Ludwig Binswanger

Ludwig Binswanger (April 13, 1881 – February 5, 1966) was a Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of existential psychology. His grandfather (also named Ludwig Binswanger) was the founder of the "Bellevue Sanatorium" in Kreuzlingen, and his uncle Otto Binswanger was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Jena.

In 1907 Binswanger received his medical degree from the University of Zurich and as a young man worked and studied under some of the greatest psychologists of the era, such as Carl Jung, Eugen Bleuler and Sigmund Freud. Although he had differences with Freud regarding psychiatric theory, Binswanger remained friends with him until Freud's death in 1939.

From 1911 to 1956, Binswanger was medical director of the santatorium in Kreuzlingen. He was greatly influenced by existential philosophy and the works of philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Buber. Binswanger is considered the first physician to combine psychotherapy with existentialism, a theory he expounds in his 1943 book; Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins. In his study of existentialism, his most famous subject was Ellen West, a deeply troubled anorexia nervosa patient.

Binswanger's Dream and Existence was translated from German into French by Michel Foucault, who added a substantial essay-introduction.