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Proceedings for the Year of 1961

ONTOANALYSIS: A NEW TREND IN

PSYCHIATRY
years ago, certain ideas which had become current in
SOME
European psychiatry began to gain influence on American psychiatry. There have existed for a couple of years two groups
which have assimilated these ideas. The Association of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry edited last year the mimeographed ExistentialInquiries which grew into the Review of
Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, the first issue being
published in the winter of 1961. The other group calls itself
the Ontoanalytic Society and has published since the spring of
1960 the Journal of Existential Psychiatry. I have been unable
to discover what differences there are between the two groups
nor to find any statement that would define their respective
aims. I shall, therefore, use the terms "ontoanalysis" and
"existential psychiatry" as interchangeable. . . . especially
since such terms as Daseinsanalyse, existential analyse, psychanalyse existentielle" and others, which originated in Europe
around 1930, have become part of the vocabulary of continental
psychiatry.
These names reveal the fact that psychiatry has felt the need
to turn for guidance and inspiration to the new philosophies
which are comprised, with more or less justification, under the
general title existentialism. As the use of the term Dasein indicates, it is primarily the philosophy of M artin H eidegger which
has appealed to the psychiatrists-not the whole of this philosophy, however, as it was developed in Heidegger's later works,
but those parts which are contained in the writings prior to
1930, that is, Sein und Zeit, published in 1927, the lecture Was
ist Metaphysik? of 1929 and, to some extent, the essay Vom
Wesen des Grundes, also of 1929. And of these works, too,
only certain parts became significant for psychiatry, namely,
those that deal with (( Philosophical anthropology." Now, it
is known that Heidegger's concern is not primarily with the
Dasein, that is, the human being, but with Being-as-such, and
that the "fundamental analysis of the Dasein" is undertaken
with the intention of finding a way of approach to the Seins/rage,

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the question of being. It is not for this brief report to ask

whether or not this limitation to a particular and preparatory
part of the philosopher's ideas entails a certain misinterpretation, nor does time permit to inquire into the reasons why it is
just Heidegger's philosophy which appeared as relevant to the
psychiatrists.
Philosophy, on the whole, is not accustomed to see her ideas
utilized by empirical disciplines. Even less is she disposed to
lay down rules or to propose viewpoints of which the empiricist
ought to take account. Such attempts have been made twice,
once, at the time of the Renaissance and the birth of modern
science, and again by German Idealism, especially by Schelling
and his followers. Both these attempts ended with a defeat of
philosophy. It is astonishing, therefore, to see rise a movement
within psychiatry, an empirical discipline, which openly declares
its allegiance to and dependence upon adefinite philosophy.
But the fact remains; and it poses several questions. We have
time to consider only a few of these. We may disregard, obviously, all questions of a specifically psychiatrie nature, as, for
instance, that of the significance of the lC existential approach"
for diagnosis and treatment or that of its relation to other aspects of psychiatrie endeavor. But we have to ask what particular features of the psychiatrist's work and problem have
brought about this turning to philosophy. In trying to answer
this question we shall, at the same time, learn whether in this
new relation philosophy is only the giving part or whether she
is not, as it were, somehow repaid for the assistance she lends
to psychiatry. I hope to show that the latter is, indeed, the case.
If there is any trait common to the several forms of existentialism, it is the concern with the human individual in his
uniqueness. This concern is also that of the psychiatrist in
his dealing with his client. The problem of grasping or understanding the individual, however, takes on a particularly poignant form in the psychotherapeutic situation. Therapy, of
course, demands that the psychiatrist avail himself of his knowledge of human nature and of its deviations for the sake of helping the clients return to normalcy. In the psychotherapeutic
situation, therefore, there arises a dilemma; or in other words,
it is essential to this situation that it have a dialectical structure.
For, on the one hand, the psychiatrist has to make use of his

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general, seientifie knowledge, and on the other hand, to deal

with an individual who, in his individuality, eseapes all attempts at being defined or eomprised by any such generality.
In fact, the psyehotherapeutie situation reveals on an enlarged
seale the essential problematie of all medieal aetivity. For it is the
task of medieine to apply the data furnished by medieal seienee
to the individual" ease." But the patient, as an individual and
as this one siek individual is not an impersonal "case" that
would "fall under" some general laws designated by the diagnosis. The" history," as it appears in medieal publieations,
loses its sense and is replaeed by the " history of a siek person."
(The differenee can be expressed more sharply in German where
one may oppose, as I did in 1925, the Krankengeschichte to the
Geschichte eines Kranken.) One may go further and say that
this same dialeeties beeomes evident whenever we are faced with
the task of applying our seientifie and theoretieal knowledge
of human nature and human eonduet in an individual instanee,
for example, in the field of edueation, counselling, appraising the
aptitudes for this or that kind of work, and so on.
Onee this is realized, it beeomes clear also that the same
dilemma or dialectics characterizes all truly interpersonal relations. For, whenever we try to understand, to eonvinee, to
persuade, or in any way to influence another, we rely, conseiously
or not, on some general ideas of human nature. It is as if we
were saying to ourselves: sinee he i8 such and such aperson, this
rather than another argument will be more appealing to him,
or: his reaeting in this or that manner is indieative of his being
a certain type of person rather than another type. But we can
never be perfeetly certain beeause the individual cannot be
exhaustively eharaeterized by even a very great number of
general features. The most complete inventory of human traits
proves insuffieient to grasp fully an individual person in his very
individuality and uniqueness.
One might argue that no individual can ever be known fully
by means of general knowledge. Knowledge, espeeially seientifie
knowledge, deals, as Aristotle emphasized, with generalities, and
no combination of general statements measures up to these
features whieh eonstitute individuality. In our praetieal dealing with the things that surround us, however, this inadequaey
of knowledge becomes only seldom a handicap. For, we look

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at and make use of most things only in one respect; there are
innumerable qualitative notes that can be disregarded. These
notes, proper to an individual thing, moreover, become more and
more insignificant the lower the level of being is to which the
individual thing belongs. The thing remains, of course, an individual, but the significance it has for us depends much more
on its specific than on its individual nature. The insignificance
of the individualizing notes on the lower levels of being becomes
manifest by the fact that one thing may replace perfectly another thing of the same kind. This is sufficiently evident to
render superfluous any further illustrations.
All that has been said up to this point is rather obvious. It
has to be admitted, however, that philosophy-under the influence of the Greekconception of theoria as superior to praxishas been relatively neglectful of the problems arising in practical, especially in interpersonal situations. Consequently, it has
almost completely been overlooked that the term" individual"
is not univocal, but analogieal. To be an individual does not
have the same meaning on the several levels of being.
The relative insignificance of the individualizing notes on the
lower existential levels makes it possible that beings belonging to
these orders replace each other, regardless of their individuality.
On the higher levels, however, such areplacement of one individual by another becomes possible only, when the individual
is first subjected to a deindividualizing process which is done
most effectively by viewing him as not more than an element in
an " organization "; for one has to remember that in " organization " there is no reference to an organism butonly to organon
in the original sense of " implement."
I t is against this de-individualization that such existential
thinkers as M artin Buber and Gabriel M arcel turn. And it is
also that which ontoanalysis seeks to overcome in viewing the
person strictly as a unique individual. This entails, /urthermore, that the client 0/ the existential analyst be envisaged in
the totality not only 0/ his being but also 0/ the circumstances 0/
his li/e or 0/ his" situation." In this respect Heidegger's statement that to-be-in-a-world is constitutive for the Dasein, or in
his terminologyan existentiale, attained aparticular importance
for the psychiatrist. Envisaged from this angle, the person and
his world or his situation form an indissoluble unity. Conse-

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Proceedings for the Year of 1961

quently, the dismemberment of this whole into relatively independent elements, which is the basic procedure of science and
of discursive reasoning, is considered to be inadequate. Discursive reasoning, even though indispensable as a tool, does not
yield areal insight into an individual; rather, to understand and,
therefore, to help a person one has to start from "intuition"
and to return to it. Since" intuition" is a highly ambiguous
term and, especially, often believed to be of an emotional nature, I prefer to speak of a "global apprehension." And I
would like to note in passing that the phenomenology of the
varieties of global apprehension has still to be worked out; they
range from the apprehension of a configuration (Gestalt) to that
of the individuality of a human person, from that of the apprehension of a simple geometrical order to that of a work of art,
so that here, too, we have to do with an analogical term. This
has to be realized in order to escape the confusion-to which some
students of psychology have fallen prey-which arises when all
objects of global apprehension are comprised under the general
title of Gestalt. The over-all characteristic of the obj ects of
global apprehension may be designated as that of a " structured
whole; " this term seems to apply to such data as alandscape,
a picture, a situation, as weIl as to what I have ance described
as the " contextual referent" of a paragraph, a speech, a book
or a system.
Whether or not one agrees with the notion just outlined, it
will be obvious to most students of this question that it deals
with the relation of a mental performance and its trans-subjective correlate, that is, its object. Not so with the existential
psychiatrists. For one need not read long in the literature dealing with existential psychiatry or ontoanalysis before coming
upon the statement that one of the great achievements of the
new philosophies consists in having "bridged the gap between
subj ect and obj ect " or " abolished the opposition of subj ect and
object" or, in the words of one of these authors, to have " cut
below the cleavage between subject and object which has bedeviled Western thought and science since shortly after the
Renaissance." In fact, this claim of having done away with the
subject-object opposition is usually accompanied by a reference
to Descartes as to the one who introduced or, at least, brought
to the fore this opposition.

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Those who make this claim think primarily of the conditions

determining our understanding of another person; they hold
that the other person cannot be viewed as an " object " without
missing his essential nature as aperson. But the mention of
science in the sentence just quoted and other similar remarks
show that this so-called "undercutting H is meant in a general
sense. This becomes clear also by the reference, frequently
made, to the statement of Heisenberg that scientific data can no
longer be considered as objective, but that the experience of nuclear physics forces us to admit the intrusion of a " subjective "
element into our apparently "objective" equations.
It is easy to see that in such statements there is a confusion
of two meanings of the term "objective." In one sense, this
term designates a datum which is the same for aIl recipients and
has to be accepted by all because it corresponds to reality itself, independently of the person who avers it. This is what is
meant by the " objectivity of science." In another sense, however, object designates any datum whatsoever inasmuch as it
is the referent of some mental acta All consciousness, said
Husserl, is consciousness of something, and that of which we are
conscious is the object with which we are concerned. To avoid
this confusion I prefer to speak of the totality of all referents,
correlated to mental acts, as the realm of the " trans-subjective."
For not only the things apprehended by our senses, but also the
" state of affairs " expressed or expressible in a proposition, the
goal we desire to attain, the situation which releases an emotional response are " transsubj ective; " they are " intentional objects." No matter to what extent something " outside the mind "
may be modified or even distorted by the mode of the subj ective,
apprehending act, this something does not cease to be the
" other" of this acta Thus, when the physicist says that his
own doing, the means he uses to study, measure and describe a
physical phenomenon, disturb this phenomenon and that we
never can get hold of facts as they are when we do not interfere
with them, the phenomenon, nevertheless, does not cease to be
" trans-subjective."
This admixture of a subjective element is said to render meaningless the old conception of objectivity; even the supposedly
objective statements of science show themselves to be subjective;

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Proceedings for the Year of 1961

what was believed to be a description of reality as independent

of the observer appears now as colored, so to speak, by man's
doings and the peculiarities or limitations of his being. To
keep separate the objective and the subjective is no Ionger possible.
In truth, however, these discoveries of modern science do not
lend any support to the claim that the gap between object and
subject has been bridged. For this conclusion rests on a confusion of the two meanings of objectivity I referred to. It is
objectively true that there enters into the statements of science,
under certain conditions, a subjective factor. This can be verified; it can be observed by an indeterminate number of observers; and a statement on probability, because of the admixture of a subj ective element, is not less " trans-subj ective " than
one which does not take account of this admixture, which appears
as a feature of the data observed and not as one pertaining to the
realm of subjective experience. Without elaborating on this
point, I would like to submit that one ought to distinguish between the objectivity and the reliability of a statement or
measurement. And one might add that this emphasis on the
subjective element does, after all, not say much more than
what is contained in the age-old principle that omnia recipiuntur secundum modum recipientis.
What the mind apprehends does not become subjective by the
mere fact that the mode of apprehension is not that believed to
be proper to science. Global apprehension, as I calIed it, does
not lend itself to the kind of dismemberment which makes up
the essence of the scientific methode This fact, however, can
be used as an argument against the cleavage between subject
and object only if objectivity is first defined in the manner of
scientism and positivism. It should not be forgotten that one
may make objectively valid statements on subjective data.
The lack of semantic clarity, so it seems to me, is mainly
what makes possible the claim that the opposition of subject
and object has been eliminated. There are also other factors
at work which deserve discussion, were there enough time. One
of these factors may be characterized as a sort of sentimental
self-deception which leads a person to believe in a peculiar oneness with another person or even with a work of art. The expression "losing oneself" in another person, a painting, or a

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85

work of music, shows how strong the temptation is to indulge in

this belief. This leads furthermore to amisinterpretation of the
togetherness of the vVe which is taken to be a substantial union.
This is amisinterpretation because therein is overlooked the
fact that nothing can abolish the otherness of the other. (It
must be noted that this is recognized by some of the existentialist psychiatrists.) Whether it be possible to say that we may
achieve, under particular conditions, a direct contact, so to
speak, with the existential or substantial being of another, is a
question requiring careful and penetrating investigation. Even
if the answer were in the affirmative, the basic fact of the otherness of the other would not disappear.
Accepting the thesis of ontoanalysis as it apparently is meant
would be tantamount to attributing to the We-as weIl as to
other experienced forms of togetherness-an ontological or existential status of its own. Or, in other words, one would have
to assurne that there exists a new substantial something, an
idea hardly compatible with the principles of most philosophies.
It might find, perhaps, a place within the framework of Hegelian
idealism, but even there it would not be a phenomenal datum
hut only a stage in the process of the self-unfolding of the Absolute. The only conception within which this idea appears as
legitimate is that of Eastern mysticism as it is expressed, for
instance, in the Mesnevi, a great poem of a Persian mystic:
U there dies the Ego, the dark despot."
How very different
sound the words of Meister Eckhardt: "If thou art in loving
union with God and hearest thy brother call for help, let God
go and help thy brother."
The proponents 01 ontoanalysis rely, as I remarked, almost
exclusively on the philosophical anthropology they find-or believe to find-in the works 01 Martin Heidegger. But I cannot
discover there any statement that would support the claim 01
ontoanalysis. Heidegger, indeed, speaks of being-in-the-world
and of being-with as of existentialia, as basic traits of the mode
of being proper to the Dasein. But this does not deprive the

world or the fellow-man of their ontological status, of their being

in their own right. These terms are rather indicative of the
self-transcendence of the Dasein.
Ontoanalysis might refer, with the serrlblance of more justification, to certain utterances by Gahriel Marcel who emphat-

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Proceedings for the Year of 1961

ically declares that the Thou can never become an object without being deprived of its very nature. Marcel, however, takes
the term "object" exclusively as designating that aspect of
reality which is investigated by science. What he means to
say is that the scientific, analytic, impersonal approach is inadequate in our relation to each other. (Almost identical statements may be found in the writings of Martin Buber.) In spite
of all the emphasis on communion, engagement and similar
terms, as well as on le mystere, with Marcel also, the other retains his being as an ontological entity in himself. This is evidenced, for instance, by two remarks-among-many otherswhich appeared to Marcel's faithful commentator, Pere Troisfontaines, as of so fundamental significance that he uses them as
a motto for one part of his treatise; the first reads: ... le sujet
ne se constitue comme sujet qu'a condition de reconnaitre l'autre
comme etant lui-meme un sujet ", that is, the other has to be
recognized as likewise a subject and, hence, as an independent
being in his own right. The second remark summarizes, in a
somewhat paradoxical manner, one of Marcel's basic convictions: La metaphysique, c'est le prochain. Marcel views intersubjectivity as a primary datum and as the starting point of
metaphysical reflection. Heidegger, on the other hand, starts
from the individual Dasein which is always my own-je meines
-. And thus, he remains, in a way, true to the tradition running from Descartes to Husserl, even though he holds that
metaphysics, as it developed since Plato has come to its end
with Hegel and Nietzsche. The ideas of Marcel-and also those
of Buber-seem to be particularly suitable for a deeper understanding of the problem arising within, and connected with, the
psychotherapeutic situation. They have, however, curiously
played a relatively subordinate role in the endeavors of the
existential psychiatrists to work out the ontological structures
underlying the psychotheraputic situation and they have attracted greater attention only in very recent times, when several
authors came to realize the basic importance of the " encounter."
But stressing this importance seems hardly compatible with the
idea of abolishing the opposition of subject and object, if the
latter term is correctly understood and not taken as a category
peculiar to science.

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I have dealt atsome length with the question of the subjectobject relation as it comes to the fore in the encounter of the
psychiatrist and his client not because of the emphasis placed
on it by the existential psychiatrists and not because of the
inacceptability of the answer proposed by them. That some
people hold untenable ideas need not be of greater concern to
philosophy; she may trust that sooner or later these erroneous
ideas will be corrected. But it has to be recognized that, although the solution be insufficient, the problem is areal one
and that it has not been studied hitherto as it deserves. In fact,
it is not one problem but a whole network of problems which
becomes apparent in the psychotherapeutic situation which presents, as I pointed out earlier, aspects common to all truly human
encounter on, so to speak, a magnified scale. I have referred to
one side of this problem as that of the nature of "global apprehension." I beg to submit some further considerations.
I believe it to be evident that there exists astriet correlation
between an intentional act and its object. To every kind of
object corresponds a peculiar way of apprehension.
We distinguish the powers of the mind by their objects and
their operations. The same principle applies to the several
modes in which apower functions. To discover and to characterize these modes is one of the tasks of phenomenology.
While for a general philosophy of the mind it suffices that the
usual broad distinctions be made, it becomes indispensable for
a more detailed study and for a fuller kuowledge of human nature that account be taken of further differentiations. These
may be such as to cut across, so to speak, the division of the
mental powers. Global apprehension, as I have called it, is a
peculiar modification of sensory as weIl as of intellectual awareness. The corresponding objects may be said to possess a structure or to form a context. Some have thought of doing justice
to this fact by using the notion of Gestalt or configuration in a
very broad sense. Therein lies, as I pointed out, the danger that
one overlooks the differences by stressing the similarities, that
is, the analogical significance of the term. Although it is true
that all structures, conetxts, meaningful wholes, or whatever
name one may prefer, have something in common and that this
something-which perhaps, escapes further analysis-is apprehended by a mental operation sui generis, it is true also that in

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Proceedings for the Year 01 1961

apprehending a geometrical configuration, a painting, the structure of a poem, the meaning of an essay, the general nature of a
philosophical system, each case has its own peculiarities. The
same is true of the apprehension of a human person, be that
apprehension of our own person or of another's.
That existential psychology and psychiatry have forcibly
pointed out this fact, is a notable service rendered to philosophy.
I have thought it advisable to concentrate on the significance
these new trends in the empirical study of man have for philosophy and to leave aside the question of their meaning for the
theoretical and practical endeavors of the psychiatrist. It falls
outside the scope of this short presentation to inquire into the
particular problems with which philosophy is faced when she
tries to come to terms with these new facts and ideas. And this
is, I Bubmit, a task philosophy is not allowed to shun if she is
to stay alive. Otherwise, it will be her fate to become petrified,
to degenerate into mere formalistic discussion, and to lose the
capacity to fill the place which is rightfully hers in the order of
knowledge.
R UDOLF ALLERS
Georgetown University

(Paper delivered by Dr. Florence Hetzler)