Binswanger and phenomenology applied to mania

The following presentation is a piece of a major research dedicated to review what modern biological psychiatry calls «bipolar disorders» and «bipolar spectrum». The first part of this research established three fonts of analysis, which were later distributed in three chapters. In Chapter I, “Some epistemological assumptions of the DSM”, I tried to localize which were the epistemological assumptions underlying the DSM-IV. In Chapter II, “Mood disorders in Kaplan´s and Sadock´ s psychiatric synopsis”, I studied the “mood disorders” according to this authors. And in the third one, called “Akiskal and the genetic era of bipolar spectrums” I analyzed and criticized the main assumptions of this author. In Part II, this research took me to study many classical psychiatry authors, especially, Griesinger, Kraepelin and Binswanger from the German school, and Falret, Baillarger, Séglas and Cotard from the French one. All these authors have one common fundamental appreciation: they all refuse to accept the so called «Faculty Psychology», and Binswanger´ s thoughts and arguments are especially interesting for focusing at this point.
I use the analyses made by the author as an example of this and also as a focus of study of the maniac subjectivity. I would like to especially highlight the concept of «Ideenflucht», the «flight of ideas», that later became pathognomonic of mania. It is also interesting to pay attention to the use that Binswanger made of Heidegger´s ideas, mainly taken from “Sein und Zeit”, because in this exceptional case, in which –as in many others- a psychiatrist support his theoretical developments in a philosopher, Heidegger himself criticized the use that Binswanger made of his concepts. The place where we can circumscribe this issues is the “Zollikon Seminars”, pronounced by Heidegger in Switzerland between 1959 and 1969 by invitation of Dr. M. Boss.