Interpreting discomfort

paving the way for phenomenological-hermeneutic (psycho)therapy

Abstract

The approaches of Martin Heidegger's philosophy have given rise to the development of several
psychotherapeutic attempts, due to the proximity between the analytics of existence, deployed
above all in the unfinished project of Sein und Zeit, where he exposes the passage from an
“inauthentic” life to an “authentic” life by taking charge of the phenomenon of anguish based on the
knowledge of the finitude of oneself. Heidegger's fundamental ontology has inspired the theories of
Dasein-analysts such as Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss and psychoanalysts such as Jacques
Lacan and William J. Richardson (although the latter did not practise). Before Heidegger, Edmund
Husserl himself turned to psychology for an answer to the phenomena of consciousness, and Karl
Jaspers introduced the phenomenological method into psychopathology. But the phenomenological
presuppositions, as they are put forward, do not in themselves make a valid form of therapy possible,
hence the need to turn to the Heideggerian proposals to unify the phenomenological method with
hermeneutics as developed by Dilthey. We believe that it is in the unity between phenomenology
and hermeneutics that an adequate interpretation of malaise, the basis of all therapy, can be carried
out.