From Passive Psyche to Dynamic Dasein

This article is a study in contrasts between Freudian psychoanalytic metapsychology, shaped by the physical–mechanistic scientific model of the Helmholtz School of Medicine, and Boss's Daseinanalytic psychotherapy, formed by the human science model derived from the Heidegger's analysis of Dasein. It begins with Binswanger's initial attempt to replace the Freudian metapsychology with Heidegger's analytic of the human being as an active agent in the world. Following this path, the article shows the radical new direction Boss gives to psychotherapy by shifting the focus of therapy from the analysis of an abstract and disembodied psyche driven by forces toward an analysis of the person as a free and responsible agent engaged in the world. Although Boss maintains a high regard for Freud's great achievement, I suggest that he failed to appreciate fully the true magnitude of his new contribution and, due to his hermeneutic of generosity toward psychoanalysis, underestimated the reciprocal influence between Freud's metapsychology and his therapeutic advice and techniques. It is my basic contention that a radical shift of a psychotherapy's philosophical anthropology transforms the entire theory, as a whole, in all its dimensions.