SANP

Swiss Archives of Neurology, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

2297-7007 2297-6981

EMH Schweizerischer Ärzteverlag AG

Farnsburgerstrasse 8 CH-4132 Muttenz

03092

10.4414/sanp.2020.03092

Review article

Psychoanalysis

«Grenzsituationen erfahren und existieren ist dasselbe» – eine philosophische Meditation über einen Satz von Karl Jaspers

Hügli

Anton W.

31 03 2020

171 02 0 0

2020

EMH Schweizerischer Ärzteverlag AG

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Wherever we are and as long as we are, we are in a situation: in a here and now, entangled in a spatially and temporally determined context of things and events. What face the situation shows depends on our goals and interests. We learn to deal with situation types. Part of the basic situation is that we are always in situations, that we cannot live without fighting and suffering, that we become guilty without being guilty, that we have to die. Becoming aware of this means being faced with a borderline situation. Borderline situations are manifestations of the basic situation of our existence. The basic human situation may be an object of contemplation, but borderline situations are experienced and suffered. They are the epitome of our failure in the world. In view of the question of German guilt after World War II, Jaspers opened the dialogue in public about the borderline situation of guilt and distinguished between criminal, political, moral and metaphysical guilt. Only in the latter does a borderline situation become apparent. This can mean despair, but there is also, according to Jaspers, the possibility in a person that he can become inwardly certain who he himself wants to be in the borderline situation – unconditionally and in the belief that only this will give him existence, beyond this world.