HUMAN

STUDIES 4, 49-65 (1981)

Erwin Straus and the Problem of Individuality

DONALD MCKENNA MOSS

Duquesne University

Introductions and commentaries of great works frequently serve no other purpose than to elaborate the questions which have once moved the author but which have not been stated in so many words [Straus, 1966, p, 168].

INTRODUCTION In the present paper I propose to develop one central and recurrent theme of Erwin Straus's writings, that of human individuality. My emphasis on the p r o b l e m of i n d i v i d u a l i t y represents a necessary d e p a r t u r e from contemporary commentary on Straus, particularly as Straus's earlier works now become accessible to the English-speaking audience (Straus, 1925, 1927, 1930). The immediate context for Straus's work in the 1920s and 1930s was the movement of anthropological psychiatry, a movement with strong existential overtones. Most commentary today, with its emphasis on the phenomenological aspects of Straus's writings, overlooks this theme of individuality. If we accept the notion that the statements of an author's youth are particularly revealing of the passions and concerns of his life, then we must take pause and reflect on the title of Erwin Straus's first Habilitations-

shcrift--Das Problem der Individualiti~t, The Problem of Individuality

(1926). In this difficult and often obscure work, he attempted to articulate an ontology of individuality by means of ontological reflections on the thing, the organism, and the person.l The medical faculty in Berlin rejected this work as unduly philosophical. Straus contended, however, that issues of human

*1 gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the following individuals who consented to interviews regarding Straus, his life, and ideas: William F. Fischer, Ph.D., Constance T. Fischer, Ph.D., Edward Emery, and John Dowds, all of Pittsburgh; Erling Eng, Ph.D., and M r. and Mrs. Anthony Zappone, of Lexington, Kentucky; Jacob !~!ein of Annapolis, Maryland; and Lucie Jessner, M.D., of Washington, D. C. William Fischer and Erling Eng, two of Straus' colleagues in his Lexington years, were especially helpful in guiding my study of Straus' writings. ~Both his approach and conclusions bear comparison to Merleau-Ponty's similar endeavor in The Structure of Behavior.

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MOSS individuality permeate all of medicine, that health and disease are not merely different conditions of physical organisms, and that in every instance medicine is an ethical discipline (cf. Moss, 1977). In The Problem of Individuality, Straus aligned his own efforts in medicine and psychiatry with the widespread new movement affecting the most diverse areas of the sciences and humanities in the first third of our century, a movement bearing a range of titles: "One speaks of the investigation of structural connections, of Gestalt, of the totality, of the whole, of the person, of the life, a n d - - m o s t comprehensively--of individuality" (Straus, 1926, pp. 27-28). This dedication to the investigation of totality and individuality involved Straus in a polemical battle against mechanism and physical realism. It also involved him in a task that was to occupy him for the remainder of his life. F o r Straus an u n d e r s t a n d i n g of p a t h o l o g y - - b o t h medical and psychological--presupposes a fully elaborated understanding of normal human individuality. "Only the man who carries in himself a virtual image of the intact whole is able to perceive a torso" (1926, p. 123). Ludwig Binswanger (1931, p. 243) wrote a lengthy evaluation and commentary on Straus's work, Event and Experience (1930). In his opening sentence he defined the principal theme of Straus's early writings: All of Erwin Straus'works, exceptingthe purely neurologicalones, circlearound a central theme: the forms and laws in and according to which, in healthy times and in ill, the structure and developmentof human individuality occurs. Whether he is dealing with the investigation of time and space experiences, with the investigation of a certain kind of behavior of the human being toward the world of fellow men--such as is found in the suggestion relationship, or exclusively with the mode and manner in which man is confronted by the world of events in which destiny places him, Straus' gaze always penetrates to the general forms in which human experience takes place. M y pursuit of the problem of individuality in Straus's works is organized in the following manner: First, I demonstrate how a concern for the dignity and a u t o n o m y of the individual undergirded his critiques of natural scientific psychology. Second, I discuss (and quite liberally) Straus's most explicit statements about the individual. Third, I e x a m i n e at length the relation between t e m p o r a l i t y and individuality in Straus's writings. Time was central for Straus, so much so that he called his approach "historiological" (Straus, 1928, 1930, 1933). Fourth, I present Straus's enduring concern with man's need to relate himself to an encompassing whole. Fifth, and finally, I present some critical reservations as to Straus's understanding of the individual, raised already by Binswanger (1931) and Boss (1947) and retaining validity today.

ERWIN STRAUS AND THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY T H E CRITIQUE O F PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES AND T H E P R O B L E M O F INDIVIDUALITY

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A large portion of Straus's writings, particularly after his emigration in 1938, consisted of confrontations with modern academic psychological theory. "The Confusion of Stimulus and Object" (1963c) is perhaps a typical example, as are sections of"The Archimedian Point" (1957). The immediate existential import of such pieces (i.e., their relevance to the question of human individuality) is often not apparent. However, the brief address Straus delivered in 1940 on "Education in a Time of Crisis" illuminates the connection. There Straus places the problem of the individual in an historical context: The moral basis of the Western democracies lies in a dedication to the protection of the independence of the individual. Straus asks, "What has modern psychology to say about human dignity and freedom? You may open a textbook of psychology and find that the first chapter deals with the question, ' W h a t is m a g i ' . . . ? The answer is: ' M a n is a mass of protopolasm'.... This interpretation leaves no room for freedom or dignity, because the reactions of protoplasm demand only mechanical, impersonal schemes, and they can best be controlled by political organizations which do not waste their time with such trifles as dignity . . . . "These prescient remarks were first delivered by Straus in an address at Black Mountain College in May, 1940, 31 years before B. F. Skinner published Beyond Freedom and

Dignity.
In his critical writings Straus tirelessly reiterated the simple truths: Acting is personal; it requires the I-world relation, it occurs within and ego-ccntric environment,it is performedwithina temporal horizonopen to the future, it is directed toward objects susceptibleto change,and it is not triggered by stimuli[1966, p. 212]. Straus understood man's individuality in a holistic biological sense. He declared that man's individuality developed out of a "primary animal situation" which man shares with other motile lacings. "Individuation is a natural relation to the world..."(1963b). Yet, as"The Confusion of Stimulus and Object" shows, modern behavioristic psychology long ago replaced the biological mode of thinking by a machine theory. The organism is treated as an apparatus with built-in reflex mechanisms set in motion by physicalchemical stimuli. And an apparatus has no world, no environment filled with objects susceptible to change. For Straus the encounter with the world, the Allon, is the foundation of individuality; the"I a m " a n d the"I do"express not only self but relationships to the world. Even the animal, Straus endeavors to show, has a world physiognomically organized into zones of significance that entice, threaten, or repel. Straus concluded that the secret motive of the behavioristic Stimulus-Response theory is to show that the entire human

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d r a m a c a n be r e g a r d e d in t h e s a m e w a y as t h e s u n b u r n r e a c t i o n o f s k i n w h e n e x p o s e d to light ( 1 9 6 3 0 .

THE INDIVIDUAL L e t us r e t u r n t o t h a t 1940 a d d r e s s , b e c a u s e it is t h e r e t h a t w e find t h e m o s t d i r e c t e x p r e s s i o n o f S t r a u s ' s o w n c o n v i c t i o n s a b o u t i n d i v i d u a l i t y . A t this j u n c t u r e S t r a u s h a d u n d e r g o n e , at the h a n d s o f the N a z i s , t h e m o s t p r o f o u n d d i s r u p t i o n s o f his o w n life, c u l m i n a t i n g in his 1938 e m i g r a t i o n . I n t h e a d d r e s s o n e d u c a t i o n , S t r a u s (1941) e x p r e s s e d t h e d i s a p p o i n t m e n t , d i s i l l u s i o n m e n t , a n d u n e a s e t h a t h a d b e g u n t o grip t h e W e s t a l r e a d y w i t h t h e o u t b r e a k o f t h e first W o r l d W a r . Only those who have known the years before the first World War can fully appreciate the magnitude of the crisis we are undergoing. During those years most people believed that in western civilization man had reached a more or less definitive state of historical development. In accordance with this attitude the past was interpreted in a somewhat peculiar way. We had heard about wars, about persecution, about intolerance... But we also had learned that since 1600, or somewhat earlier, when man's eyes were opened, there had been irresistable progress...""There was general optimism and a feeling of security. And then suddenly that shocking disappointment to optimism and security! Suddenly history with all its good and bad passions was alive again. Suddenly everything which we thought gone forever was here again, and that progressive state which we expected to be the final and lasting one had disappeared. ""Today the ominous symptoms of still greater changes are showing themselves. All the principles on which the so~al order of the nineteenth century were laid are challenged... There is a dissolution of the older order, but only vague signs of the new one. I n this c o n t e x t - - a g r a v e crisis o f t h e m o r a l o r d e r - - S t r a u s felt c o m p e l l e d t o state his o w n c o n v i c t i o n s in s i m p l e l a n g u a g e : As individuals we are born and as individuals we die; as individuals we feel desire, pleasure and pain. As individualities we belong to nature, as individualities we belong to a spiritual, objective order. As individuals we are marked by some peculiarity, such as the fingerprint; we become individualities in so far as we integrate objective orders and adapt ourselves to them. As individualities we are specimens of a zoological species, and we are restrained to the present in space and time. As individualities we are in a potential relation toward the whole of the world, to the past and to the future. Because we are all related to one and the same objective order, it may become the norm, the means, and the object of education [Straus, 1941]. I n this 1940 a d d r e s s , S t r a u s e x p r e s s e d c o n c e r n n o t o n l y w i t h t h e t h e o r y o f h u m a n i n d i v i d u a l i t y b u t a l s o w i t h t h e p r a c t i c a l t a s k o f e d u c a t i n g t h e y o u n g so as t o e n h a n c e t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f i n d i v i d u a l i t y . H i s v a l u e s a r e e v i d e n t in t h e p r o g r a m he o u t l i n e s f o r e d u c a t i o n . T h e s e p o i n t s m i g h t a l s o be t a k e n as a p r o g r a m f o r S t r a u s ' s o w n w r i t i n g s , w h i c h in t h e i r f o r m a n d c o n t e n t r e f l e c t t h e following themes: First, the eternal questions--to use a solemn word--must become vital questions again; the eternal problems must become visible again, not as special problems for specialists,

ERW1N STRAUS AND THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY but as problems concerning all of us and ultimately giving to all our knowledge and skill their real meaning and importance. It is certainly not legitimate to expect education to breed geniuses; but it certainly is its function to establish or perhaps to re-establish the right relation between every-day life and the eternal problems. That is, the great problems should penetrate and mold daily life; yet preoccupation with them should not permit and excuse us from proving true in the small affairs of every day. Second, if "frcedom" has only a negative meaning--if it means only to be free from something and to do whatever we want to do--then the individual must again experience himself as a part of a whole, as a part of a lasting, embracing order that he himself helps to form. Third, if individuality is expressed by the proper relation of the individual to theeentral problems and by the way the individual lives as a part of the whole, then it becomes each individual's task to develop his individuality, to give to his own life a sensible, consistent meaning ans shape.

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INDIVIDUALITY AND TEMPORALITY In Event and Experience (1930), S t r a u s delcared the p r i m a c y o f temporality in h u m a n existence. He t o o k as his explicit conceptual point of departure Binswanger's concept o f the "innere Lebensgeschichte, " although Binswanger (1931) disputed the accuracy of Straus's appropriation. In any case, Straus used his understanding of h u m a n becoming to confront the causal-genetic viewpoints of both Pavlovian reflexology and Freudian psychoanalysis. In this sense, Straus believed time to be the "central problem or axis of theoretical psychology, a r o u n d which all problems must be organized" (1930). In a p p r o a c h i n g Straus's theory of h u m a n t i m e - - w h i c h in his early "historiological" works (1926, 1928, 1930, 1933) comprises his most explicit account o f the structure o f individuality--it is helpful to recognize that his statements on time contain an unclarified dialectic with at least three distinct strands. H u m a n time is c o m p r i s e d o f first, the i n w a r d l y c o h e r e n t appropriation of impinging (fateful) events; second, the outward actualization o f the Eidos o f the person in the objective f o r m o f the h u m a n work; and third, the immediate, lived level o f biological becoming, in which the life functions display an i m m a n e n t directedness t o w a r d the future. I deal in turn with each o f these strands in the following paragraphs.

Fatalism and the Past

Straus has been called a "true Greek." The Greek, deeply aware of the unfolding o f destiny, is o v e r c o m e with the tragic results o f ignorance. The final words o f Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonnus express this well: "But cease now and nevermore lift up this lament, for all this is determined." In this tribute to the seventy-fifth birthday of his close friend, the G e r m a n a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l p s y c h i a t r i s t Emil v o n Gebsattel, S t r a u s q u o t e d y o n

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Gebsatters own words: "What the human being does and undertakes, is itself only a small part of that which befalls him"(Straus, 1959, p. 303). Then S traus inverted this statement: "What befalls the human being, corresponds to no small part of that which is peculiarly his own, or of that which he has to make his own" (Straus, 1959, p. 304). Thus Straus showed a keen awareness of the individual's deep responsibility for his unsought destiny. This is the ethical principle permeating Event and Experience. It is also the existential issue underlying his long consideration, in that same work, of the psychic trauma: How does the fortuitous Geschehnis, the outward fact, fatefully compel an Erlebnis? While combating all concepts of natural easuality, Straus could not avoid employing a rigorous terminology o f his own. He spoke of a Zwang zur Sinnentnahme, a compulsion to derive a certain sense from the event, a compulsion he described as analogous to causal relationships (Straus, 1930).

Self-Actualization and the Future

Nevertheless, Straus escaped the fully tragic cast of Greek fatalism. Event and Experience (1930) also reveals the significance of the future in Straus's anthropology. For example, Straus criticized Freud for attempting to deduce the "Should," the realm of freedom, from natural casuality. Instead, Straus pointed to an alternative foundation in the experience of time. He pointed out that the individual experiences himself as a becoming. The whole or essence of the person does shine through in every moment, every action, every fragmentary expression, yet none of these momentary manifestations or actualizations is definitive. As the individual subordinates the single moment to an encompassing, unfolding, potential whole, the moment itself is devalued, and its significance becomes determined through the relation to the whole. The moral sense arises as the human being orients himself beyond the factual, the present, and the partial toward a potential whole in the process of being actualized. The human experience of time beckons the individual to view his life as an unfolding, temporal whole, and invites him further to engage himself in the world in order to give an objective shape to this ever-latent whole. The once, and only once, quality of the human life infuses this task with seriousness. No matter what material and arena the individual seizes upon, and is given, for his life's activity, he always seeks the same e n d - - t o attain the whole of his being. The human work--whether of the artist or the social reformer or the researcher--is an effort at a timeless realization of this whole. It is primarily through productive activity, or work, that the individual guides the whole of his life--its Gestalt or Eidos--ever more out of a potential and into an actual

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being. 2 Yet the inner temporal principle o f the h u m a n w o r k frustrates the individual, for the whole is never realized. I n the very m o m e n t o f its completion, the w o r k leaves its creator behind: " H e remains imprisoned by life and time" (Straus, 1930). Ever anew he stands before the necessity o f a new beginning. As H u g o von H o f f m a n n s t h a l put it, " T h e whole of life is an eternal beginning again." As long as h u m a n w o r k retains its creative, productive moment, however, and does not degenerate to a mere means to an end, a mere labor devoid o f individual meaning, it remains the principal arena for self-actualization. " W o r k is our answer to world, and our insertion in it, and o u r validation" (Eng, 1978). Straus's concept o f seeking self-actualization t h r o u g h the work, with its emphasis o n an effort to objectify the latent temporal whole o f one's life in material or cultural forms, differs substantially f r o m the selfactualization ideologies o f our time. The latter portray self-actualization as the strivings o f solipsistic, detached, and a-historic selves to experience all possible inner and outer feelings and sensations. F o r Straus, moral experience is by no means a secondary restriction o f p r i m a r y drive impulses. "Because ethical behavior is a behavior orginally c o r r e s p o n d i n g to the experience of time, it stands just as close to, or just as far from, the biological foundations of the h u m a n soul as do sensation and perception ~ (Straus, 1930, C h a p t e r 7). Straus's interpretation reflects the existentialist understanding o f ethics. Straus based the value o f individual c o m m i t m e n t s and upright actions, as well as the value o f general cultural norms, not on any social contract, divine precept, or natural law, but rather on an understanding o f h u m a n time. Like Kierkegaard and like M a x S c h e l e r - - b o t h o f w h o m exercised a powerful influence over S t r a u s - - h e was interested in the ways in which h u m a n actions enhance the depth and inwardness o f h u m a n individuality. In Event and Experience Straus stood in j u d g m e n t on the neuroses and perversions that he understood as individual efforts to evade the s u m m o n s to self-actualization: 2Straus'early analyses of part-whole relations(Straus, 1925, 1927, 1930)appear at first glance to be mere carryovers from the Gestalt psychologists then prominent in Berlin. Straus's use of the notion of Gestalt, however, hearkens back more to Goethe than to Wertheimer. The Greek Eidos, the Platonic essence, also seems to lurk behind Straus's use of Gestalt. His is an existential Gestalt psychology of man and world, and man and history, with little room for physiologically fixed Gestalten. Throughout his life Straus read and re-read the classics of antiquity, especially Aristotle, as well as Augustine, Goethe, and Shakespeare. His psychology has more affinity with the world view of Hamlet, of Faust, and above all with that of the Greeks, than it does with any modern psychology or psychologist. Straus's education at the Lessing Gymnasium in Frankfurt left him convinced that the one true revolution in human thought was that of Greece in the classical period.

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MOSS The movement opposed to self-actualization, which attempts to flee the demand proceeding from the whole, neverthelessremains,just for this reason, bound to this whole and related to it. it can attain its aim of self-abandonment, of letting oneself fall into decline, in all its degrees up to self-destruction,only through the deformation and destruction of the forms and structures serving self actualization.

S t r a u s also stood in j u d g m e n t o n the general m o d e r n r e l a x a t i o n of traditions a n d mores, such as those t o u c h i n g sexuality. I n these tendencies, Straus saw evidence of i n a u t h e n t i c i t y and m o r a l decline: In behavior commonly praised as objectivityand veracity, we see manifested the attitude of an individual who experiences himself not as the creator of his own historical Gestalt, but rather as a creature, which, with diminished responsibility toward itself, suffers and lives through its conditions and situations as external forces and internal pressures. O n the other h a n d , S t r a u s believed that strict n o r m s , such as the C a t h o l i c p r o h i b i t i o n o n divorce or the high value on virginity, emphasize the significance of the one-time, uniquely occurring decision, a n d force the i n d i v i d u a l to take himself seriously a n d to fit each individual action into the o n g o i n g process of self-actualization (Straus, 1930).3 T h u s Straus's c o n c e r n is again with the d e v e l o p m e n t a n d s u s t e n a n c e of individuality. T h e m o v e m e n t s to dissolve such cultural forms have one thing in c o m m o n : "They relieve the i n d i v i d u a l of the r e q u i r e m e n t to take himself seriously, a n d they seek to protect experiencing from shocks a n d to banalize i t - - f o r c i n g it into the d o m a i n of states, moods, a n d h u m o r s . " T h e moral gravity of h u m a n existence is f o u n d e d in the historical modality, a n d it is u n d e r m i n e d by psychologies a n d societies lacking the proper a p p r e c i a t i o n for the historical d i m e n s i o n (Straus, 1930). 4

31nhis elucidation of the ethical significanceof the uniquelyoccurring, first-timeevent, Straus echoes the formulations of the ethical spokesman in S. Kierkegaard's Either~Or, Volume II. 41 suggest, in this congext, that Straus's social, moral, and esthetic conservatism, which drew virulent criticism in his Black Mountain College years (Duberman, 1972), was by no means a mere prejudice of his time or a momentary personal expediency.Rather, like the conservatismof Kierkegaard, it is an integral part of an ethos, reflecting a recognition of the profound relation between cultural forms and individuality. On the other hand, the evaluation in "Critical Reservations"(page 60-2) of this paper could also be extended to show the blind spots in Straus's esthetic, moral, and social conservatism its obliviousness to the positive moment, the effort at self-actualization latent within tartisti de-construction (e.g., cubism, pointillism, or atonal and dissonant musical forms), as well as within instances of social or moral de-construction. In this regard the spirit of Nietzche's Zarathgstra would provide the playful corrective:"But I say: what is falling down we should still push. Everything today falls and decays:who would check it? But I--I even want to push it.

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Biological Becoming, The Constitutional Viewpoint, and Time

In addition to the historical or reflective level of human temporality--the level at which I actively relate myself to my own becoming--Straus also emphasized a vital level of temporality. He favored the idea of yon Gebsattel that there is a vital bodily time, manifested in the rhythms of our physiological functions ("life-functions"), that can be blocked or arrested at the vital level. According to yon Gebsattel, the direction of the organism toward the future is immanent in the movement of life. [Cf. von Gebsattel's 1939 article on depression as a "vital inhibition of becoming ~, Straus's 1928 article on endogenous depression, or Hans Jonas's more recent evocation of the same themes (Jonas, 1966).] In "The Problem of Individuality" Straus turned to Driesch and the vitalistic, p r e m o d e r n u n d e r s t a n d i n g of a biological becoming. Straus criticized the tendency of the vitalists to objectify a life principle (i.e., to regard it as a separate, underlying, and real life force). Nevertheless, the vitalistic mode of understanding and the biological image of an elan vital--a pulse of life flowing through us--never lost its allure for him: An organism will remain alive only so tong as it is capable of joining issues with an environment in a continuous process of assimilation and dissimilation. To persist, to endure, means to maintain itselfagainst the permanent threat of decay. It means to keep entropy low throughout the whole of life [1967, p. 765]. For Straus birth and death are the fundamental frame within which all the events of our lives receive their peculiar meaning. H u m a n "life time" is not homogeneous. "Placed between the first cry and the last breath, biographical years are not commensurable" (1967, p. 762). The categories of life, death, health, and disease appeared to him to be as essential to the comprehension of man's individuality as are the existential categories of possibility, finiteness, and nothingness. Even Heidegger's being-in-the-world seemed too impersonal to Straus; man's original home is not the world but the earth. "It is the territory on which man takes a position, his stand as a living bodily creature, a zoon" ( 1975, p. 149). Man, a zoon, is a "son of mother earth," with eyes and ears appropriate to terrestrial conditions. The richness of Straus's mature anthropology, with its central emphasis on man's b o d y - - m y b o d y - lies in this confluence o f the biological and existential modes of understanding. Biological is taken here in the broadest sense; Straus's viewpoint could legitimately be called an anthropological or even ontological biology. Straus's biological m o d e of understanding also defines the frame and limits within which existential self-actualization is possible. Even in this movement toward the future in self-actualization, the weight of the past is great. Straus

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believed that the general form of the individual's life and experience, their essence, suchness (Sosein), or Eidos, are predetermined by the individual's biological constitution, whereas the concrete form, the particular, the existence (Dasein), and the factual contents are a matter of historicalbiographical actualization. In "The Problem of Individuality" Straus cited Aristotle's dictum that all becoming is a transition from potential to actual being. Man's potentialities, according to Straus, are laid down in advance in his constitution: "Thus the 'acquired characteristics' do not enter as new alongside the inherited, they are not a genuine acquisition and not an enrichment, rather we must see in them a delimitation of the possibilities already on h a n d . . . Aging (i.e., the process of the narrowing in of the possible) is one of the central problems of a nonmechanistic biology" (1926, p. 98). "Even the best external circumstances can always actualize only the greatest abundance of those possibilities already on hand for an organism. Nothing can growbeyond itself.... Spiritual factors do not enable the organism to develop beyond the limits set down for it, no more than do the material factors" (1926, p. 99). Man is educable but only within the limits established by his constitution. Notice the dialectic interdependence of the three strands of Straus's view of time and ethics: The individual is responsible not only to appropriate the impinging events presented by fate but also to take them up as material to be actively crafted in the process of self-actualization, and in this process of selfactualization, the Eidos decreed by one's biologic constitution contributes the essentials of the form to be objectified. MAN'S RELATION TO THE WHOLE: RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, AND SCIENCE In his essay "Psychiatry and Philosophy," Straus (I963b) described the basic situation, grounded in man's motility and upright posture, through which the human being enters into contraposition to the Allon, the surrounding world of objects and fellow humans. I experience myself in terms of a primordial biological Gestalt: I am a living, embodied, motile being, relating myself as a part to an encompassing whole. No matter how I relate myself to this encompassing whole, whether I attempt to establish my independence and separation from it, or whether I attempt to connect or surrender myself to it, a bipolar tension remains. "Primary separation is paired with primary solidarity. One relationship is not possible without the other. Separation--felt as such--calls for connection--realized as such" (1963b, p. 38). The relation of man to the encompassing whole is one of the "eternal questions" to which Straus returned again and again. In 1922 Straus reviewed a series of lectures that Rudolf Steiner and the "Anthroposophical Society"

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p r e s e n t e d in Berlin. A s i d e f r o m a brief, not entirely favorable, reference to the i m p o r t a n c e S t e i n e r put on upright p o s t u r e as s h a p i n g m a n ' s place in the cosmos, 5 Straus focused on a critique of the "effortless solution" a n t h r o p o s o p h y offers to t h e " r i d d l e o f the world": And as to the inescapable need to comprehend the whole of the world in some manner, which is hardly satisfied today by religion, art, and science, Steiner approaches this need in a thoroughly easy-going form. Anthroposophy requires from its disciples the Sacrificium intellectus, and for no other sacrifice are the majorityof men more ready than for this. Genuine religion requires the strength of believing, genuine philosophy the exertion of thinking, and genuine mysticism the ardour of spiritual submersion. In each case the surrender of the entire person is required. Anthroposophy, in its semblance of knowledge and its bowdlerized mysticism, presents its believers effortlessly the solution to the fiddle of the world. It is a joy to become inward, as everything in the Cosmos fits together neatly and as--with the help of magic numbers and formulae--all of the mysteries of this world and of higher worlds are unveiled. [Straus, 1922, p. 960]. T h i s e t e r n a l q u e s t i o n o f m a n ' s r e l a t i o n to the w h o l e is one to which religion has m o s t o f t e n p r e s e n t e d a n s w e r s . S t r a u s p r e f e r r e d " t o a t t e m p t a n a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l s o l u t i o n before a theological o n e " ( 1 9 5 7 ) , a n d d i s p l a y e d a p r o f o u n d skepticism for t h e l a z y solutions p r o v i d e d so often by b o t h s p e c u l a t i v e t h o u g h t a n d religion, which solve t h e p r o b l e m by dissolving it: The search for the harmony of opposites aims "basically" at suspending the tension experienced within the real relation of part and whole. Despite all efforts to master the whole through the mediation of discursive thought or entrusting oneself in faith to the whole, the tension of opposition persists. The Tower of Babel remained unfinished [1963b, p. 49]. I f we were to place S t r a u s ' s t h o u g h t a n y w h e r e a m o n g those ancient disciplines c o n c e r n e d w i t h m a n ' s place in the c o s m o s ( a n d S t r a u s w o u l d have ridiculed such efforts), we might well recall t h a t a s t o n i s h e d w o n d e r m e n t with which S t r a u s c o n f r o n t e d the " n o b l e trivialities" o f e v e r y d a y life. I n this respect E r w i n S t r a u s was a p h i l o s o p h e r . A s A r i s t o t l e said: For through astonishment men have begun to philosophize, both in our times and at the beginning. T h e i n s c r i p t i o n a d o r n i n g Straus" h e a d s t o n e , " B o r n to see, b o u n d to b e h o l d " , expresses his gnostic destiny. 6 S t r a u s ' s w o n d e r , like t h a t o f the ancients, was c o n c r e t e l y b o u n d to the objects o f the senses: the objects a n d events o f o u r s p a t i o t e m p o r a l w o r l d . W h e r e m o d e r n scientific m a n f o u n d only

~'Thus a very special significance is attributed to the learning of the upright posture and of upright movement in childhood. The human being stands entirely differently on the earthorganization than does the animal, and to this autonomous and liberated position correspond in turn the freedom and mobility of thoughts [Straus, 1922, p. 959]." 6This line, from Goethe's Faust il, served as title to one of Straus's finest essays (Straus, 1963).

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facts, Straus found enigmas and questions: How is it that a brain, which is enclosed in the dark hollow of the skull, sees light? How is it that my friend and I, who sit opposite sides of the stadium and receive entirely different light stimuli, share in the same spectacle? How is it that this physical object, my human body, is more intimately related to me than any other object in the universe? How is it that I may detect a patient with a "thought disorder" by observing his posture as he approaches me? The final paragraph of Straus's 1935 treatise on the sense of the senses beautifully declares the intentions of his life's work: Such investigationshave, therefore,probably much less practicalapplicationthan natural science research. But perhaps they may claim another kind of usefulness.The knowledge they seek is not meant for masteringthe world, but rather, for unlocking It and makinga world that is mute into one whichspeaks to us in a thousand places.The fulnessand depth of our world is to be heard wherever, till now, it has been silent [1935, p. 395].
/.

CRITICAL RESERVATIONS In this article I have presented Straus and his explorations of the problem of individuality sympathetically De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Only one criticism seems necessary in the context of the present article, a criticism already voice by Binswanger (1931) and Boss (1947). I include it here because it touches the core of Straus's understanding of the individual. In Event and Experience Straus, following a direction set down by von Gebsattel in his 1929 paper on fetishism, states that the essence of the perversions lies in their deformation of the realm of values (i.e., their essential aim and meaning is to destroy, humiliate, desecrate, and deform the perverse individual himself and his partner). Binswanger (1931) stated flatly that he found the concept of deformation to be barbaric, Binswanger sought instead to place in the foreground a disturbance of the experience of community, a disturbance of our being-with-one-another. H e felt that this disturbance plays a more central role in every neurosis than does deformation or moral decline. Boss also emphasized that alienation and isolation from one's fellow man was the basic condition for the perversions, which represent desperate efforts to penetrate the hard crust of the others' indifference, to make c o n t a c t - - b y force, if necessary--in spite of the distance and barriers that are experienced (Boss, 1947; Moss, 1978a). Straus's view constitutes a judgment on the perversions as well as on psychopathology in general because he also regarded the concept of deformation a s basic to the understanding of the neuroses and psychoses. 7

~For a comprehensivetreatment of the relevanceof Straus'anthropology to psychopathology, as well as a summary of Straus's specificcontributions to a phenomenologicalpsychopathology, see W. Fischer (1977).

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Already in his 1930 work, Event and Experience, he used the phrase"allowing oneself to fall into decline," as the antithesis to self-actualization. This foreshadows the emphasis Straus later placed, in his mature anthropology, on the vertical dimension in man's existence: on physical uprightness, moral rectitude, and the fall from these. Late in his life Straus was fascinated with the idea that schizophrenia is a deficit in man's uprightness--a moral decline. Psychology must recover an appreciation of the moral dimension in all psychic phenomena--normal and morbid. Yet Straus's view, however rich, is attuned only to the deficit inherent in psychopathology, the negative moment, the destruction of values, and the turning away from the future. In their criticism, Binswanger and Boss pointed to the positive moment. Even extreme forms of psychopathology comprise desperate efforts to resume the process of self-actualization. Binswanger closed his critique with a lengthy reanalysis of one of Straus's own examples, the miser, to highlight the positive moment and tendency that Straus neglected. Even in the behavior of the miser, Binswanger wrote, "the self 'actualizes' itself, and individuality has the w o r m as its own ~ (1931, p. 273). Notice here that the very possibility of deep-seated change through psychotherapeutic means is contingent upon the truth of the second viewpoint. Binswanger and Boss, unlike Straus, were analytic psychotherapists. It is also notable that Binswanger believed that psychoanalysis, in its vision if not in its metapsychologieal assumption, provides an invaluable mode of access to this positive moment that was neglected by Straus: Here we cometo speak of Straus' relationshiptoward psychoanalysisin general. In all of his writings his argumentation is often determined by the combat-attitude toward psychoanalysis,in noneso stronglyas in Event and Experience. oftento the injuryof the vision and systemof the train of thought~ (Binswanger, 1931, p. 265). Straus's psychology is a psychology of the adult individual. It is a lonely psychology: on all sides the solitary individual confronts the Allon--t-he alien, unknowable surrounding world inhabited by the enigmatic heteroi. Straus chose to describe man's confrontation with nature, history, and culture, but never with Mother, Father, and Brother. Straus's psychology is also a theory of the already upright and morally responsible adult, and not of the child supported in its mother's arms and living at the premoral level of irrationality and helplessness plumbed by psychoanalysis. Straus did not like people to leave the vertical; one must stand upright to be judged. Eriwn Straus, we may deduce from his writings, experienced life as a labor against gravity and a labor against merely succumbing to what befalls a man. This labor is unending. For Straus, individuality is a rising up in opposition to the world and others, and every rising up implies within itself the possibility of falling. This is a Stoic view of human life, which constitutes the dark counterpart to Straus's ecstatic Greek embrace of the possible. One must stand up and embrace the possible. Straus deplored the Freudian paradigm of

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the human being as "man on the couch," passively yielding to whatever dreams and affects arise within. There is indeed a psychology of the We-formation in Straus's early works (Straus, 1925, 1927), but nowhere is there a psychology of the family, or of the primordial intimacy of child-parent relations, s In fact, Binswanger asserted that Straus "betrays a much too one-sided conception of the child's psyche," especially when--in discussing sadism--Straus claims that the child takes joy not in destruction per se but rather only in his "having an effect on things" (i.e., in a kind of feeling of agency). Human beings are by no means so simple, concludes Binswanger, and charges Straus with overlooking the irrational existential stratum of"state of mind"(Befindlichkeit), which is so decisive for the general-human (not individual) significance of actions and experiences. Let me close with an acknowledgment that neither position--neither that of the optimistic advocates of a unitary tendency toward love and selfactualization, nor that of the proponents of the moral deformation theory-has yet been fully appreciated by modern American psychologists. It would be more timely for us to endeavor to appreciate both fully than to pit one prematurely against the other. The most persuasive reconciliation of the positive and negative moments antedates the entire debate. It comes from Dostoevski's Notes from the Underground (1864):
And if he has no other remedy, he will plan destruction and chaos, he will devise all sorts of sufferings, and in the end he will carry his point! He will send a curse over the world, and as only man can curse (this is his privilege which distinguishes him from other animals), he may by his curse alone attain his object, that is, really convince himself that he is a man and not a piano key.

CONCLUSION My intent in the foregoing has been to establish Erwin Straus's preoccupation with the "problem of individuality." The theme of individuality can be traced throughout his works in a threefold sense: First, what are the conditions and principles governing the unfolding of normal human individuality? I reiterate here that individuality, for Straus, is an unfolding of an Eidos, in the Aristotelian sense of a transition from potentiality into actuality (Straus, 1926, 1930). His later work on the upright posture served to give greater definition to the particular frame and limits of the human Eidos. 9 Second, what conditions are detrimental to the consummation of individuality? Under this category fall Straus's critiques of

sCf. Moss (1978c) for an analysis of the psychology of the family, cast in terms of the relationship between individuality and totality. 9Cf. Moss (1978b) for an analysis of the relationships among embodiment, motility, and experience, in light of Erwin Straus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

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psychological theories or therapeutic techniques, which he felt posed a threat to the dignity and autonomy of the individual (e.g., ~his critiques of Pavlov (Straus, 1930, 1935), of Freud and psychoanalysis (Straus, 1925, 1930), and of the modern Stimulus-Response school (Straus, 1963, 1966). He showed the same vigorous opposition ot social-cultural tendencies (Straus, 1930) or religious cult movements such as anthroposophy (Straus, 1922), which offer an easy solution to the riddle of the world, or which otherwise encourage the banalization, trivialization, or leveling down of the significance of an individual's actions and experiences. Third, and finally, Straus passionately pursued the question of the proper relation between individuality and totality. It is man's special task and destiny to relate himself as a part to the encompassing whole (Moss, 1978c). Straus returned to this theme ever again, in his exploration of I-world relations, in his essays on the upright posture, and even in his early essays on suggestion, in which he described man's flight from solitude and immediacy into the comfort of the We-formation (Straus, 1927). Individuality, for Straus, is not a natural given but rather an ethical task. Straus's final articulation of man's unique destiny (Straus, 1957, 1963) places him within the tradition of philosophy, dedicated to the rediscovery of wonder. REFERENCES In the preceding text all works have been cited by original publication dates, whether in German or English, in order to preserve a sense of chronology. In the following references, the version of the text actually cited will be given a full reference; the original publication date, if different, will appear last, in parentheses. Binswanger, L. Eventand experience,Concerningthe work of the same name by ErwinStraus. Geschehnis und Erlebnis, zur gleichnamigen Schrift von Erwin Straus. Monatschrifif~ Psychiatrie und Neurologie, 1931,80, 243-273. Boss, M. The meaning and content ofsexualperversions. New York:Gruneand Stratton, 1949. (1947) Duberman, M. Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community. New York: Dutton, 1972. Eng, E. Locating Erwin Straus. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 1976, 7(1), 1-14. Eng, E. Personal Communication, 1978. Fischer, W. Erwin Straus and the phenomenologicalapproach to psychopathology.Journalof Phenomenological Psychology, 1976, 7(1), 95-115. Jessncr, L., Foy, J. L. In memoriam: Erwin W. Straus, 1891-1975. American Journal of Psychiatry, 1975, 132(11), 1218. Jonas, H. The phenomenon of life: Toward a philosophical biology. New York: Delta, 1966. Kierkegaard, S. Either~Or (Vol. II). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940.(1843) Moss, D. M. Distortions in human embodiment.Presentation to Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. New York, Nov., 1977. Revised version in Selected studies in phenomenology and existentialphilosophy (Vol. VIII). The Hague: Martinus Mijhof, in
press.

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Moss, D. M. Medard Boss and daseinanalysis. In Existential PhenomenologicalAIternatives in Psychotog.v.R. Valle & M. King, Eds New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.(a) Moss, D. M. Brain, Body, and World: Perspectives on Body Image. In R. Valle & M. King (Eds.), Existential phenomenological alternatives in psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.(b) Moss, D. M. Family and individuality. Presentation to American Psychological Association, Toronto, August, 1978.(c) Straus, E. (The pathogenesis of chronic morphinism). Zur Pathogenesis des chronisehen Morphinismus. Monatschrift fiJr Psychiatrie und Neurologie, XLVI. Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der medizinischen Doktorwurde an der Friedrich Wilhelms Universitiit zu Berlin, 1919. Straus, E. (Anthroposophy and natural science). Anthroposophie und Naturwissenschaft. Klinische Wochenschrift, 19, 1922. Straus, E. The nature and process of suggestion. In The Archimedian Point. D. Moss, trans. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, in press, 1979. (1925) Straus, E. (The problem of individuality). Das Problem der Individualidit. Die Biologie der

Person: Ein Handbuch der allgemeinen und speziellen Konstitutionslehre, Vol. L 25-234. T.
Brugsch & F. H. Lewy (Eds.). Berlin-Vienna: Urban and Schwarzenberg, 1926. Straus, E. On suggestion and suggestibility. In The Archimedian Point. D. M. Moss, trans. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, in press ofr 1979. (1927). Straus, E.: (The experience of time in endogenous depression and in the psychopathic disorder). Das Zeiterlebnis in der endegenen Depression und in der psychopathischen Verstimmung. Monatschrift fi~r Ps.vchiatrie und Neurologie, 1928, 68. Straus, E. Event and experience. In The Archimedian Point. D. M. Moss, trans. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, in press for 1979. (1930) Straus, E. Shame as a historiological problem. In PhenomenologicalPs.vchology. E. Eng, trans. New York: Basic Books, 1966. (1933) Straus, E. The primary world of the senses. New York: Free Press of Gtencoe, t963. (1935) Straus, E. Education in a time of crisis. Black Mountain College Bulletin, 1941, 7. Straus, E. The upright posture. Psychiatric Quarterly, 1952, 26, 529-561. (1948Xa) Straus, E. On obsession: A clinical and methodological study. New york: Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs, 1948.(b) Straus, E. (Ludwig Binswanger on his 70th birthday). Ludwig Binswanger zum 70. Geburtstag. Der Nervenarzt, 1951, 22(7), 269-270. Straus, E. On the form and structure of man's inner freedom. Kentucky Law Journal, 1956, 45(2), 255-269. Straus, E. The Archimedian point. In The Archimedian Point. D. M. Moss, trans. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, in press for 1979. (1957) Straus, E. (Victor Emil Freiherr yon Gebsattel for his 75th birthday). Victor Emil Freiherrn von Gebsattel zum 75. Geburtstag. Jahrbuchfi~r Psychologic und Psychotherapie, 1959. Straus, E. Born to see, bound to behold. In TijdschHft voorPhilosophie, 1965,27e(4),659--688. (1963Xa) Straus, E. Psychiatry and philosophy. In Natanson (Ed.), Psychiatry and philosophy. New York: Springer Verlag, 1969. (1963) Straus, E. The confusion of stimulus and object. In The Archimedian Point. D. M. Moss, trans. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, in press for 1979. (1963) (c) Straus, E. Phenomenological psychology: Selected papers. New York: Basic Books, 1966. Straus, E. An existential approach to time. Annals ofthe New York Academy of Sciences, 1967, 138(2), 759-766. Straus, E. (For Victor yon Gebsattel Subsequent to his 90th birthday). Viktor yon Gebsattel nachtr~iglich zum 90. Geburtstag. Der Nervenarzt, 1974, 336.

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Straus, E. The monads have windows. In Phenomenological Perspectives: EssaJ's in Honor of Herbert Spiegelberg. The Hague: Martinus Nijhof, 1975. Spiegelberg, H. Phenomenology in Psycholog.|' and Psychiatry. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972. von Baeyer, W. (Ed.). Condition humana: Eriwn Straus on his 75th birthday. BerlinHeidelberg-New ~ork: Springer Verlag, 1966 yon Gebsattel, V. E, Concerning fetishism. Ueber Fetishismus. In Prolegama einer medizinischen Anthropologie. Berlin-G~ttingen-Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1954. (1929) yon Gebsattel, V. E. Disturbances of becoming and of the experience of time in the context of psychiatric illnesses). Die St~rungen des Werdcns und des Zeitcrlcbcns in Rahmen psychiatrischen Erkrankungen. In Prolegama e#Ter medi:inisc.hen Anthropologie. BerlinGfttingen-Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 1954. (1934)