 1958), andA Psychiatrist Discovers India(English translation, 1965).

Boss saw dreams as coming from a person's life as a whole, not from a separate "dream state". He also did not see the "unconscious" as a place where the denied impulses were kept, which was the way Freud presented it.

Select bibliography

• Zollikon Seminars:Protocols, Conversations, Letters (editor; Martin Heidegger, author) (2001). F. Mayr, trans.Northwestern University Press.
• Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology (1979). S. Conway and A. Cleaves, trans. Northvale, NJ:Jason Aronson.
• Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis (1963). L. E. Lefebre, trans. New York: Basic Books.
• A Psychiatrist Discovers India (1965). Wolff.
• I Dreamt Last Night... (1977). S. Conway, trans. New York: Gardner Press.
• The Analysis of Dreams (1957). J. Pomerans, trans. New York: Philosophical Library.
• The Meaning and Content of Sexual Perversions (1949). L. L. Abell, trans. New York: Grune and Stratton.
• Psychotherapy for Freedom: The Daseinsanalytic Way in Psychology and Psychoanalysis. E. Craig (ed.). A Special Issue ofThe Humanistic Psychologist,Volume 16, Spring, 1988.

External links

• Brent Dean Robbins' Medard Boss Page
• Dr. C. George Boeree's overview of Boss' theory
• Zollikon Seminars(at Wikipedia). Martin Heidegger and Medard Boss (seminars, letters, discussions).