Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences Crossing Dialogues ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Association Madman and Philosopher: Ideas of Embodiment between Aby Warburg and Ernst Cassirer AEP Meeting of Psychopathologists at Hospital Corentin Celton, Paris (France), December 2016 N A Introduction 15.11.1921: Severe delusional ideas during lunchtime: cabage is the brain of his brother, potatoes are the heads of his children, meat is the human fl esh of his relatives, milk is not from the cow, eating a sandwich is eating his own son […] 19.11.1921: Three children have been slaughtered and have been eaten by patients. Three dead kids are lying in the nurse’s bed […] 09.04.1922: Patient very aggressive, boxing, hitting out and injuring nurse and doctor. Feels his nurse, coming back from leave has killed all his relatives on the order of Dr. Binswanger. Keywords: embodiement, psychopathology, Binswanger, Cassirer, Warburg. DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2017; 10(1): 14-22 These are only a few of numerous reports form though, remains focussed on the abstract from the hospital-fi les of Aby Warburg during and conscious end of the symbolising process, his treatment in Kreuzlingen between 1921 thus gaining distance from concrete emotions and 1924. Despite his diagnosis of an ongoing and from being caught in physical interaction. schizohrenia (later changed to mixed manic- My presentation focusses on the original depressive state) philosopher Ernst Cassirer and encounter between Warburg and Cassirer, on historian of culture Fritz Saxl tried to convince the contemporary controversies about Warburg’s cilinic director Ludwig Binswanger to give madness, and on the wider implications the permission to Warburg to restart his cultural whole Kreuzlingen szenario might have with studies about the Hopi Snake-Ritual as it might regards to the implementation of symbolic/ stabilise his mental balance. semiotic fi ndings in today’s psychopathological Warburg gave special attention to the study discourse. of emotional expression in gestures, rituals and INTRODUCTION depiction. As a young man he had gone through Dear Colleages, my presentation tries to the personal experience, that the encapsulation highlight the extraordinary results of a self- of emotional states into bodily confi guration healing eff ort of an ununusual personality like had a calming down and protective impact Aby Warburg, his synergic and mutual profi table, on his vulnerable and easily aff ected mind. It yet unusual, connection with philosopher Ernst fostered Warburg’s theory of iconography and Cassirer, and the amazing theatre of therapeutic his idea of ‚Pathosformeln’, looking out for the action and confl icting opinion around his case embodyment of human feeling in images and of madness played out on the mondaine scenery sculptures throughout the history of art. of Bellevue Hospital in Kreuzlingen, a Swiss Warburg’s approach guided by his very psychiatric shelter for the European upper class personal highly sensitive condition was and nobility. In his novel “The Radetzky March” somewhat contradictory, but at the same time the Austrian writer Joseph Roth (1995:187) complementary to Cassirer’s views. Cassirer, called Kreuzlingen interested in the logic of mental categorisation, “the linstitution on Lake Constance where spoiled and aligned himself temporarily with Warburg’s wealthy madmen underwent careful and expensive outlook, emphasising the primacy of ritual action treatments, – and the psychiatric attendants were as in the emergence of culture. His idea of symbolic nurturing as midwifes […]”1 www.crossingdialogues.com/journal.htm 14 Andersch, 2017

This is the place where Aby Warburg, deemed embodied emotion on art. In 1912 – following a an untreatable and unrecovering schizophrenic, reinterpretation of frescoes in the Schifano palace ended up in April 1921 – following a 30-month of Ferrara – he called his method ‘iconography’, odyssey through a number of mental hospitals.2 yet his 1893 dissertation on this subject is seen Here he and ‘his case’ got drawn into an by many art-historians already as the start of this astonishing whirlpool of opinions between new science. In open disregard of family opinion diff erent schools of contemporary psychiatry, he married a non-Jewish (orthodox-protestant) argueing philosophers, psychoanalysists, art painter and sculptor in 1897 and had three historians, infl uential family protagonists and children with her. committed psychiatric staff : a clinical panopticum During his visit to the USA in 1895/6 he carried of madness and therapy in the early 1920s, and a out ethnological studies on the Indian Hopi drama with changing encounters, from which – tribe, a work which he would revert to during strange as it seems – Aby Warburg emerged as a his psychosis. Back in Hamburg after 1902 he healed and furtheron fairly balanced personality, continued his life as a private scholar, remaining and a productive art-historian as well. involved in a multitude of cultural activities. His A PRIVILEGED WAY INTO MADNESS massive collection of scientifi c books and prints AND A PRIVILEDGED CURE TO ESCAPE brought about the idea of creating a cultural- FROM IT historic library, thereby turning his private Aby Warburg (1866-1929) was the fi rst of collection into a public institution which had fi ve sons (and two daughters) of the wealthy and grown to 60,000 books at the time of his death in conservative Jewish banker’s family (in which 1929.” In a letter to his brother Paul he explained both parental sides were troubled by a number his intentions: “The Warburg library is a post for of depressed or psychotic individuals among the registration of the changing (amplitudes) and their wider relatives). Aby was a spoiled and frequencies of human values, let’s say, between impulsive child. Noone could, or ever wanted Virtus and Contemplatio (bloody action and to rule him in. He tended to follow his wishes pure observation), while it is I who discovered and tempers, his own thoughts and daydreams. its polarity in images and actions” (Marazia/ Problems caused by Aby used to be solved by Stimilli, 2007: 115). subservient personnel. Wishful phantasies were, In November 1918, Warburg, 52 years old from early age on, followed by compulsive and only recently appointed professor of Art and frightening thoughts about his looks, his History, threatened to shoot his family and personality and character. He found it diffi cult to himself, claiming he was a ‘Werwolf’. These follow schooldiscipline and teachers found him disturbances, followed by further sophisticated diffi cult to deal with. His meandering lifestyle suicide attempts, were only the end of a and performance was an ongoing embarrassment lengthy nightmare in which Warburg had been for his father Moritz, head of the Hamburg increasingly worried and confused by late branch of the Warburg Bank, who was a strict developments of WW I, which went through its and overtly rigid parent. Aby often withdrew to fi nal stages. Obviously angered and disappointed his own company, a bit excentric and isolated, when a well loved and very close ‘Gouvernante’ already in younger years looking for remedies – caring for his needs – left the Warburg home to calm down his troubled, and easily aff ected to return to England, he withdrew from daily mind. With some help he managed his A-levels communication and got obsessed with beliefs and started studies in art-history in Bonn, Munich he might be responsible and accountable for and Strassbourg, rejecting any involvement in Germany’s dire war situation. He was admitted the banking business as his father had hoped.3 to the psychiatric Anstalt Lienau, close to He moved to Florence in 1888, developing Hamburg, where Prof. Embden diagnosed a a revolutionary method of understanding the schizophrenia with phobic and compulsive traits. afterlife of the antiquity, the reemergence of He also guessed Warburg was suff ering from a pagan imagination and the magic impact of “Beeinträchtigungswahn”.

15 DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2017; 10(1): 14-22 Warburg, constantly shifting between bouts of recommended for his sophisticated treatment normality and extreme periods of hallucinatory of seriously mentally ill nobility, mainly from delusion, could hardly be contained in his Russia, Italy and Germany (Hirschmüller, 2002). extremely loud, aggressive, upsetting and His son and successor Robert developed the “egocentric” behaviour. A few months on the typical ‘Bellevue style’, integrating psychiatric unruly patient was subsequently transferred patients into the therapeutic and lavish from Lienau/Hamburg to Prof. Berger5 in Kreuzlingen environment like family members. Jena (who would successfully perform the He handed over Bellevue to his son Ludwig fi rst electoencephalography/EEG on a human (1881-1966) in 1911, who, trained under Bleuler being in 1939). Berger, following a careful and Jung in Burghölzli, was a close friend examination, fully confi rmed Embden’s of Sigmund Freud’s. Strongly infl uenced by schizophrenia diagnosis of Warburg. Several psychoanalysis Ludwig B. remained committed extremely diffi cult months of containment to biological aspects of illness but was at the and helpless eff orts of treatment in Jena led to same time eager in grasping new philosophical Berger’s belief that Warburg would never fully approaches and elements of treatment from a recover. His prognosis seemed confi rmed by gestaltist and phenomenological background. Warburg’s further deterioration into lengthy, In the early-mid 1920s Binswanger, after prolonged delusional stages, accompanied inquiring of Husserl and Scheler, got quite by very aggressive behaviour and screaming. enthusiastic about Ernst Cassirer’s symbol theory7 Berger was fi nally fed up and wanted to get rid of and Goldstein’s psychological experiments on the uncurable Warburg and transfered him to his brain-injured patients. Finally reading “Sein und old friend Ludwig Binswanger in Kreuzlingen in Zeit” in 1927 he fell for Heidegger’s ‘Daseins’ April 1921. theories and followed a form of a philosophy of Both psychiatrists knew each other well as they his own which – as a therapeutical outcome – had been young assistants under Binswanger’s tried to establish ‘Daseinsanalyse’ as a healing uncle Otto in Jena in 1908. Berger knew how method. Still unexperienced as Head of Bellevue ambitious Binswanger was, when it came to in the early years after takeover Binswanger the treatment of psychotic patients. This was could count on advice from his uncle Otto, (Prof. helpful to the transfer. Moreover, the pavillion of psychiatry at Jena till his retirement in 1919) style of ‘Bellevue’ with specifi c single shaped and on practical support from his cousin Kurt, ‘Jugendstil’-buildings (containing several rooms also trained as psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, for each patient with additional living facilities who remained as his fi rst assistant at Kreuzlingen for nurses and serving personnel) was a much until 1927. better setting in dealing with an unruly, rich and Cousin Kurt was actually much more involved demanding patient and his infl uential, powerful in Aby Warburg’s day to day treatment from familiy compared to the more basic hospital 1921-1924 than Binswanger himself. During his grounds in Jena. There were also money issues early month in Bellevue Warburg got possessed at stake which the Binswanger clinic urgently by the idea that Ludwig B., as clinic head, was needed, and: Warburg’s banker family had loads leading a murderous conspiracy against him 6 of it. and family members and openly despised and A TREATMENT CAROUSEL AT physically attacked him. His time in Bellevue KREUZLINGEN AND A PANOPTICUM had been planned by Binswanger as a ‘talking OF PSYCHIATRIC VANITIES cure’, but Warburg refused all forms of speaking The Binswangers were a family clan and a contact and made conversation to moths or powerful dynasty in psychiatry. Ludwig B’s butterfl ies instead. He also insisted on ongoing grandfather (also named Ludwig) had founded visits by Prof Embden from Hamburg, much the private Klinik Bellevue in Kreuzlingen to the dislike of Binswanger. It was only after in Switzerland in 1857. He became a Warburg’s discharge that he developed a lasting household name among European aristocracy, friendship and correspondence with him. www.crossingdialogues.com/journal.htm 16 Andersch, 2017

Binswanger admired Sigmund Freud but felt restart his pending research. This move was unconvinced by his approach to psychosis and supported by Cassirer9 who knew very well that schizophrenia. He considered himself the more for Warburg diving into a realm of images of experienced clinician in cases of severe mental structured emotion (was not like some dangerous illness and, in an exchange of letters in 1921 irritation, but) had a calming and healing eff ect. expressed his personal prognosis that Warburg First positive steps had already been made in would never fully recover from his illness: early 1923, when Warburg – still quite psychotic “It is such a shame that he most likely will not be able at times – managed to struggle successfully to use his enormous treasure of knowledge and his through a full hour public presentation on the immense library again.”8 Hopi-snake-ritual in front of Bellevue staff and Ernst Cassirer’s theory of Symbolic Forms patients. Still Binswanger remained hesitant. seemed to Binswanger in 1923/4 like a new When Cassirer fi nally arrived at Kreuzlingen in key to understanding psychotic features better April 1924 he spent most of his time discussing and fi nally to distance himself from Freud. the importance of magic rituals with Warburg He took up a scientifi c correspondence with instead of confering with a disappointed and Cassirer and lauded his and Goldstein’s research jealous Binswanger. achievements. At a conference in Zurich in early Binswanger was under considerable pressure 1924 (Binswanger, 1924) he promoted symbolic at this time. It was not only Freud who again and gestaltist approaches as new stepping stones started asking about the Warburg case (from in understanding the riddles of psychiatry. He which he had heard from one of his own clients, had invited Cassirer to the Zurich event and now Helene Schiff , a close friend of the Warburg encouraged him to have a meeting with him in dynasty). It was also Max Warburg, after father Kreuzlingen. Moritz’s death the factual head of the Warburg In the meantime Hans Prinzhorn, psychiatrist clan, who, worried by Aby’s lack of progress, and collector of schizophrenic art, had presented unexpectedly and rigorously demanded that his studies at Freud’s psychoanalytic circle in Warburg should be assessed by Prof. Kraepelin, Vienna. Freud, a bit worried about Binswanger’s a theoretical adversy of Binswanger. distancing course, informed him about Kraepelin, the unchallenged senior of Prinzhorn’s promising performance. Binswanger German psychiatry had successfully treated the felt mildly pressed to invite Prinzhorn to see American banker James Loeb, brother in law Warburg at Bellevue. There were indeed close of Aby’s younger brother Paul, from psychotic parallels between Prinzhorn’s new publication symptoms some time ago. Now Loeb and the ‘Die Bildnerei der Geisteskranken’ and wider Warburg family were enthusiastic about Warburg’s eff orts to use pictorial expressions to his healing powers and felt Kraepelin might have gain relief from mental tension. According to the the right cure in Aby’s case as well. Binswanger clinical records (Item UAT 441/3782) Prinzhorn was furious, but had to obey. Kraepelin came and Warburg talked “keenly and thoroughly and assessed Warburg for two days. Binswanger about symbology.” went out of his way. Also Warburg did not like Prior to Cassirer’s visit, Fritz Saxl, Warburg’s Kraepelin. assistant colleague at his Hamburg library, had Nonetheless, the old fashioned conservative made his way to Kreuzlingen with the idea to organic psychiatrist came up with a diff erent support Warburg in his weird struggle against diagnosis: mixed manic-depressive state and a hospital authorities. All Bellevue medics were more positive prognosis, compared to all other stubborn in their insistance that Warburg “had to colleagues before him, including Binswanger’s. get well fi rst”, before taking up his abandoned Fact is: Warburg improved impressively after cultural studies. Saxl and Cassirer with their Kraepelin’s visit. This change was much lengthy knowledge of Warburg’s troubled supported by Warburg’s close encounter with personality had a much diff erent point of view. Cassirer in the same week. Warburg was highly Saxl started eff orts to convince Binswanger relieved that Cassirer fully understood his plans to allow a still partly confused Warburg to to restart his research,10 that Cassirer highlighted

17 DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2017; 10(1): 14-22 the importance of Warburg’s ongoing scientifi c burial of a friend, got massively frightened of eff orts, and felt he could contribute substantively the “satanic character of the world” after reading to the art history discourse. Warburg could be Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’ or, got obsesssed by the discharged back home in September 1924. fear of having been bitten by a dog, suff ering WARBURG’S VS CASSIRER’S from rabies. This actually never happened; EMBODIEMENT: COMPLEMENTARY nonetheless Warburg remained convinced and APPROACHES TOWARDS THE SAME horrifi ed over weeks that he would die from GOAL thirst from rabies-induced fear of water. Warburg describes several nervous breakdowns shortly The congenial understanding between before exams (“a trauma I never managed to get Warburg, the eldest, excentric son of a banker’s rid off […]”) but also the healing eff ect of being dynasty, and Cassirer, the very bourgeois, formal involved in scientifi c work and research (which and controlled philosopher, brings up quite a he experienced as “tools of liberation”). number of interesting aspects. It is not only His main project during his Florence studies the madman who meets the philosopher, it is thus focussed on the embodiement of antique also the form of embodiement of uncontrolled forms of expression in a collection of life pictures emotion in images and sculptures –Warburg has from the European renaissance. Parts of these been chasing around all his life to calm down his images were later put together and posthumously troubled and easily aff ected mind – which catches published in the book ‘Mnemosyne’ the name of the philosopher’s attention. Beyond Warburg’s the Greek goddess of memory (1993/4). In his unconscious self-medication and strange 1905 presentation on ‘Dürer und die italienische healing-eff orts it is the sophisticated structural Antike’ Warburg coins the term ‘Pathosformeln’ order of his library of culture in Hamburg, which for the fi rst time. This expression tries to grasp fosters Cassirer’s understanding of his own how gesture and mimic are formed to a pattern- previously unclear shape of the symbolic matrix like confi guration in historical paintings. he considers the basis of human consciousness. Much in contrast to Cassirer’s symbolic forms There are a few hand-written autobiographical as patterns of consciousness close to reality – albeit excerpts in Warburg’s correspondence with used in an unrefl ected habit or attitude – Warburg’s Saxl, dated September 1922, when he was still ‘Pathosformeln’ are a collection of images in Kreuzlingen. Here Warburg describes early and fi gures gained from the momentum of childhood fears which he connects to a time interference between new powerful aff ects and when he suff ered from ‘fever phantasies’. He cultural patterns of incorporation. They are a describes being tortured by chaotic hallucinatory spontaneous idea of embodiment of emotional memories and an extreme over-sensivity energy in a temporary Gestalt. They emerge regarding accustic or olfactorial sensations. from a reoccuring fi ght at the borderline to These horrifying experiences later turned into psychosis meant to regain or maintain control reoccurring events amongst the helpless eff orts over inner tensions – a protection from being of the boy overwhelmed by pure fascination or the horror “to bring some kind of order into this intellectual chaos, – an attempt which may be identifi ed as the tragical of negative emotions. The cultural historian childhood eff orts of mankind as such – very early eff orts Bredekamp (2005/10) defi nes ‘Pathosformeln’ indeed, and much too early for my personal constituiton as “hardly contained eruptions of emotion, so at that time”. (Marazia/Stimilli, 2007:101) much in continuous movement that they cannot As a highly intelligent schoolboy Warburg be secured in a reusable pattern”. advanced through the fi rst forms very fast, an In countering hallucinatory events and psychotic experience (carried out to highlight his progress, symptoms Warburg’s lengthy considerations led but) which he felt as extremely traumatic him to a model of ‘Denkraum’. His very personal (considering his huge diffi culties to adapt to new experience fostered a concept where mythical groups and environments). At times his own and symbolic thoughts are creating a space imagination totally took hold of him, so much for contemplation, thus providing protection that he felt “physically grasped by death” at the and shelter from an overbearing world and www.crossingdialogues.com/journal.htm 18 Andersch, 2017 from inner mental compulsion; or: from being “Sense can only come into life by embodiment” fl ooded by intellectual and technical demands.’’ (Cassirer, 2001/2 PSF I: 160), or: Denkraum’ is a medium of safety that keeps “[…] the human body (Leib) and its extremities are the subject and object apart; preventing both coordination system onto which all our geometrical correspondents from collapsing into each other. space conceptions are transferred.” (Cassirer, 2001/2 Wedepohl (2014:49) points out that Warburg PSF II: 112) considers ‘Denkraum’ as a unity in time, as an Nonetheless the cultural world gets act of recognition by diff erentiation, as a guide increasingly detached from bodily action, to subsequent sense-making. rising up from our concrete grounding to the Here is the closest bridge to Cassirer’s light - but also very thin – skies of abstraction. system of culturally created symbolic forms as Human complexity – throughout childhood and connecting – but also protective – membranes, adolescence – transferred by symbolic means made from an always new and only temporary from the social group onto the subject distances marriage of sense and sensuality. us from our instinctive and biological roots. In Ernst Cassirer’s research there is no specifi c Cassirer always felt more at home in the realms diff erentiation between ‘Leib’ and ‘Körper’ as of complex thoughts and consideration, and was you will fi nd with Merlaeu-Ponty. For Cassirer quite a foreigner to confl ict, tension, imbalance, the animal paradise of instant instinctive (re) but: he never wanted to lose contact to the other, action and immediate experience is closed to more basic, rough, materialised side of our the mentality of humans. It is growing refl ective existence, and to conditions where the symbolic distance and detachment from immediacy which matrix has broken down, as in psychosis. makes space for cultural creation. Cassirer’s Warburg in his direct and abrupt action, in his outspoken views on this matter have led to balancing act on the borders of madness, in his some misunderstandings when it comes to meandering between intellectual discourse and the importance of embodiment, of ‘Leib’ and violent physical action must have been the ideal ‘Leiblichkeit’. Both sense and sensuality are counterpart for an overtly stiff , correct, calm, basic phenomena in Cassirer’s view. They considered and conscious Cassirer. Warburg had are the integral content of his philosophical spontaneity and used his potential to live emotion categories. His concept of symbolic relations – (instead of just considering it). He cleary had spinning a net of cultural fi guration between both what Cassirer missed - and the other way round. correspondents – is not emerging from a theory There was something that made their personalties of consciousness, but are emerging from the ‘click’, brought their complementarity to life. actual, lived body. His symbolic forms thereby Cassirer’s emotional intelligence emerges as are describing thresholds of growing refl ection bright, respectful and (meta)analytical. You (like changing positions on an imaginary would hardly believe that Cassirer and Warburg scale), which are marking the distance which met in Bellevue for the very fi rst time in their mankind has successfully managed on its way lives. But they knew each other well, their from instant, concrete, highly emotionalized mutual studies, their backgrounds, their places, aff ect towards an open fi eld of selfconsciously their attitudes and considerations. Their meeting considered possibilities (Lauschke, 2012). may have been a risky enterprise, an event of Cassirer’s defi nition of symbolic form as unfullfi lled expectations or pretentions. “every energy of spirit by which the content of Yet, Cassirer was well aware of Binswanger’s spiritual signifi cation is linked to a concrete and reservation against the restart of Warburg’s intrinsically appropriate sensuous sign”11 has a studies. Cassirer never took sides in a confl ict- clearly materialized feeling to it, because all that prone direction. He would never have risked mental action without the hard link to bodily Warburg’s health in the middle of crisis, he existence vanishes from the screen of our mind would never have arrogantly interferred in the like a lost dream or cigarette smoke in the air. sacred doctor patient relationship. There are ample citations in his ‘Philosophy Instead he could fi gure out from his own of Symbolic Forms’ confi rming his stance: theory that formative studies would work for

19 DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2017; 10(1): 14-22 Warburg; he encouraged him, he highlighted his considerable impact as well, a layman. skills, he empowered him carefully in the most I have always been suspicious about self- concrete way - not in an empty fl attering attempt healing reports, yet I am convinced that but by spending time, by listening, by handing Warburg’s lengthy cure (including a little help responsibility back to Warburg. And last but from his friends12) was something of that kind. not least: by integrating into their conversation Living in today’s unspirited desert of ‘evidence the importance of Warburg’s life-experienced based psychiatry’ one can only dream of the 1920s contributions; what his – at times admirable, when there was space for discussion amongst at times helpless – eff orts had meant for his psychiatric phenomenologists, biologists, Gestalt- (Cassirer’s) own research and philosophy. Fact and-symbol theorists, neurologists, psychologists, is: Warburg in his lifelong mental struggle and psychoanalysists, anthropologist, culture-historians in his brave and inventive way of dealing with it, and philosophers. helped Cassirer fi nding his way – and getting an Clearly, Bellevue was lightyears away from honest feedback from Cassirer, helped healing the inhumane day to day business of remotely Warburg. locked-up asylum inmates, then – and now. WHERE ARE WE GOING FROM HERE? Binswanger ‘Daseinsanalyse’, proven only When I started studying Cassirer’s impact on amongst nobility and rich clients, may be much the theory of psychopathology at the Warburg too much overrated – and Jaspers’ existentialist Library in London nearly two decades ago, approach may not be the choice for the 21st- none of my friends and colleagues knew who century schizoid man. But even if those Warburg was nor what he stands for. There approaches are chosenstill: who has the time, were a few busy scholars, though, lost in the who provides the money to make them work? corridors of the admirable building at Woburn There was indeed a gifted clinician, Square; but back then, Warburg was something group-therapist, experimental researcher for medievalists and historians of art dealing and psychopathologist who picked up, or with the Renaissance. This has fundamentally partly reconfi gured, the formative embodying changed in recent years with regard to Warburg, approaches of Warburg and Cassirer. This was this has considerably changed when it comes to Hanscarl Leuner in the early 1960s, professor at Cassirer. Both are now subject to lengthy and Göttingen University, an extremely experienced sophisticated articles and reviews. They are LSD researcher and brilliant writer, inventor at the centre of international meetings about of symbol-therapy (katathymes Bilderleben) the arts, culture, psychopathology. Warburg is and vivid critic of Freud’s and Jaspers’ limited fashionable discourse right now. Cassirer will psychopathological concepts. get there soon. Leuner rejected Freud’s biased interpretation Reconsidering Warburg from my clinical point of symbols as only regressive and pathological. of view, I was stunned about the powerful family Leuner’s fi ndings point to the fact, that there clan who supported him, and the wide ranging is a genuin human quality of formative power professional network which was involved which grasps pattern from environment, which in his “case”. Remarkable was the intensity creates embodiment, and: which has a fi gurative, of the interdisciplinery discourse around his gestaltist impact, back on itself. This is a system illness. In contrast to my expectation it were which absorbs energy, and its image producing the psychologically orientated and ‘progressive’ capacity (i.e. in hallucinations) therefore should clinicians who came up with the more damning not be seen just as a symptom of illness, but diagnosis for Warburg – and with the worst of as a healing matrix which has its equivalents all prognoses: uncurable. For a single day or two in the healthy mind as well. This symbolic within the fi ve-year treatment period an ancient matrix can help in disentangling severe forms of biologist (Kraepelin) had to appear on the scenery schizophrenia, which, until now, are considered of ‘Bellevue’ to change all that. Who would have the unsolvable riddles of psychiatry. guessed it? And – not to forget: Cassirer had a Leuner’s research outcomes fully confi rm www.crossingdialogues.com/journal.htm 20 Andersch, 2017

Warburg’s very concrete life-experiences and the Otto Binswanger, the uncle (and later part-time usefullness of cultural tools in balancing them. advisor) of Ludwig Binswanger in Kreuzlingen. Otto On the other hand Leuner confi rms Cassirer’s B. had not only successfully treated Aby Warburg’s brother Fritz, some years ago – but had also tried theoretical, philosophical concept on the make his skills, albeit in vain, on the famous philosopher up of consciousness . and writer Friedrich Nietzsche and his uncurable late In mainstream psychiatry all these eff orts schizophrenia. were systematically sidelined: by the US led ban 6: Financial issues were at stake during the treatment on hallucinogenic research and by the tradition- of Warburg. Binswangers diary reads on 3/8/1923: “The future of the asylum seems a bit more rosy loaded, Heidegger-infested, after-war branch of despite the discharge [...] of Warburg”. Marazia Ch, German psychopathology. Even now, having Stimilli D, 2007: 284. failed on a grand scale in the last decades, 7: Letter of Ludwig Binswanger to Ernst Cassirer there are massive attempts to drag DSM/ICD referring to the publication of the fi rst volume dinosaurs and never ending, perpetuum mobile of Cassirer’s ‘Philosophy of Symbolic Forms’: like ‘phenomenological’ approaches into the 21st “Having worked out the term of ‘Symbolic Form’ is of crucial importance for a psychiatrist – as soon as century. This is why there are not only historical he acknowledges his main objective: to progress to reasons to go back to Warburg, Cassirer and a phenomenology of pattern of thoughts which are Leuner. Instead, there are very real considerations continuously presented and performed by our main to be made about their embodiment theories and group of patients: the schizophrenics.” semiotic fi ndings, which may help grabbing 8: Fichtner G (Ed), 1992 Sigmund Freud und Ludwig a way out of the dire straits of contemporary Binswanger, Briefwechsel 1908-1938, Frankfurt, Fischer Verlag, here: letter from Binswanger to psychopathology (Andersch, 2017). Freud from 8/11/1921, p.176 translation by Wimmer M, 2017. 9: “Yesterday Harrison’s ‘prolegomena of the Study Endnotes of Greek Religion’ arrived. [...] It actually was the 1: Famous patients in ‘Bellevue’ amongst others very fi rst of the new materials which had an impact on were: Raymond Russel (French writer),dancer Vaslav Warburg. You could literally watch how it took hold Nijinsky, actor and director Gustav Gründgens, of him and pushed him getting back to science and Ludwig Kirchner (expressionist painter), Bertha reality. Those moments are unique [...]. In his recent Pappenheim (known as Freud’s Anna O). letter Cassirer classifi ed Warburg as a historian, who 2: Warburg was treated by Prof. Embden in the might have been the fi rst among all others, to fi nd ‘Nervenheilanstalt von Dr. Lienau’ close to Hamburg out about the real problem. I immediately held this from November 1918 to July 1919, thereafter in the letter under Binswanger’s nose, which made him University Hospital Jena (Prof. Dr. Berger) from run wild with jaleousy, because it has to be just him October 1919 to April 1921. This was followed by to be recognized by Cassirer.” From Saxl’s notes the treatment in Kreuzlingen from April 1921 to 12. in Kreuzlingen, excerpt from March 1923. Marazia August 1924, when Warburg was discharged home. 2007: 122. Prescribed medications: Trional, Veronal, Brom, 10: “During Cassirer’s visit it could be proved – Pantopon, Opium. and I am greatful to my fate for this – that I am on 3: The unconfi rmed saga goes that Aby handed the right way with my self-torturing considerations over his fi rst-born-right of taking over the banking [...] they are about to come together to a system [...] business to his brother Max in exchange for the which might turn out becoming a cornerstone to a promise to buy him (Aby) every book he wanted new scientifi c paradigm (‘Weltanschauung’)”. Aby’s (which turned out to be an extremely costly deal for letter to his brother Max from 16/04/1924. Max considering the number of 60.000 volumes – in 11: Please compare this version (Wimmer, 2016: parts extremely expensive middle-age foliants) – up 263) to the translation of Bayer (2001: 15): “Under to Aby’s death in 1929. a symbolic form should be understood each energy 4: In 1909 Warburg moved to Heilwigstrasse 114 in of spirit (Geist) through which a spiritual (geistig) Hamburg but had bought the neighbouring grounds content or meaning is connected with a concrete as well. The new library building was started in sensory sign and is internally adapted to this sign.” 1924 after Warburg’s discharge from Kreuzlingen. 12: A preprint draft of this article was published His ever growing book collection comprised about and discussed (especially with regards to the impact 20.000 volumes in 1920 and had grown to 77.000 of committed nursing staff on Warburg’s healing when it was moved to London in 1933. process). Please see: www.academia.edu/sessions/ 5: Prof. Berger had taken over the Jena post from Madman and Philosopher.

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