This book explores the importance of the philosophical dimension of emotions, turning the traditional relationship between emotions and philosophy upside down: instead of being one of many objects of philosophical thought, an emotion contains an inherent philosophical truth. For this thesis, the author refers to Kierkegaard's groundbreaking discovery of 'anxiety' as an emotional experience that is totally different from fear. This allows a deeper understanding of the emotions, and reveals the philosophical primacy of emotions over thoughts, which always convey a meaning. Part I explores the three aspects of anxiety (anxiety about 'nothing', guilt-anxiety, shame-anxiety) that are distinguished by their capacity to disclose the human condition in its naked thatness, which is generally for most of us too hard to bear. Parts II and III then discuss the basic human need for protection from being overwhelmed by the ontological-emotional experience of anxiety. Part II examines the protection given by negation of this intolerable truth in its direct emotional repudiation in nausea, envy and despair. Part III addresses the protection by the two positive feelings of love and trust, which claim to be stronger than anxiety and therefore to be able to overcome it. Only sympathy cannot be categorised here. It belongs in a psychoanalytic therapy guided by existential perspectives, where the analyst listens with a philosophical ear and recognises his patients as 'reluctant philosophers' who are especially sensitive to the ontological truth disclosed in anxiety and therefore suffer not only 'from reminiscences' (Freud), but also from their own being.

Daseinsanalysis - the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic school of thought founded by Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss in the 1940s - had a huge impact on the development of existential therapies in the English-speaking world. This highly stimulating and lucid book gives a critical overview of the daseinsanalytic concepts of Binswanger and Boss and explains their key differences despite the common reference to Freudian psychoanalysis and the Heideggerian philosophy from which daseinsanalysis took its name. The author gives a systematic account of a new approach to mental suffering based on Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre that never loses sight of Freud's fundamental insight into the hidden meaning of apparently senseless neurotic symptoms. She goes on to demonstrate that mental suffering is a 'suffering from our own being' and the mentally suffering patient is an individual overwhelmed by frightening experiences of the finitude and frailty of the human condition that can neither be suppressed nor tolerated. Finally, the author considers the therapeutic implications of the existential view of mental suffering and concludes that Freud's three technical rules provide the optimal conditions for understanding and engaging with these baffling existential experiences.