MEDARD BOSS
1903 - 1990
Dr. C. George Boeree
It is hard to imagine better preparation for a career in psychotherapy. Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, on October 4, 1903, Medard Boss grew up in Zurich during a time when Zurich was a center for psychological activity. He received his medical degree from the University there in 1928, taking time along the way to study in Paris and Vienna and to be analyzed by Sigmund Freud himself.
After four years at the Burgholzli hospital, as an assistant to Eugen Bleuler, he went on to study in Berlin and London, where his teachers included several people in Freud's inner circle as well as Karen Horney and Kurt Goldstein. Beginning in 1938, he became associated with Carl Jung, who revealed to Boss the possibility of a psychoanalysis not bound up in Freudian interpretations.
Over time, Boss read the works of Ludwig Binswanger and Martin Heidegger. But it was his meeting, in 1946, and eventual friendship with Heidegger that turned him forever to existential psychology. His impact on existential therapy has been so great that he is often mentioned together with Ludwig Binswanger as its cofounder.
Theory
While Binswanger and Boss agree on the basics of existential psychology, Boss sticks somewhat closer to Heidegger's original ideas. Boss doesn't like, for example, Binswanger's ideas about "world-design:" He feels that the idea of people coming to the world with preformed expectations distracts from the more basic existential point that the world is not something we interpret, but something that reveals itself to the "light" of Dasein.
The analogy of light plays an important part in Boss's theory. The word phenomenon, for example, literally means "to shine forth," "to come out of the darkness." And so Boss views Dasein as a lumination which brings things "to light."
This idea has a profound effect on how Boss understands things like psychopathology, defenses, therapeutic style, and the interpretation of dreams. Defensiveness, for example, is a matter of not illuminating some aspect of life, and psychopathology is analogous to choosing to live in the darkness. Therapy, on the other hand, involves reversing this constriction of our basic openness, and we could call it "enlightenment!"
One of his most important suggestions for the client is to "let things go" (Gelassenheit). Most of us try too hard to keep a tight rein on our lives, to keep control. But life is too much for us. We need to trust it a little, trust to "fate" a bit, jump into life instead of forever testing the waters. Instead of keeping the light of Dasein tightly focused, we should let it shine more freely.
Existentials
While Binswanger likes to use Heidegger's Umwelt, Mitwelt, and Eigenwelt, Boss prefers Heidegger'sexistentials, the things in life that we all have to deal with. He is interested, for example, in how people see space and time -- not the physical space and time of measured distances and clocks and calendars, but human space and time, personal space and time. Someone from long ago, who now lives far away, may be closer to you than the person next to you right now.
He is also interested in how we relate to our bodies. My openness to the world will be expressed by my bodily openness and my extension of my body out into the world, what he calls my "bodying forth."
Our relationship with others is as important to Boss as it is to Binswanger. We are not individuals locked up inside our bodies; We live rather in a shared world, and we illuminate each other. Human existence is shared existence.