Case-specific comparative method of existential psychoanalysis

The Case-specific comparative method of existential psychoanalysis treats conduct not as a collection of fixed symptoms but as a series of particular expressions whose comparison can disclose the individual’s fundamental choice. Its central discipline is to interpret each act within the person’s situation, without turning one case’s meanings into universal laws or mistaking a living choice for a permanent state.

Comparison and Fundamental Choice

Each example of conduct symbolizes the fundamental choice in its own way while disguising it beneath its immediate circumstances and historical occasion. No single gesture or act therefore supplies the whole answer. The method compares different expressions so that their shared, individual meaning can emerge through their differences. The aim is not to assemble a catalogue of behaviors, but to decipher what these behaviors reveal together about a person’s way of choosing.

This comparison is case-specific because the ultimate term of inquiry is a choice, not an inherited trait or a condition mechanically produced by the environment. The surroundings matter only insofar as the person comprehends them and makes them into a situation. Environment and choosing consciousness are thus related: the situation refers back to the person who takes it up, while that person is situated in the world. An objective inventory of external circumstances cannot substitute for understanding how they have been lived and interpreted.

Symbols Without a Universal Dictionary

The method refuses to establish general laws of behavioral succession or a universal symbolism. A symbol works within the meaningful whole of a particular person’s life; it cannot be assigned a constant translation that remains valid across cases. Thus an equation such as faeces with gold, or a pincushion with the breast, cannot be treated as an elementary symbolic rule whose meaning survives unchanged when transferred from one person’s interpretive ensemble to another’s.

This refusal is not a denial that conduct is significant. It makes interpretation more exacting: the analyst must rediscover what a symbol is doing in the particular case rather than apply a ready-made code. An apparent resemblance or recurring image is not enough to establish a fixed meaning. The relevant question is how that sign functions within this person’s total pattern of choice.

A Living Interpretation

Because the choice being studied is living, it can be revoked. A person may undergo an abrupt change of orientation and assume a new position toward an unalterable past. At such a turn, an earlier symbol may acquire a different meaning; the analyst must be prepared to abandon an interpretation that had previously seemed adequate rather than preserve it as a rule.

The method must therefore remain flexible and responsive to even slight observable changes. An approach that has served one person may fail with another, and an interpretation that once fitted a person may cease to fit that same person later. Its subject is what is individual and sometimes instantaneous, so interpretation follows the changing organization of meaning rather than forcing change back into a stable diagnostic scheme.

Methodological Significance

The method’s comparative procedure and its resistance to generalization belong together. Comparison seeks the distinctive choice expressed through several acts; it does not reduce those acts to instances of a universal formula. Situational interpretation, case-specific symbolism, and readiness to revise an account preserve the individual character of the inquiry. The resulting analysis is not a search for a hidden, static datum, but an effort to understand a choice as it is expressed and potentially altered in a person’s concrete life.