Books / Humanistic, existential & experiential
Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology
Edited by Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger, Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology (1958) introduced European phenomenological psychiatry and Daseinsanalyse (Ludwig Binswanger, Eugène Minkowski, Erwin Straus, Roland Kuhn) to North America, establishing existential psychotherapy as a major clinical discipline.
Book details
Author of listed edition: Rollo May, Ernest Angel and Henri F. Ellenberger (Eds.)
Edition: 1st edition (1958)
Publisher: Basic Books
Edition year: 1958
Language and origin: English (United States; with translations from German and French)
Form and genre: Clinical & Theoretical Monograph
Level: Advanced
Historical era: 1940–1959 · Object Relations, Existential & Client-Centred
Covers: Daseinsanalyse (Being-in-the-world); Three simultaneous modes of world: Umwelt (biological), Mitwelt (interpersonal), Eigenwelt (self-relational); Phenomenological reconstruction of lived time and lived space; Ludwig Binswanger’s famous "Case of Ellen West"
APA 7th reference: May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. F. (Eds.). (1958). Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology. Basic Books.
What it is & historical context
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Swiss, German, and French psychiatrists, inspired by Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), had developed a profound clinical approach to psychosis, melancholia, and neurosis that remained almost unknown in the English-speaking world. Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and medical historian Henri Ellenberger collaborated to translate key clinical papers and precede them with three foundational introductory essays that launched the existential movement in American psychiatry and psychology.
Core clinical themes & arguments
Rollo May’s two opening chapters ("The Origins and Significance of the Existential Movement in Psychology" and "Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy") and Henri Ellenberger’s clinical survey ("A Clinical Introduction to Psychiatric Phenomenology and Existential Analysis") clarify that existential analysis is not a new set of technical tricks, but a fundamental shift in how the clinician perceives the patient: instead of reducing a human being to a collection of drives or conditioned reflexes, the therapist seeks to understand the patient’s concrete "Being-in-the-world" (Dasein) across three simultaneous modes, Umwelt (the biological and physical environment of drives and natural laws), Mitwelt (the interpersonal world of fellow human beings), and Eigenwelt (the "own-world" of self-awareness and relationship to oneself). Ellenberger shows how psychiatric phenomenology reconstructs the patient’s inner experience of lived time (temporality), lived space (spatiality), causality, and materiality.
Clinical practice, reception & legacy
The second half of the volume translates classic European case studies, culminating in Ludwig Binswanger’s famous and tragic "The Case of Ellen West: An Anthropological-Clinical Study", which traces how a young woman’s existential struggle with embodiment, weight, dread of aging, and longing for ethereal purity narrowed her world across Umwelt, Mitwelt, and Eigenwelt.
Reader level & educational scope
Catalogued at an advanced reading level within humanistic, existential & experiential (clinical & theoretical monograph). This entry summarises published bibliographic, historical, and peer-reviewed records for educational orientation; it does not provide personal clinical advice, diagnosis, or treatment recommendations.
Paired academic and clinical scholarship
Paired work: Existential Therapies (2nd ed.) (Mick Cooper, 2016)
Reference: Cooper, M. (2016). Existential therapies (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Comprehensive comparative textbook mapping the Daseinsanalytic, American existential-humanistic (May, Yalom), British existential-phenomenological (Laing, van Deurzen, Spinelli), and logotherapeutic schools initiated in English by Existence (1958).
Source-mapped claims and evidence notes
Claim 1: Existential analysis conceptualizes human Being-in-the-world (Dasein) across three simultaneous, inseparable modes: Umwelt (the biological/natural world), Mitwelt (the social world of mutual human relations), and Eigenwelt (the mode of self-awareness and relation to oneself). (Formulated in Rollo May’s Chapter 2 ("Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy," pp. 61–65) of Existence (1958).) [Source 1: May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. F. (Eds.). (1958). Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology. Basic Books (Jason Aronson reprint, 1994).]
Claim 2: Rather than imposing external diagnostic categories onto symptoms, psychiatric phenomenology reconstructs the structure of the patient’s subjective inner world across lived time, lived space, materiality, and causality. (Detailed in Henri F. Ellenberger’s Chapter 4 ("A Clinical Introduction to Psychiatric Phenomenology and Existential Analysis," pp. 92–124) of Existence (1958).) [Source 1: May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. F. (Eds.). (1958). Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology. Basic Books (Jason Aronson reprint, 1994).]
Sources and inspection notes
Supports: Pending verification: All descriptions of May’s and Ellenberger’s introductory essays, Umwelt/Mitwelt/Eigenwelt, psychiatric phenomenology, and Binswanger’s Case of Ellen West.
Cooper, M. (2016). Existential therapies (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Supports: Pending verification: Historical and clinical overview of Daseinsanalyse and existential-humanistic therapy.