The Definition of the Anomalous from the Experience of the World in the Psychiatric Phenomenologies of Ludwig Binswanger and Rudolf Allers

Abstract

The central purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptualizations of psychic abnormality in the works of Rudolf Allers and Ludwig Binswanger. It examines how these influential psychiatrists, deeply imbued with phenomenology, challenged models that reduced pathology to internal dysfunctions. Instead, they proposed that abnormality lies in an alteration of the individual's fundamental relationship with their “world”. The analysis distinguishes their complementary contributions: while Binswanger redefines authentic existence from the crucial intersubjective dimension of love, Allers, a less explored author, introduces an axiological realism that grounds abnormality in a decoupling from an objective order of values. The paper presents the proposal that pathology is not a constitutive “failure”, but rather a modification of existential possibilities, constituted by the difficulty of establishing authentic bonds (Binswanger) and of adapting to the order of being (Allers). Their psychotherapeutic proposals consequently seek to intervene in these elements of reorienting the person in their world.