BINSWANGER WITH SCHAPP - EXISTENTIAL OR N ARRATIVE ANALYSIS

Binswanger's Dasein analysis tries to explain the close links between understanding, interpreting and experience; to this end it evolves in a constant zigzag between two schools of thought - Husserl's and Heide gger's. It centres around the question of Living connections between w hat is lived and connections between my life and that of another. Of c ourse it runs into the problem of incomprehensibility and returns to H usserl's theory of perception. The authors question the primary ontolo gical importance of perception by following Wilhelm Schapp's philosoph y. For this author it's history that has pride of place, not perceptio n. Things are of value only because they belong to a story; the story is the man's place. Man is thus described as bogged down in stories. W e show that Binswanger's project can be redesigned by following Schapp 's narrative scheme. The connections within experience are the connect ions between stories. The meeting with the psychiatric patient can be understood as mutual ''bogging down''. This brings the authors to reco nsider existential analysis in terms of strict narrative analysis.