Therapy Toronto Psychotherapy Definitions

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Stephen van Beek (the Annex)

Daseinsanalysis

The analysis of 'being-there' as a human being amid others in a social world largely beyond our personal control, Daseins, as it is often called, is a therapeutic modality that is particularly useful in this era of post-modern confusion about our core humanity.

As a therapeutic approach it was first adapted from the philosophy known as phenomenology by a Swiss physician, Medard Boss.

Boss had been impressed by the ideas advanced by the great German thinker Martin Heidegger, one of the major inspirers of the modern ecology movement.

Daseinsanalysis explores how we attempt to "be-there" for each other in this world, a place in which it is a struggle for each of us to simply be authentic as who we are.

By analyzing and loosening up our rigid thinking about what it is to become and remain human, the Daseins approach helps us come to terms with our natural existence in a world of existential issues and predicaments.

A later version of Daseinsanalysis was developed by Jean-Paul Sartre and came to be known as existential analysis. It hearkens back to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard and has had a lasting and pervasive influence on artists, thinkers and writers.

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