Phenom Cogn Sci

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9569-8

Two ways of combining philosophy and psychopathology

of time experiences

Alice Holzhey-Kunz 1

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract In this paper the author presents two different modes of relationship between
phenomenological psychopathology and philosophy. The dominant mode conforms to
the medical-psychiatric discourse which takes pathological time experiences as nega-
tive deviations from the ‘normal’ and ‘adequate’ equivalent. In this mode phenomeno-
logical description of ‘disturbed’ time experiences requires philosophy to provide an
insight into the ‘essence’ of time and an essentially adequate experience of time. Only
such a philosophical insight can deliver a valid reference point for investigating what is
really missing in pathological time experiences. This philosophical reference point can
either consist in a metaphysical-normative concept of time and time experiences
(Bergson), or in a transcendental concept of how normal and abnormal time experi-
ences are constituted in the inner consciousness of time (Husserl). There is another
mode of relationship which conforms to Freud’s discovery that pathological symptoms
are not just negative alterations of the ‘normal’ but hide an own ‘meaning’. The author
makes the case for the use of philosophy to unveil the specific kind of meaning in
pathological experiences of time. She refers to existential philosophy in this respect,
and in particular to its concept of Angst as a fundamental philosophical experience.
This allows for a hermeneutic approach to ‘disturbed’ time experiences. What looks
from a pure psychiatric perspective to be a mere ‘disorder’ of the ‘normal’, becomes
understandable as a specific form of ‘suffering from one’s own temporality’. She argues
that people with disturbed time experiences are especially sensitive to anxiety-laden
experiences of what it means to be temporal, whilst ‘normal’ people can screen them
out in favor of a ‘mentally undisturbed’ everyday life.

Keywords Phenomenological approach to psychopathological phenomena . Medical-

psychiatric discourse . Normative philosophy . Transcendental philosophy .
Phenomenological hermeneutics . Existential philosophy

* Alice Holzhey-Kunz

1
Zürich, Switzerland
 A. Holzhey-Kunz

1 Introduction

As soon as phenomenology enters the field of pathological variations of time experi-

ences, it is confronted with considerable problems. The reason is that in this field the
phenomena are all too often not comprehensible in themselves. They mostly lack a
natural comprehensibility and manifest themselves as enigmatic, because they drop out
of the meaningful context they belong to and manifest themselves like erratic blocks in
a landscape. Therefore the famous phenomenological call ‘to the things themselves’
cannot be a valuable guideline anymore. Whenever the ‘things’ present themselves as
‘incomprehensible’, it becomes pointless to try to describe them with precision.
Another process is needed to shed light on the mysterious strangeness of the patholog-
ical experiences of time.
Therefore phenomenology turns to the medical-psychiatric discourse whenever it
operates in the field of psychopathological phenomena. This discourse is determined by
the two basic concepts of ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’ respectively ‘normality’
and ‘mental disorder’. As a consequence of this adaptation ‘mental health’ becomes
now the constant reference point of any phenomenological description of pathological
phenomena. This means a fundamental change phenomenology undergoes when
operating in the field of psychopathology.
But now phenomenology needs to find a really valid and well founded concept of
time and of essentially adequate time experience, otherwise it cannot hold the standard
of a scientific description of pathological deviations. With good reasons it turns to
philosophy. Only philosophy is able to answer the fundamental questions of what time
is in its essence, and what experience of time can be called adequate and therefore
‘healthy’ and ‘sound’.
The question of whether this is the only chance for philosophy to be of help in the
field of psychopathology has never been asked until now, because it has always been
taken for granted that phenomenology cannot do other than adapt itself to the
medical-psychiatric discourse when entering the field of psychopathology. The main
task of the second part is to demonstrate that there is another way of combining
philosophy and psychopathology. This other way can be found under the condition
that phenomenology does not turn to the medical-psychiatric discourse, but instead to a
‘discovery’ we owe to Sigmund Freud. This discovery concerns the understanding of
psychopathological phenomena in general. Freud made this discovery in his ‘talking
cure’ with women with hysteria. In listening to what they told him he discovered that
the hysterical symptoms have a hidden meaning (Freud 1916–17 p. 15f.). This goes
against the dominant medical-psychiatric perspective on pathological symptoms as
negative deviations from their normal and healthy equivalents which have an apparent
meaning and are therefore easily understandable.
Turning to Freud’s discovery that symptoms hide a meaning does not imply a
necessity to follow his meta-psychological assumptions about what meaning lies
hidden in the symptoms. Here, in my opinion, existential philosophy provides an
opportunity of a hermeneutic approach which is much more phenomenological in
nature. So philosophy again plays an important role in approaching pathological time
experiences, but in a totally different way. Philosophy is now indispensable because of
the assumption that the hidden meaning of manifestly irrational pathological phenom-
ena is of a philosophical nature.
Two ways of combining philosophy and psychopathology of time...

It is very important to realize that as soon as we assume that pathological experiences

of time hide a philosophical meaning, phenomenology too undergoes a fundamental
change. Instead of being devoted to comparing the manifest with the healthy equivalent, it
is now devoted to unveiling what lies behind the surface and to interpreting it. This is a
shift from phenomenological-descriptive comparison to phenomenological hermeneutics.
I want to emphasize the point that it is not my intention to argue in favour of the new
way of combining philosophy and psychopathology of time experiences to the disad-
vantage of the dominating traditional way. I think however that the hermeneutic
approach should also have a voice in the phenomenological branch of psychopathology.

2 Part I. The way that a descriptive phenomenology relates to philosophy

in the field of pathological time experiences

2.1 General remarks about four relevant aspects

2.1.1 Why phenomenological description of pathological symptoms becomes a sort

of comparison and measurement

As I already said in the introduction, phenomenology is confronted with a new task

when entering the field of psychopathology. In all other areas phenomenology has to do
with phenomena which are meaningful in the actual context they belong to and are
therefore understandable in a natural way. Now it encounters isolated phenomena
which cannot be understood anymore. The new task is to catch the specificity of their
otherness respectively strangeness, which is totally different form the strangeness of
phenomena which belong to another epoch or culture. To solve this task phenomenol-
ogy submits to the medical-psychiatric discourse, which takes for granted that the
strangeness of these phenomena is the result of an alteration in the sense of a negative
deviation from their normal and sane counterparts.
It is important to realize how much phenomenology applied in the field of psycho-
pathology differs from how the phenomenological method of description is applied in
other sciences. Instead of investigating the ‘essence’ of the ‘things themselves’, it now
investigates the alteration of the pathological ‘things’ compared with their supposedly
normal and sane counterparts. This comparison has the character of a normative
measuring, because the ‘normal’ counterpart has the function of a norm or a benchmark
which allows defining the alteration as a negative deviation from it.
Whereas the phenomenological method, when applied in other sciences (as for
instance psychology or sociology), is always intertwined with hermeneutics, it becomes
now an a-hermeneutic description of something which makes neither in itself nor as part
of the actual environment much sense, because the manifest meaning of pathological
phenomena is per definition distorted. Out of this follows the specific phenomenological
task in the field of psychopathology, namely to describing what the pathological phe-
nomena are lacking compared with their normal equivalent and to what degree. In this
way description becomes a constant comparison. The focus does not rest anymore on the
pathological phenomenon as such, but on the pathological phenomenon in relation to the
 A. Holzhey-Kunz

normal equivalent. By choosing ‘mental health’ as the reference point for comparison, the
riddle of the strangeness of pathological phenomena is solved by interpreting them as
‘negative’ deviations from the healthy equivalents which are by definition undamaged
and therefore meaningful parts of a broader context. The stronger the deviation from the
normal, the more distorted is the manifest meaning of the symptoms.

2.1.2 Why phenomenology turns to philosophy and not to common sense

Psychiatric diagnostic manuals of today hold on to what is generally assessed and accepted
as ‘normal’. They do not even pretend to have a well-founded concept of mental health or
mental normality. Even more importantly: they do not look for a normative understanding
of mental health, which would identify it with ‘psychic maturity’ or a ‘truly successful’ or
‘truly meaningful’ life. Phenomenological psychopathology on the contrary is not willing to
content itself with turning to common sense for an adequate understanding of what is
normal and healthy. In other words: it is not looking for ‘average normality’, but instead it
interrogates the concept of ‘mental health’ from a philosophical perspective. This has to do
with the self-understanding of phenomenology as ‘view of the essence’, be it concerned
with philosophical or ontic-concrete questions. That is why it turns to philosophy. Only
philosophy is able to deliver what phenomenology looks for, namely a true insight of the
‘essence’ of time and the essentially true and adequate time-experience.
We have to ask what are the consequences of the decision to hold on to a
philosophical concept of the essence of time and time-experience for the phenomeno-
logical approach to pathological time experiences.

2.1.3 Consequences of turning to philosophy for a normative understanding

of ‘normality’

Phenomenology turns to philosophy for a ‘normative’ concept of time and of time

experience. Thanks to this normative concept, phenomenology is able to say what is
‘essentially’ lacking in pathological experiences of time, because it is compared with
what time is in its essence and how a fully adequate experience of time is structured.
But there are considerable consequences when pathological time experiences are not
compared with the current and average equivalents, but with the ideal norm of essentially
adequate time experiences. The main consequence is that they appear more deficient than
when compared with the average. In other words, by using a normative understanding of
normality, the gap between the normal and the abnormal deepens. What we call ‘average
normality’ is nothing else than the rather broad grey zone between the idealistic norm which
is seldom reached on the one hand and the apparently pathological deviations from the norm
on the other. And whereas time experiences are then apparently pathological when they are
inadequate to a degree that they have a disturbing effect on daily life, the grey zone of
average time experience becomes deficient too, as soon as it is compared with the idealistic
norm, albeit to a lower degree.

2.1.4 The turn to transcendental philosophy

Ludwig Binswanger was the first to replace the philosophical norm of essential time
experience with a transcendental norm. He found this norm in Husserl’s transcendental
Two ways of combining philosophy and psychopathology of time...

phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time. I will explain this in more details
in 2.4. Here I will just make clear what is meant by ‘transcendental philosophy’, and
then ask what is changed for the better by turning to transcendentalism and what
remains unchanged.
The transcendental question always focuses on ‘the conditions of possibility’. It
always steps away from just exploring the experience itself and asks what makes
this experience possible, what lies underneath it and enables its being. The
transcendental turn is, since Immanuel Kant, the turn from the worldly phenomena
to the mind or consciousness through which these phenomena are constituted.
When we apply this to our topic of ‘normal’ time experience, the transcendental
question focuses on what makes this experience possible and how it is constituted
in terms of the human consciousness of time. The progress of the transcendental
turn lies in enabling a more radical exploration of ‘normality’ and also in opening
up a totally new field of phenomenological research.
It is also important to realize that the intention for this turn away from
philosophy of the essence towards transcendental philosophy remains the same:
namely to obtain a norm to measure pathological alterations of time experiences.
Because the norm does now lie in the proper functioning of the process of the
inner constitution of time, it is now possible to describe the deviation from the
norm on the most fundamental level. This is – seen from a medical-psychiatric
perspective – a big advantage of the turn to transcendental philosophy. Phenom-
enological investigation is now more than just a comparative description of the
manifest, because it unveils the fundamental cause for the manifest deviations at
the same time. By referring to transcendental philosophy in the sense of Husserl’s
transcendental phenomenology of the inner consciousness, the phenomenologist
now has direct access to what lies underneath, not simply what appears as normal
or what appears as pathological on the surface.
There is another advantage of the transcendental turn. The transcendental norm
taken from Husserl’s analysis of inner time consciousness (1893-1917) is neither
idealistic nor moralistic, but purely rational, giving the phenomenological mea-
suring of the pathological phenomena a scientific quality. But this does not mean
that the transcendental turn questions the submission of phenomenology to the
medical-psychiatric discourse. What manifests itself as a pathological deviation on
the surface is just traced back to a deviation in the fundamental constitution of the
inner consciousness of time. Binswanger explained his step away from
Heidegger’s Daseinsanalytic in ‘Being and Time’ to Husserl’s Phenomenology
of time at the beginning of his book ‘Depression and Mania’ (1960) with the
argument that only thanks to Husserl’s phenomenology of consciousness can the
psychiatrist now catch the mental disorder ‘as a disorder’ and has therefore
reached the same scientific level as somatic medicine (p. 428).

2.2 How Erwin Straus and Viktor von Gebsattel make use of philosophy for their
phenomenological investigation of pathological time-experiences

In this section I will focus on two famous papers both written in 1928: ‘Experienc-
ing of time in Endogenous Depressions and Depressive Reactions’ by Erwin
Straus, and ‘Time-related obsessive Thoughts in Melancholy’ by Viktor von
 A. Holzhey-Kunz

Gebsattel. Although both papers were published in the same year, the paper by
Gebsattel is strongly related to Strauss’ paper and praises it as ‘extremely relevant’
to solving the problem of obsession by referring to time and time-experience
(Gebsattel, p. 1). Both authors are not only committed to Husserl’s phenomeno-
logical method which they introduce in psychopathology, but share – at least in
these papers – also the same philosophical concept of time and of time experience
which is mainly taken from Henry Bergson (even though this French philosopher
is not named explicitly). Both have made Bergson’s philosophy of life, which
includes important reflections about time, their own. Despite of this common
philosophical ground the two papers approach the subject in different ways.
Therefore they do not only complement each other, but represent two possibilities
for a phenomenological measuring of pathological time experiences. We owe to
Straus’ paper general reflections about how and why the experience of time in
depression is negatively altered compared with the norm. Short examples are
given to illustrate his thoughts. Gebsattel’s paper by comparison is centered on a
case-study of a young woman suffering from obsessive thoughts about time. His
theory is exemplified through his interpretation of the long quotations demonstrat-
ing the thoughts by which this woman is constantly harassed.

2.2.1 How Straus and Gebsattel make use of the philosophy of Bergson

We can distinguish several aspects of Bergson’s philosophy of time which are equally
relevant to both authors (see Moscalewicz 2017):

– the distinction between two forms of time-experience: ‘personal time’ respectively

‘experience-immanent time’ and ‘world time’ respectively ‘experience-
transcending time’;
– arguments for the evidence that human life normally takes place and develops in the
realm of ‘personal time’, which has a qualitative character and is more fundamental;
– arguments for the evidence of the priority of the dimension of the future in
‘personal time’;
– arguments for the evidence that world-time represents the lifeless rational thinking
which is needed for time-measuring in the natural sciences, but which is hostile to
the richness of a full and expansive life.

According to Strauss and Gebsattel all these moments are criteria for a normal
and successful life. Therefore it is appropriate to characterize the psychopathol-
ogy of Straus and Gebsattel as ‘lebensphilosophisch’ because of their strong
bonds to Bergson’s philosophy of life (Fuchs 2014. p. 128); Theunissen 1993, p.
336). They are convinced that the real cause, for why in depression the dimen-
sion of the future is ‘blocked’, lies in a ‘vital inhibition’ – more explicitly an
inhibition of what Bergson has called the ‘élan vital’. For ‘the melancholic’ the
future as the most important dimension of personal time is ‘blocked’ or ‘barred’
because the vital striving which is fundamental for human life is strongly
diminished. Therefore the melancholic person is unable to go ahead, to plan
his or her own future – in short: to strive for self-realization and to live a full,
rich, satisfying life.
Two ways of combining philosophy and psychopathology of time...

2.2.2 Why Bergson’s philosophy of time radicalizes the normative character

of psychiatric phenomenology

Bergson’s philosophy of life is very well suited to function as a norm in the hands of
psychiatric phenomenologists, because it advocates a thoroughly positive conception of
mankind. This becomes especially clear by the extrapolations Gebsattel makes from
what is implicitly also inherent in Strauss’ view of ‘normal life’ and ‘normal time-
experience’. The following moments are especially striking. First to have a future is
only seen as the possibility to shape our own future according to our desires and
abilities. The uncanny fact that the future is equally the dimension of the unknown,
which we can neither foresee nor control, is ignored. This one-sidedly positive view of
the future is complemented by the astonishing claim that only world-time is ‘passing
by’, whereas personal-time is ‘progressing’ and therefore ‘growing’ the longer we live
and the more we realize ourselves (Strauss p. 129).
Unlike Strauss, Gebsattel at least feels obliged to mention the fact of death awaiting
everyone in the future. But it is again surprising how optimistically the basic fact of
being mortal is conceived. Death is just part of life because life is essentially ‘becom-
ing’ and becoming is in itself always a partial dying. Therefore only in leaving
something behind do we have the chance to make further steps in our personal
development (Gebsattel p. 13). Even the final death is idealized as the ‘final fulfillment’
of one’s life, because for Gebsattel death seems only to come when life is fulfilled (ibid.
p. 14). In total accordance with such an idealized concept of human temporality, human
life is seen as a constant striving for self-realization and self-fulfillment. There is neither
any hint at inner conflicts inherent in human striving nor at the possibility of personal
failure or insurmountable obstacles to our will to shape our future, nor severe illness or
premature death.
Let us make clear how far away this philosophical conception of an ‘ideal’ normality
is not only from pathological deviations, but also from ‘down-to-earth’ normality of
average people. Therefore it is not difficult to imagine the consequences it has when
psychiatric phenomenology takes this idealistic norm as the criterion for measuring
alterations in pathological time experiences. What is already categorized in medical-
psychiatric discourse as a negative deviation from the normal is intensified to the
extreme if we identify this idealistic norm with ‘normality’. Whatever melancholic
patients say about their experiences of time is only relevant as an indicator of the
unbridgeable gap which separates such experiences from an ideal (normative) relation
to time, and is therefore just an indicator of the extent and degree of their illness.
The example given by Gebsattel is especially impressive in this respect. This
example of a young woman suffering from ‘time-related obsessive thoughts’ has
become famous in phenomenological literature and is therefore often quoted, but, as
far as I know, always in accordance with the view of Gebsattel. The problem of this
woman is that she cannot help thinking incessantly ‘that time passes by’ and ‘that death
comes constantly a little nearer’ (Gebsattel 1928, p. 2ff., all quotations are translated by
the author). All the many quotations given by Gebsattel speak of this undeniable fact in
varying modes. I think that almost all of us have had similar thoughts on certain
occasions, because her obsessive thoughts are true not just for her, but for all of us. Of
course there is a difference which consists of our being able and willing to forget such
uncanny thoughts as soon as we can, whereas this woman is obsessed by them all the
 A. Holzhey-Kunz

time. Thus the ‘abnormality’ in this case does not lie in the inadequacy of what this
women thinks all the time, but in her being unable and unwilling to letting them go in
favor of other thoughts and – more fundamentally – in favor of leading a normal
everyday life undisturbed by such true but frightening thinking.
Gebsattel does not see it that way. He not only stands firmly on the side of medical-
psychiatric thinking, but additionally accepts unquestioningly the normative concept of time
experience of the philosophy of life. Therefore he can hold on to the reassuring conviction
that what may seem like a true insight into our human condition is in truth just the result of
the fundamental time-deficiency Strauss has identified as the ‘blockage of the future’ this
woman suffers from. Because for this woman the future is blocked due to her illness, she has
lost the capacity to experience the move of time as ‘growth’ and ‘expansion’ and is
condemned to experience it only negatively as a ‘passing by’ (ibid. p. 5, 7f).

2.2.3 Appendix: On a dialogue of the German philosopher Michael Theunissen

with Strauss and Gebsattel

Thanks to the philosophical interest Michael Theunissen has taken into the two papers
of Straus and Gebsattel (1991a; 1991b; 1993), they have become famous beyond
phenomenological psychiatry. His dialogue is highly interesting because of its unspo-
ken ambivalence. Theunissen does not explicitly question their adaptation to the
medical-psychiatric discourse, but he is nevertheless irritated by it. On the one hand
the reader gets the impression that Theunissen takes for granted that the turn of
phenomenology from hermeneutic description of the phenomena to their a-
hermeneutic comparison and measurement in relation to a norm is objectively justified
when operating in the realm of psychopathology. On the other hand he introduces a
philosophical understanding of time which undermines this kind of phenomenological
approach to ‘disturbed’ time experience. We find this new understanding expressed in
the title of his paper about Strauss and Gebsattel which is as follows: ‘Melancholic
suffering under the dominion (BHerrschaft^) of time’ (1991b, p. 218). This title
corresponds to the question posed in the title of another paper of the same collection:
‘Can we be happy under the dominion of time?’ (1991a. p. 37).
Evidently both titles indicate a philosophical-anthropological perspective on time
and time experience. In this perspective temporality is seen as a fundamental ontolog-
ical given which burdens all human beings. This perspective discloses a new horizon
for investigating time-experiences. Theunissen does not really make use of this new
perspective when studying the phenomenological approach of Strauss and Gebsattel.
Nevertheless this perspective enables him to speak in the title of the ‘suffering’ of the
melancholic in a totally new way. Now the melancholic is not suffering from his or her
illness, but from the impact of being subjected to the law of time. The difference is that
the melancholic is suffering anxiety from what is true for all of us, whereas we others
are also burdened by this truth but are not suffering from it.
According to Theunissen ‘normal’ people do not suffer from being subjected to the
law of time, because they are fighting in a natural manner against it, whereas melan-
cholic people have not the strength to fight anymore and feel therefore ‘at the mercy’ of
the power of time (1991a, p. 49, 1993, p. 339). I will come back to this philosophical-
anthropological differentiation between ‘normal’ and ‘pathological’ relatedness to time
towards the end of the second part of this paper.
Two ways of combining philosophy and psychopathology of time...

2.2.4 Ludwig Binswanger’s turn to transcendental philosophy

Ludwig Binswanger’s turn to the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl

marks the third and last period of his psychiatric research. It starts in 1957 with the
foreword to the anthology Schizophrenia. Under the influence of his philosophical
friend Wilhelm Szilasi he replaces the previously central Heideggerian term of ‘world’
respectively ‘world-project’ with the term ‘experience’. This turn from daseinsanalytic
to purely phenomenological research is based on Binswanger’s new insight that it was
an error to take the ‘world project’ as the last given as he had previously assumed. From
Husserl he now learns that the world-project is constituted by operations of transcen-
dental consciousness. The first important result of this discovery is his book ‘melan-
cholia and mania’ published in 1960.
By relating to Husserl’s theory of the transcendental constitution of time,
Binswanger’s phenomenological approach to pathological time experiences becomes
totally new compared with the approach of Strauss and Gebsattel. Abnormal time
experiences are no longer checked against their normal respectively normative coun-
terparts to determine their deficiency, but are now traced back to their being constituted
on the transcendental level of the inner consciousness of time. This means that a totally
different philosophy is now in charge – a philosophy in the sense of Kant which
investigates the conditions of the possibility of something. Instead of asking ‘what time
is in its essence’, a transcendental philosophy of time asks ‘by which constitutive acts
of the inner consciousness of time adequate time experiences are made possible’.
I have already said in the ‘General remarks’ 2.1.4 that this turn to transcendental
philosophy alters nothing in the relationship to the psychiatric discourse, because the
transcendental phenomenology of Husserl provides also a norm, namely the norm of
how time and adequate time experiences are constituted. Binswanger is convinced that
thanks to the transcendental turn psychiatry finally gets the status of a science and is
therefore on the same level as somatic medicine (Binswanger 1960, p. 428). To what
extent Binswanger is devoted to the medical-psychiatric thinking after he has aban-
doned his daseinsanalytic convictions becomes clear when we take a look at the
example of Cécile Münch, which we find at the beginning of Binswanger’s book about
melancholy (Binswanger 1960, p. 358f.).
Cécile Münch is a widow who had lost her husband 5 months ago in a train accident
when undertaking a Sunday family excursion. Since then she was in a state of severe
depression. Her constant complaints centred around the fact that she had proposed this
excursion. She could not help reproaching herself for it. This self-reproach took the
form of a wish directed to the past: ‘If only I had not made this proposal’ (Binswanger,
ibid. p. 361).
Binswanger reminds the reader that it would be totally misleading to start with the
subjective suffering of this woman (ibid.). Instead one has to focus on the form or
structure of the sentence she repeats again and again: ‘If only I had not made this
proposal’. It is decisive for this approach that only the form and not the content reveals
what goes wrong on the transcendental level.
What is wrong with the structure of this sentence? Binswanger argues that the only
adequate direction for a wish is the future, because it is the only dimension of time in
which any wish can be fulfilled. The wish ‘If only I had not made this proposal’ is
evidently not directed to the future, but to the past. The utterance of such a wish and
 A. Holzhey-Kunz

even more the persistence of it is for Binswanger certain proof of a severe alteration on
the basic level of the transcendental constitution of time in the sense of a loosening of
the constitutive bonds between ‘protention’, ‘retention’ and ‘presentation’ (ibid., p.
361f.). Because of this loosening of the bonds, retention and protention become ‘free-
floating’, resulting in wishes which are senseless because they are directed to the past
instead of to the future. According to Binswanger a ‘normal’ and ‘sane’ person would
never direct a wish to the past because the future is the only dimension of time in which
wishes can come true.
To sum up, the turn to transcendental philosophy has two consequences. Binswanger
loses sight of the patient as a ‘whole person’ and is instead only interested in a scientific
explanation of the ‘disorder as disorder’ (ibid. p. 360; 367); and he turns away from the
patient’s subjective suffering in favour of objective results which comply with true
scientific standards (p. 361; 428).

2.2.5 Thomas Fuchs’ continuation and further development of the transcendental

approach to pathological time experiences

Thomas Fuchs is currently the most brilliant psychiatric phenomenologist and philos-
opher in the German speaking countries and beyond. It is especially astonishing that he
knows to switch between existentiell-hermeneutic considerations about important
topics of general interest and a-hermeneutic phenomenological investigations within
the medical-psychiatric discourse. I mention here only his phenomenological work
which takes up and develops the tradition of a phenomenological approach to patho-
logical time-experiences (Fuchs 2014, p. 128). This development takes place in two
respects. Fuchs brings back together what has drifted apart: the normative phenome-
nological approach represented by Straus and Gebsattel and the transcendental-
phenomenological approach represented by Binswanger. In addition he complements
the pathology of subjective time-experience with the pathology of intersubjective time-
experience (Fuchs 2002, pp. 111–134; 2014. p. 135ff).
Here I have to limit myself to indicating three examples of the progress he makes in
relation to subjective time experience and its pathologic alterations. Firstly Fuchs picks
up Straus’ thesis of a ‘vital inhibition’ as the last biological cause of pathological time
experience in depression and interprets it from a transcendental viewpoint. From this
viewpoint Bergson’s élan vital’ becomes the status of a ‘transcendental conativity’,
which is retarded in depression (Fuchs 2014, p. 132: 151.) Secondly, he resumes the
distinction of Bergson between two levels of subjective time-experience and calls them
the ‘implicit’ or ‘lived time’ on the one hand and the ‘explicit’ or ‘experienced’ time on
the other (ibid., p. 129ff.; 132ff.) Out of this results his thesis that ‘implicit time’ does
not only depend on the ‘transcendental synthesis’ Husserl has discovered, but on the
‘transcendental conativity’ as well. Finally, Fuchs makes use of the distinction between
‘lived time’ and ‘experienced time’ to emphasize the difference between endogenous or
psychotic melancholia and neurotic-reactive depression (ibid., p. 159), whilst Bin-
swanger has no choice than to negate this difference (Binswanger 1960, p. 357f.) by
stating that it is always the same endogenous melancholia even when it is triggered by
current circumstances, as in the case of Cécile Münch.
As important as these developments are, they do not transcend the boundaries of the
psychiatric discourse. The reason for this lies in the transcendental-phenomenological
Two ways of combining philosophy and psychopathology of time...

approach as such. It leaves no other choice than asking what is ‘altered’ and to what
degree on the transcendental level compared with the transcendental constitution of
normal time experiences.

3 Part II. The way that a hermeneutic phenomenology relates

to philosophy in the field of pathological time experiences

3.1 The philosophical truth in pathological experiences of time

Let us get to the heart of it by presenting a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to

the examples of Gebsattel and Binswanger. This alternative approach is based on the
assumption that pathological experiences of time have a hidden meaning which is not
just true for these individuals but for all of us and is thus of a philosophical nature. That
is why the leading question which guides this approach concerns the philosophical truth
in pathological experiences of time.

3.1.1 What is the philosophical truth in the ‘time-related obsessive thoughts’ described
by Gebsattel?

This example is especially suited to start with, because the thoughts of this young
woman are neither distorted nor, as regards content, strange or even mistaken. I dare
say that they speak of the fundamental truth about our being thoroughly temporal. This
means that in this example the philosophical meaning is not even disguised, as it mostly
is, but is expressed in a straightforward way. This woman is indeed obsessed by this
truth. From morning until evening her world revolves around the simple but unalterable
fact that life is totally dominated by the law of time and that therefore with every
passing minute her lifetime becomes shorter. It is unusual to be so obsessed by this truth
that everything else seems unimportant compared with it. We should however be
careful to separate the true and therefore meaningful content of her thoughts from the
aspect that these thoughts so totally absorb her that they hinder her from conducting a
normal life. The latter is certainly important too and cannot be neglected just because of
the striking truth of her experience of temporality. But it comes afterwards. The first
step in a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach I propose here always consists in
looking for the philosophical truth inherent in the pathological time-experience.
We can only speak of a philosophical truth because the experience of this woman
does not just concern her own being as an individual, but as a human being. This
woman is forced to think incessantly about her being temporal as part of the human
condition. More exactly, she is struck by the pure fact that the time which has passed is
gone forever and will never come back, will never be again at one’s disposal on the one
hand, and the pure fact, that the passing of time brings constantly nearer to one’s own
death on the other hand. This truth is in its pure facticity unfathomable for her – only
for her or, to be honest, for everyone? Let us put aside this question for the moment and
just stay with the experience that whenever something is unfathomable for us we
cannot come to terms with it, cannot leave it behind and think something else. She
herself speaks of how much this truth frightens her. And she wonders why other people
– ‘normal’ people – are able to ignore this truth (Gebsattel, p. 2).
 A. Holzhey-Kunz

When we ask what this woman suffers from we can call her a person suffering from
the philosophical truth that time passes by and nobody can do anything about it. To
suffer always means two things: on the one hand, to be disclosed to something and to
experience it instead of simply screening it out, and, on the other, to feel overwhelmed
by the experience and therefore to suffer from it as something felt to be unacceptable or
even unbearable.

3.1.2 What is the philosophical truth in the belief of being forced to grow older?

Before I come to the example of Binswanger, I want to mention an example of my own

practice because it seems at first sight very similar to the example of Gebsattel. It is
again a young woman. She complains about being forced to grow older (Holzhey-Kunz
2014, pp. 173 f.). When asked who is forcing her, she mentions vaguely other people
surrounding her. This hints to a tendency to delusional beliefs. But let us again
approach this belief by asking what philosophical truth lies hidden in it. To grow older
is a process which demonstrates our being under the dominion of time which is
therefore unstoppable. What exactly is the truth she suffers from when she feels forced
to grow older? It is not just the truth that time passes by and brings us constantly nearer
to death, as in the example of Gebsattel, but the truth that under the law of time nothing
can stay as it was, not least oneself. It is the truth of inevitable change which one must
undergo regardless of whether one is ready for it or not. This woman cannot negate this
truth but feels overburdened by it. She wishes a life of timelessness and oblivion, where
nothing changes and everything and everyone stays the same. For her the time of her
childhood was such a time where she felt inside a protective shell, and therefore she
wants this time to last forever.
Why is she so much afraid of any change? Firstly, she knows better than Strauss and
Gebsattel that nobody knows what the future will bring and that every change can also
be a change for the worse; secondly, she knows that the change from childhood to
adulthood requires her to become a subject of her own, to go into the world and to face
for herself all the vicissitudes of life. The pure thatness of this truth inherent in any
change overwhelms her and intensifies her wish to live a life beyond time.
When we compare the suffering of the two women we realize that the uncanny truth
of living under the dominion of time has many implications. Whereas for the young
woman of Gebsattel it is unfathomable that being temporal means to live towards death,
for this woman it is unfathomable that being temporal means being exposed to constant
change one cannot even foresee, let alone determine and control. But there is another
important difference: Whereas the woman described by Gebsattel is just spellbound by
the philosophical truth and is aware that there is no remedy against it, this other woman
tries to escape this truth by insisting on the possibility of living forever in a symbiotic
union with her mother. But even when this woman holds on to a delusional belief, there
is a philosophical truth in it about what it means to be temporal.

3.1.3 What is the philosophical truth in the wish directed to the past described
by Binswanger?

Let us now turn to the example of Binswanger. After Cécile Münch has lost her
husband in a train crash she cannot do other than utter endlessly the same wish directed
Two ways of combining philosophy and psychopathology of time...

to the past which has the form of: ‘If only I had not suggested this excursion’. For
Binswanger this sentence is nothing but the senseless manifestation of a severe disorder
on the transcendental level where objective time and subjective time experiences are
constituted. There is no question that a wish directed to the past is futile because it is not
realizable.
But an unrealizable wish can hide a philosophical truth. Therefore we abandon again
the psychiatric discourse and ask which philosophical truth lies in such a wish. It is
again a very simple and at the same time unfathomable truth. It consists of the pure fact
that the past is not open to change later on. Or, more exactly: that whatever we have
done in the past is done for ever, because it is out of reach of any corrective actions.
Cécile Münch made a proposal which seemed totally harmless because no one could
foresee what would happen. She is therefore by no means guilty in the moral sense. But
is it not especially uncanny to realize that totally harmless and well-meant proposals
can have such terrible consequences? Therefore the intense wish to undo what cannot
be undone anymore is all too understandable. It is her revolt against the unfathomable
truth that we human beings can never foresee all the consequences of our doings but
have nevertheless caused them, albeit unintentionally, by our actions.

3.2 The philosophical truth in Freud’s definition of psychic suffering

as a ‘suffering from reminiscences’

In the introduction to this paper I have emphasized the point that I would take up
Freud’s discovery that pathological experiences have a hidden meaning, but not his
assumptions about the specific content of their meaning. I may seem to contradict this
statement when I turn now – after the example of Cécile Münch - to Freud’s definition
of psychic suffering as a suffering from reminiscences (Freud/Breuer 1895). All
reminiscences are, by definition, reminiscences of the past. Therefore to suffer from
reminiscences means to suffer from one’s own past. This leads us to the fascinating
discovery that for Freud all psychic suffering is also a suffering from living under the
dominion of time.
Let us take a short look at how for Freud this suffering from being temporal
manifests. A key term in this respect is ‘acting out’, which means presenting a situation
of long ago as a current situation. Freud gives a brief example: ‘The patient does not
remember that he used to be defiant and critical towards his parents’ authority; instead
he behaves in that way to the doctor (Freud 1914, p. 150). This action is evidently
based on a confusion between present and past. But this confusion of dimensions of
time does not just happen as an error, but is – seen from a psychoanalytical standpoint –
unconsciously intended. Thanks to this confusion a wonderful opportunity seems to
open up. It is the opportunity to change, retrospectively, what happened in childhood.
In Freud’s example it provides a new opportunity for the patient to compete with his
father and bring the battle with him to a less humiliating, more acceptable, conclusion.
Now we understand why Binswanger’s example of Cécile Münch has a lot to do
with the Freudian understanding of psychic suffering in general as a suffering from
reminiscences. Freud discovered that whoever suffers from neurotic or psychotic
symptoms suffers from his own past in the sense that he cannot accept that he has to
live with this past and no other and therefore strives to change it. Because for Freud all
patients are suffering from their own individual past, the hidden meaning which has to
 A. Holzhey-Kunz

be unveiled and understood in therapy is mainly a historical one which refers to

experiences of one’s own early childhood which have been forgotten (‘repressed’)
because they are too painful to remember.
Of course it is not the same to suffer from immediate consequences of what one did
recently in the way Cécile Münch did, or to suffer from what happened to oneself long
ago that is not remembered. But there is a common philosophical truth which with they
all are struggling. They cannot come to terms with the fundamental fact that we human
beings have to live with our own past which is not only different from the past of
others, but sometimes worse; they also suffer from the truth that we human beings
have, to a large extent, not chosen our own past but have nevertheless to live with it.
This suffering implies very often a revolt against the unfairness of having to live with
the consequences of bad experiences in one’s own childhood whilst others have not.

3.3 Why do certain people suffer from being subjected to the dominion of time
and others do not?

Strauss starts his paper about the time-experience in endogenous depression with the
remark that ‘on good days and weeks when, we are productive or when we have to
collect an abundance of new impressions, we do not notice that time passes by’
(Strauss, p. 126). This statement corresponds very well to Heidegger’s statement in
‘Being and Time’ that ‘a specific kind of forgetting’ is essential for everydayness: ‘In
order to be able to Breally^ get to work Blost^ in the world of tools and to handle them,
the self must forget itself’ (1927, p. 324). Let us not misunderstand this sentence.
Heidegger knows of course that we have to remember who we are as these concrete
individuals. What is hindering or even damaging to conducting a ‘normal’ life is to be
constantly aware of the philosophical truth that we are fundamentally dominated by the
law of time without any chance of escaping it.
This is exactly what the three women taken from the examples of Gebsattel, of
Binswanger and of my own practice have in common. They cannot forget what is true
for all of us but which is incompatible with leading a ‘normal’ life. That is why they
suffer from it. So called ‘normal’ people have no reason to suffer from it according to
the idiom ‘what I don’t know won’t hurt me’. They are able to live a life undisturbed by
pathological time experiences because they are able to screen out what would be too
heavy a burden to live with for them as well. The ‘harmless’ look at our watch is a good
example of that, because it always gives us double information: it tells us what time it is
now, and it tells us that time incessantly goes by at its own pace and cannot be delayed
or even stopped or accelerated by our will. Whereas ‘normal’ people just stay with what
time it is now, there are other people who cannot help but to be aware of what a look at
the watch reveals about our being subjected to the law of time.
It may sound irritating when I connect psychic normality to the ability to forget what
is true for all of us but not compatible with meeting the demands of daily life. This
irritation is caused by the dominance of the medical-psychiatric discourse which
identifies psychic ‘health’ solely with positive attributes on the one hand, and a strong
tendency to idealize human nature on the other. According to this it suggests that
‘normal’ people do not suffer because of their ability and readiness to accept the truth
about the human condition. But a sober-minded look at psychic ‘normality’ does not
confirm this suggestion. Accepting the philosophical truth about our temporality is a
Two ways of combining philosophy and psychopathology of time...

possibility which is seldom realized. Therefore the conduct of a normal life undisturbed
by psychic symptoms is mostly not achieved by acceptance but by negating the truth by
a self-deceptive screening out.

3.4 Coming too near the philosophical truth as a precondition for psychic
suffering

The understanding of psychic ‘normality’ given above gives way to a quite unusual
view on psychic suffering. To suffer from being temporal can now be understood as the
effect of being too much exposed to the philosophical truth of one’s own temporality.
People suffering from it can be seen as people coming too near the truth which is too
heavy to bear for most of us. I speak therefore of a special ‘sensitivity’ as the cause for
psychic suffering. This particular sensitivity to the philosophical truth of one’s own
temporality makes the person who suffers from it a ‘reluctant philosopher’.
Of course this kind of philosophizing is a very special one which has almost nothing
to do with elaborate philosophical reflections about human life. As we have seen in our
three examples, sensitive people are struck by the pure and naked thatness of being
temporal and its consequences and revolve around what forces itself on them as
undeniable and as unfathomable at the same time. Kierkegaard has discovered that
the philosophical truth about our human condition is originally disclosed neither by
perception nor by thoughts, but by the experience of ‘Angst’ (Holzhey-Kunz 2014, pp.
95ff.; 2015 pp. 42f; 2016 pp. 18ff). It is therefore no accident that the patient of
Gebsattel starts her explanations by saying that she has ‘during the whole day a feeling
which is permeated by anxiety and which is related to time’. Of course it is immensely
important to know that what Kierkegaard calls ‘Angst’ is ‘totally different from fear
and similar concepts’ (Kierkegaard 1844, p. 42). Whereas fear is always related to a
concrete danger to our life, Angst tells us only about the unfathomable truth of our
being fundamentally temporal and finite which is – in its pure thatness (facticity) –
beyond words. This emotion is therefore not an emotion in the usual sense, but a
philosophical experience.
In looking back at the highly interesting differentiation that the philosopher Michael
Theunissen draws between ‘normal’ and ‘pathological’ relatedness to time it becomes
evident that he stops halfway. He certainly goes beyond the psychiatric discourse by
stating that all human life has somehow to come to terms with the threatening fact that
time rules our life. But then he falls back by declaring that the normal individual does
better in this respect by fighting against the dominance of time whereas the ill person
lacks the strength to do so and is therefore not just ‘subjected’ to it but at its ‘mercy’
(Theunissen 1991a, p. 49). Theunissen did not realize that the advantage of the healthy
person is due to his ability to escape from the truth, whereas the melancholic is at its
mercy because he comes too near the unbearable truth due to his or her special
sensitivity.

3.5 Conclusion: How philosophy and psychopathology are intertwined

beyond the psychiatric discourse

It is most remarkable to see how differently philosophy and psychopathology are

intertwined when phenomenology turns to hermeneutics as I have proposed here.
 A. Holzhey-Kunz

Philosophy is no longer strictly on the side of the person doing phenomenological

research as it is when a descriptive phenomenology adheres to the psychiatric dis-
course. When phenomenology looks now for a hidden sense or meaning in the
pathological experiences, it meets philosophy in its ‘objects’. It discovers a philosoph-
ical truth in the seemingly meaningless phenomena.
Regarding the question of why the phenomenologist needs philosophy for his own
research, we discover that he or she needs it in order to reach the level of the patient’s
sensitivity. In short: The phenomenologist has to be able to listen with a philosophical
ear so as to be on an equal footing with the patient who is troubled by philosophical
experiences (Holzhey-Kunz (2015, pp. 41f). As to the question of what mode of
philosophy is best, in my opinion only existential philosophy is suitable thanks to its
discovery that we human beings are not just subjected to the law of time, as all living
creatures are, but are disclosed to this fundamental fact, and primarily neither in
thoughts nor in perceptions, but in the (philosophical) emotion of Angst.

3.6 Instead of a usual summary

To sum up this paper I want to complement what I said as an introductory remark about
having the intention to draw some attention to a second way of intertwining philosophy
and psychopathology. In this paper both ways of combining philosophy and psychopa-
thology are represented in regard to ‘disturbed’ time experiences. I hope it has never-
theless become clear that both ways are not restricted to the specific topic of time but give
access to all psychopathological phenomena. They represent different approaches to the
same phenomena based on fundamentally different questions which are both relevant not
only for the advancement of psychopathological theory but also for psychiatric and
therapeutic practice. These two approaches cannot (and should not) be mixed up, neither
can one approach be integrated into the other hegemonically. But we can switch between
the medical-psychiatric and the hermeneutic perspective and whoever takes this oppor-
tunity will get a deeper insight into the complexity of mental suffering.

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