Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

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The Mania of Existence: Klein, Winnicott, and

Heidegger's Concept of Inauthenticity

Beau Shaw

To cite this article: Beau Shaw (2015) The Mania of Existence: Klein, Winnicott, and Heidegger's
Concept of Inauthenticity, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 46:1, 48-60, DOI:
10.1080/00071773.2014.990796

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2014.990796

Published online: 27 Mar 2015.

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The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2015
Vol. 46, No. 1, 48–60, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2014.990796

The Mania of Existence: Klein, Winnicott, and Heidegger’s Concept of

Inauthenticity
Beau Shaw*

Columbia University, 708 Philosophy Hall, 1150 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027

This paper offers a new interpretation of Heidegger’s concept of inauthenticity

(Uneigentlichkeit) in Being and Time. It breaks from the “conformity interpretation” of
inauthenticity, according to which the anonymity of the inauthentic person is due to her
conformity to das Man. Rather, it argues that the anonymity of the inauthentic person is due
to “existential mania” – a state in which a person denies her death and anxiety, understands
her abilities to be limitless, and is perpetually active. It shows how this existential mania –
and the anonymity to which it gives rise – is analogous to the mania described by the object
relations psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Finally, drawing on D. W. Winnicott’s discussion of
mania, it shows how both the inauthentic person’s conformity to das Man, and her
existential mania, give rise to anonymity.

Introduction
The concept of inauthenticity (Uneigentlichkeit) is one of the most significant concepts in Heideg-
ger’s Being and Time.1 It has a crucial role in the overall aim of Being and Time – the raising of the
question of the meaning of being (der Sinn von Sein). Heidegger explains that, in order to raise
this question, he must first clarify the understanding of being (Seinsverständnis) that belongs to
“Dasein” – Heidegger’s designation for the human being, the “being which we ourselves in each
case are”.2 For Heidegger, the human being’s everyday (alltäglich) way of being is captured by
the concept of authenticity. It therefore reveals how being is understood in an everyday way –
even if in the mode of the forgetfulness of it.
In addition to this, the concept of inauthenticity is significant for another reason. It indicates a
phenomenon with which we are all concerned – in our personal, social, and political lives. This is
the phenomenon of anonymity. For Heidegger, the being of the human being is defined by “exist-
ence” (Existenz) or “care” (Sorge). What a human being is, she is in terms of those possibilities or
abilities (Möglichkeiten) by which she goes about coping or practically caring for herself.3 For a
person to be inauthentic, is for her to be anonymous, in the sense that she does not understand
herself in terms of her own abilities – in her individuality; and she does not individually

*Email: bcs2104@columbia.edu
1
Being and Time, 14/16. Page citations will be to Martin Heidegger, Being and Time [BT], trans. Joan Stam-
baugh, State University of New York Press, 1996 and, after the dash, to Sein und Zeit, Max Niemeyer Verlag,
2006. I will change Stambaugh’s “Da-sein” to “Dasein”.
2
BT, 6/7.
3
The understanding of Möglichkeiten as “abilities” has been particularly stressed by William Blattner. See
William Blattner, Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

© 2015 The British Society for Phenomenology

 The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 49

choose her own abilities – she is not individually responsible. Heidegger therefore contrasts the
inauthentic person with the authentic person, who does understand herself in her individuality,
and is individually responsible. As Heidegger writes, the authentic person is “free for the
freedom of choosing and grasping [herself]”.4
In the following, I will offer a new interpretation as to why, for Heidegger, the inauthentic
person is anonymous. I will break from a widespread interpretation, which I will call the “confor-
mity interpretation”. For the conformity interpretation, the inauthentic person is anonymous
because she conforms to what Heidegger calls “das Man” – “the One” or “the They”. Das
Man is a group of indistinct individuals, all leading the same kind of life – it is an impersonal
crowd. For Heidegger, a person, at first and for the most part, conforms to das Man. She
enjoys only those types of abilities that das Man enjoys – she is characterised by “averageness”
(Durchschnittlichkeit). And she does not individually choose her abilities; rather, das Man makes
that choice for her – she is characterised by a “disburdening” (Entlassen) of her individual respon-
sibility. For the conformity interpretation, this conformity to das Man explains why the inauthen-
tic person is anonymous. For example, Charles Guignon writes:

For the most part in our everyday lives, we are dispersed into They-possibilities, doing what “one”
does as anyone might do such things. Being a “They-self” in this way promotes a mode of existence
Heidegger calls “inauthentic.” The German word for “authentic,” eigentlich, comes from the stem
eigen which means “own,” so an inauthentic life would be one that is unowned or disowned. As
inauthentic, my life is not my own but rather that of the They.5

And Stephen Mulhall writes:

the average everyday mode of Dasein is inauthentic. Its mineness takes the form of the “they,” its Self
is a they-self – a mode of relating to itself and to others in which it and they fail to find themselves and
so fail to achieve genuine individuality … if Dasein typically loses itself in the “they,” it will under-
stand both its world and itself in the terms that “they” make available to it, and so will interpret its own
nature in terms of the categories that lie closest to hand in popular culture and everyday life; and they
will be as inauthentic as their creators.6

For the conformity interpretation, the inauthentic person’s anonymity is due to her losing herself
in das Man: understanding as das Man understands, and choosing as das Man chooses – that is,
not choosing at all.7
I will argue that the conformity interpretation overlooks a crucial dimension of the life of the
inauthentic person, and precisely the one which gives rise to the inauthentic person’s anonymity. I
will call this dimension “existential mania”. I choose this formulation purposefully. This existen-
tial mania is an analogue – and I will explain what I mean by “analogue” momentarily – to the
concept of mania which can be found in the work of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, one of
the most important psychoanalytic theorists after Freud, and the founder of British object relations
psychoanalysis. As I will discuss, for Klein, mania is a state in which a person denies anxiety and

4
BT, 176/188.
5
Charles Guignon, “Becoming a Self: The Role of Authenticity in Being and Time”, The Existentialists:
Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre, ed. Charles Guignon, Rowman & Little-
field Publishers, Inc., 2004, 126, italics in the original.
6
Stephen Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time: Second Edition, Routledge, 2005, 68.
7
For other examples of the conformity interpretation, see Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Com-
mentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I, MIT Press, 1991, 233–4; and William Blattner, Heideg-
ger’s Being and Time, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006, 40.
50 B. Shaw

death; understands her libidinal possibilities to be limitless; and is in a state of perpetual activity.
For Klein, because of these aspects of mania, the manic person is anonymous: she is unable to
understand herself in her individuality, and is unable to be responsible. I will argue that, in Hei-
degger’s concept of inauthenticity, an existential mania, analogous to this psychoanalytically con-
ceived mania, can be identified, and that this existential mania gives rise to the inauthentic
person’s anonymity.
This contention raises a question, which I will also try to address: If existential mania gives
rise to the inauthentic person’s anonymity, what is the relation between a person’s conformity to
das Man, and that anonymity? Drawing on the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, who, in develop-
ing Klein’s concept of mania, showed the dependence of mania on social practices, I will argue
that the inauthentic person’s conformity to das Man makes possible existential mania – which
gives rise to anonymity.
Before beginning, let me address a number of methodological issues which my approach
involves. First, I do not claim that the mania which Klein describes is identical to the existential
mania which Heidegger describes. They are not identical: Klein’s mania is described from a
psychological perspective, whereas Heidegger’s existential mania is described from an existential
perspective. I only claim that they are analogous to one another – that is, they consist in quali-
tatively similar characteristics. For example, the perpetual activity which Klein finds in mania,
is qualitatively similar to the perpetual activity which Heidegger finds in existential mania.
However, this gives rise to a further issue. It might seem difficult to suggest that these two
manias could, even, be “qualitatively similar”. Heidegger’s existential analysis takes, as its
point of departure, the human being’s understanding of being. As Heidegger writes, “[t]he
ontic distinction of Dasein lies in the fact that it is ontological”.8 However, psychology does
not understand the human being in terms of its understanding of being.9 For this reason, the
“human being” which Heidegger describes – “Dasein” – is entirely different from the “human
being” which psychology describes. And, consequently, they could not be characterised by any
“qualitatively similar” mania.
There are a number of replies to this objection. First, Heidegger does separate his existential
analysis from psychology – and, more generally, from the human sciences, for example, anthro-
pology and biology. However, this does not mean that he severs it from them. Heidegger writes
that his existential analysis lays the groundwork for a philosophical anthropology – even though
completing this philosophical anthropology is not one of its aims.10 In this respect, Heidegger’s
existential analysis addresses the same subject as the human sciences, and can inform their con-
cepts.11 Second, in many respects, Heidegger’s existential analysis of the human being has a
rather straightforward similarity to psychology. This is not to say – as some have suggested –
that it is a thinly veiled translation of Kierkegaard’s observations about the Danish. However –
to give one example, which I will look at later – there is a clear similarity between Heidegger’s
pointing out that the inauthentic person “does not somehow come to a rest”, or is characterised by
“uninhibited busyness”, and Klein’s pointing out that the manic person is in a state of “suspended
animation”. Third, there has been a long tradition of psychological, and, in particular, psychoana-
lytic thinkers, who have used Heidegger’s existential analysis in order to inform their own psy-
chology. Ludwig Binswanger is the most prominent example. More recent examples include

8
BT, 10/12.
9
BT, 46/49.
10
BT, 124/131.
11
Derrida has considered how Heidegger’s existential analysis is simultaneously distant from, and proximate
to, the human sciences, specifically in the case of his analysis of death. See Jacques Derrida, Aporias, trans.
Thomas Dutoit, Stanford University Press, 1993.
 The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 51

Robert Stolorow,12 and – closer to my own concerns – the object relations theorist Jeffrey Sein-
feld.13 This suggests a community of concepts, between existential analysis, and psychology.
Finally, I will comment on one perhaps particularly problematic element of the analogy
between Klein’s mania and Heidegger’s existential mania which, in the following, I will point
to. As I will discuss, just as Klein describes how the manic person takes her libidinal possibilities
to be limitless – she believes that her possibilities of expressing love will never come to an end –
Heidegger describes how the inauthentic person understands his abilities to be limitless. As Hei-
degger writes, for the inauthentic person, “nothing is closed off”, and “all doors are open”. Here,
the analogy lies in the fact that both Klein and Heidegger ascribe a limitless understanding of pos-
sibilities, or abilities, to the manic and the inauthentic person, respectively. However, this analogy
may be problematic given that Klein’s libidinal possibilities have very little in common with Hei-
degger’s abilities. The former are possibilities of gratification (even if Klein does not understand
this gratification as biologistically as Freud does), whereas the latter are practical ways of coping
with the world. This is true. However, my intention is to suggest that they are analogous specifi-
cally in respect to the fact that Klein’s libidinal possibilities, and Heidegger’s abilities, are under-
stood to be limitless. Indeed, as I will show, it is precisely this understanding of libidinal
possibilities, or abilities, as limitless, which gives rise to anonymity.
My plan is as follows. I will (1) look at Klein’s concept of mania, and how, for Klein, mania
gives rise to anonymity; (2) look at how Heidegger understands the inauthentic person according
to existential mania, and how this existential mania gives rise to anonymity; (3) reconsider the
inauthentic person’s conformity to das Man in light of the interpretation that I am offering.

1 Klein, Mania, and Anonymity

How does Klein understand mania? And how, for Klein, does mania give rise to anonymity?
Before answering these questions, I will provide some background to Klein’s concept of
mania. This background is Freud, on whom Klein was profoundly dependent, despite her theor-
etical innovations which, ultimately, led to the establishment of her own school of
psychoanalysis.14
Freud understands mania in the context of mourning and melancholia. His fullest discussion
of mania is in “Mourning and Melancholia”.15 In this text, Freud understands mourning as that
“work” by which a person who has lost a loved object – for example, a person or an ideal – is
able to acknowledge that the object is lost, separate her libidinal interest from it, and invest
that libidinal interest in objects which are not lost. For Freud, melancholia arises from a failure
to mourn. The melancholic loses a loved object, but, rather than give it up, she identifies with
it; she takes it to be the same as herself. (For example, as the psychoanalyst Karl Abraham
describes, when his father – who had grey hair – died, his own hair turned grey.) In this way,
the melancholic is able to continue to love the lost object, just as she had before she lost it.
However, this love is an unhappy love. The melancholic directs hatred towards her loved
object, because it abandoned her; this means, however, that she directs hatred towards herself

12
See Robert Stolorow, Trauma and Human Existence, Routledge, 2007.
13
See Jeffrey Seinfeld, The Empty Core: An Object Relations Approach to the Psychotherapy of the Schizoid
Personality, Jason Aronson, Inc., 1991, and Containing Rage, Terror, and Despair: An Object Relations
Approach to Psychotherapy, Jason Aronson, Inc., 1996.
14
For an overview of Klein’s work and its relation to Freud, see Hanna Segal, Introduction to the Work of
Melanie Klein, Karnac Books, 1998, and Julia Kristeva, Melanie Klein, trans. Ross Guberman, Columbia
University Press, 2004.
15
Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”, SE: XIV, 237–58.
52 B. Shaw

– since she identifies with her loved object. This accounts for the manifest symptoms of melanch-
olia – “self-reproaches and self-revilings”, and a “delusional expectation of punishment”.16 For
Freud, mania is a state by which a person “pushes aside” these melancholic dynamics.17 The
manic person believes that her loved objects cannot be lost; and that she cannot hate, but only
love. The manic person is filled with life – filled with objects which can never die, and with a
love for those indestructible objects. Freud therefore writes that she is characterised by “joy, exul-
tation, or triumph”, as well as a “readiness for all kinds of action”, and she lives as though at a
feast.18
Klein develops her concept of mania primarily in two articles, “A Contribution to the Psycho-
genesis of Manic-Depressive States”, and “Mourning and Manic-Depressive States”.19 Like
Freud, Klein understands mania in relation to melancholia. However, Klein understands melanch-
olia in terms of one her central innovations, the “depressive position”. For Klein, the depressive
position is, above all, a “position” – it is not a stage in the development of the libido, like Freud’s
oral, anal, and genital stages; rather, it is a group of beliefs, fantasies, and desires, which concern a
person’s own self and the objects to which she is attached, and which are deployed for the pur-
poses of defence. In the depressive position, Klein says, a person identifies with a “good object” –
an object which nurtures her and loves her. This “good object”, however, is “whole” or “com-
plete”.20 It is also a “bad object”: an object which harms and, even, can destroy her. In the
depressive position, therefore, a person takes herself to be both good and bad. As a result, in
the depressive position, a person both loves and wishes to destroy her own self. And, for this
reason, in the depressive position, a person acknowledges her own destructibility – that she
can be destroyed, annihilated, and disintegrated, and by her own hands.21
For Klein – as for Freud – mania “pushes aside” the object relations characteristic of the
depressive position. There are three primary ways in which it does this.
(1) The manic person denies her own destructibility and anxiety. For Klein, the manic
person denies that she herself is bad, and denies that she harbours destructive wishes towards
herself. For this reason, she denies that she is destructible. Rather, she understands herself in
a radically idealised way – as entirely good, perfect, and indestructible.22 Connected to this,
the manic person denies anxiety, over her destructibility. Klein writes that it is precisely the rec-
ognition of the destructibility of the self which brings about anxiety. Therefore, by denying this
destructibility, the manic person denies her own feeling of anxiety. Klein writes that she “denies
the different forms of anxiety”, and denies “the most overpowering and profound anxiety of all”,
“dread”.23
(2) The manic person understands her libidinal possibilities as limitless. The manic person
denies that she is bad, and that she has destructive wishes. For this reason, she understands her
objects as always worthy of love, and understands herself as always capable of loving them. In
this respect, she understands her libidinal possibilities as limitless. Klein therefore writes that

16
“Mourning and Melancholia”, 243.
17
“Mourning and Melancholia”, 253.
18
“Mourning and Melancholia”, 254; Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, SE:
XVIII, 65–144, 130.
19
Melanie Klein, “A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States” [“Psychogenesis”],
“Mourning and Manic-Depressive States”, both in The Selected Melanie Klein, ed. Juliet Mitchell, The
Free Press, 1987.
20
“Psychogenesis”, 118.
21
“Psychogenesis”, 124.
22
“Psychogenesis”, 123.
23
“Psychogenesis”, 132–3, italics in the original.
 The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 53

hypomania – a state similar to mania, but compatible with normal functionality – is characterised
by a “tendency to conceive of everything on a large scale, to think in large numbers, all this in
accordance with the greatness of [the manic person’s] omnipotence … ”24 The manic person
lives – as Freud suggested – at a never-ending libidinal feast.
(3) The manic person is perpetually active. Klein writes that mania is a state of “over-activity”
and “excess of activity”.25 This is linked to the manic person’s denial of her destructibility and
anxiety, and her understanding her libidinal possibilities to be limitless. Nothing stops the
manic person’s enjoyment; and she never believes that it can be stopped. She therefore never
ceases thrusting herself into new possibilities of enjoyment. As Klein writes, she is in a state
of “suspended animation”.26
For Klein, mania does successfully manage to “push aside” the object relations characteristic
of the depressive position. The manic person does not find herself to be bad, does not try to
destroy herself, and does not acknowledge her own destructibility. This may make mania seem
like a delight. However, for Klein, it is a pathology. It is a pathology primarily because it is psy-
chotic: for example, the manic person’s belief that she is indestructible is a psychotic fantasy.
However, it is a pathology for a second reason: it gives rise to anonymity – and anonymity, in
the sense in which I described above. This can be seen in two ways.
(1) The manic person is unable to understand herself in her individuality. Why this is can be
seen by comparing the manic person to the person who perseveres in the depressive position.
For Klein, the depressive position is not only a source of pathology, but also an achievement
of maturity. More precisely, it is an achievement of self-understanding. In the depressive pos-
ition, a person understands that she is both good and bad; that she is capable of both love
and hatred; and that she is destructible. As Klein writes, in the depressive position, a
person’s “ego makes its way towards a more realistic conception of both its external and internal
objects”.27 Alternatively, the manic person, who defends against the depressive position, loses
all of these achievements of self-understanding. She believes that she is only good; that she is
only capable of loving; and that she is indestructible. This is a radically attenuated, and fantas-
tical, understanding of herself.
(2) The manic person is unable to be individually responsible. This, again, can be seen by
comparing the manic person to the person who perseveres in the depressive position. In the
depressive position, a person acknowledges destructive wishes towards herself, and also
towards others. She thereby acknowledges her own destructibility, as well as the destructibility
of others. For Klein, this means that a person in the depressive position is able to be make
“reparations”.28 By this, Klein means that she is able to acknowledge her own guilt in
causing destruction, as well as to repair that destruction, in light of that guilt. In this respect,
the person in the depressive position is able to be individually responsible. Alternatively, the
manic person is incapable of this individual responsibility. She does not acknowledge that
she can destroy anything; she has no sense of guilt; and she cannot try to repair the destruction
that she causes. Klein writes that the manic person is characterised by a general “detachment”,
and does not have any “concern”.29

24
“Mourning and Manic-Depressive States”, 155 (italics in the original).
25
“Psychogenesis”, 132.
26
“Psychogenesis”, 133.
27
See fn. 7, “A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States”, International Journal of
Psychoanalysis, 16 (1935): 151. This footnote is not reprinted in the version in The Selected Melanie Klein.
28
“Psychogenesis”, 144; “Mourning and Manic-Depressive States”, 153.
29
“Psychogenesis”, 134.
54 B. Shaw

2 Existential Mania and Anonymity

I will now take a fresh look at Heidegger’s concept of inauthenticity. I will suggest that the
inauthentic person is characterised by a mania which is analogous to the mania which
Klein describes – an existential mania; and that this existential mania gives rise to the inauthentic
person’s anonymity.
This existential mania consists in three primary characteristics. Each of these characteristics
corresponds to the characteristics which Klein finds in her psychological account of mania. Hei-
degger describes these characteristics in his section on “falling” (Verfallen). Falling is central to
inauthenticity. Heidegger writes that inauthenticity is “defined more precisely” by falling.30
Broadly, falling indicates the way in which the inauthentic person relates to her being, or her abil-
ities – the way in which she understands them, and is attuned to them. As Heidegger writes, it is
the way in which inauthentic Dasein “is its ‘there’” (sein “Da” … ist).31 In this respect, one way
of understanding my claim is that, for Heidegger, falling is existential mania.
(1) In falling, a person denies death and anxiety. Here, it is important to note that Heidegger’s
conceptions of death and anxiety are not equivalent to Klein’s conceptions of destructibility and
anxiety (or “dread”). For Heidegger, “death” (Tod) is not biological death – which he calls “per-
ishing” (Verenden). (On the other hand, Klein does not understand death as biological death,
either: it is the destruction of the self – the “disintegration” of the self). Rather, for Heidegger,
death is a “possibility”, and, specifically, the possibility of “impossibility”: “Death is the possi-
bility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein” (Der Tod ist die Möglichkeit der schlechthinnigen
Daseinsunmöglichkeit).32 By this, Heidegger means that death is that possibility, that nothing is
possible; or, death is that possibility, of having no abilities. As William Blattner has put it, it is
“existential death”.33 Heidegger therefore writes that death is the possibility of being “primarily
unsupported by concern taking care of things” (auf die besorgende Fürsorge primär ungestütz) –
that is, the possibility of not being able to cope practically in the world for oneself, or for others.34
Additionally, for Heidegger, anxiety (Angst) is not an affect, but, rather, a “mood” (Stimmung)
or “attunement” (Befindlichkeit). It is a non-cognitive disclosure of “how it goes” with a person,
and with her world (and, in this respect, is equivalent to moods or attunements such as melan-
choly, or joy). For Heidegger, what anxiety discloses is, specifically, death. Anxiety, Heidegger
writes, is “the attunement which is able to hold open the constant and absolute threat to itself”,
and, in anxiety, “Dasein finds itself faced with the nothingness of the possible impossibility of
its existence”.35
Nevertheless, like Klein, for Heidegger, in falling, a person denies death and anxiety. Heideg-
ger writes that, in falling, a person is characterised by an “absorption” (Aufgehen) in her abilities.
One can, here, imagine a doctor, who ceaselessly (manically) tends to her patients. She spends all
of her time caring for them, and thinks of nothing else but her caring for them. However, for Hei-
degger, this absorption in a person’s abilities is, at the same time, a “flight” (Flucht) from the
possibility of not having any abilities – from death. Furthermore, it is a flight from that mood
which discloses that possibility of not having any abilities – from anxiety. For example, in describ-
ing giving a dying person consolation for her death, Heidegger writes,

30
BT, 164/175.
31
BT, 164/175.
32
BT, 232/250.
33
William Blattner, “The Concept of Death in Being and Time”, Man and World 27 (1994): 49–70.
34
BT, 245/266.
35
BT, 245/265–6, italics removed.
 The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 55

the “neighbors” often try to convince the “dying person” that he will escape death and return again to
the tranquillized everydayness of his world taken care of. This “concern has the intention of thus
“comforting” the “dying person.” It wants to bring him back to Dasein by helping him veil completely
his ownmost nonrelational possibility.36

By consoling a dying person, the neighbours try to absorb him in his abilities – that he will “return
again to … his world taken care of”. But, for Heidegger, this is a veiling of his death, and a veiling
of the anxiety which discloses this death.
It is important to stress that this flight from death and anxiety does not mean that death and anxiety
disappear. Heidegger writes that “[f]actically one’s own Dasein is always already dying”37; and Hei-
degger adds that the “threat” (Bedrohung) of anxiety “can factically go along with security and self-
sufficiency of the everyday way of taking care of things”.38 Death and anxiety are constant possibi-
lities. For this reason, the flight from them is a denial of them. They are there always there. Only, a
person – through her manic absorption in her abilities – refuses to acknowledge them.
(2) In falling, a person understands her abilities as limitless. For Heidegger, two of the
primary characteristics of falling are “curiosity” (Neugier) and “idle talk” (Gerede). For Heideg-
ger, curiosity is not an isolated intellectual attitude, but a pervasive way in which a person relates
to her abilities. Specifically, she relates to her abilities in such a way that they never give out. The
curious person, Heidegger writes,

seeks novelty only to leap from it again to another novelty. The care of seeing is not concerned with
comprehending and knowingly being in the truth, but with possibilities of abandoning itself to the
world. Thus curiosity is characterized by a specific not-staying with the world. Consequently, it
also does not seek the leisure of reflective staying, but rather restlessness and excitement from con-
tinual novelty and changing encounters … 39

No sooner has the curious person has grasped one ability, than she moves onto another ability. She
is, so to speak, an existential glutton. She cannot have enough of her abilities.
Idle talk, for Heidegger, is not merely careless speech, but – like curiosity – a pervasive way in
which a person relates to her abilities. Additionally, it is not only a way of speaking, but, more
generally, a way of understanding. In idle talk, a person understands her abilities in such a
way that they never give out. For example, Heidegger writes that idle talk “is the possibility of
understanding everything without any previous appropriation of the matter. Idle talk already
guards against the danger of getting stranded in such an appropriation”.40 In idle talk, a person
is never “stranded” (sheitern): she never faces a situation in which her abilities would fail. Hei-
degger therefore writes that, in idle talk, “nothing is closed off”, and, in connecting idle talk to
“tranquillization”, he writes that, in this way of understanding, “all doors are open”.41
In curiosity, a person abandons herself to new ability after new ability, limitlessly; and, in idle
talk, she understands herself to be embraced by a never-failing, limitless expanse of abilities. In
this respect, in curiosity and idle talk, a person understands her abilities as limitless.
(3) In falling, a person is perpetually active. Heidegger makes the significant remark that
falling is, fundamentally, an “ontological concept of motion” (ontologischer Bewegunsbegriff).42

36
BT, 234–5/253.
37
BT, 235/245.
38
BT, 177/189.
39
BT, 161/172.
40
BT, 158/169.
41
BT, 166/177.
42
BT, 168/180.
56 B. Shaw

This motion is not a change of physical place – it is not kinesis – but, rather, is a motion appro-
priate to Dasein. One could call it existential motion. Heidegger writes that the existential motion
characteristic of falling is “uninhibited ‘busyness’” (die Hemmungslosigkeit des “Betriebs”).43
Heidegger adds that “[b]eing entangled in the ‘world’” – a person’s absorption in her abilities
– “does not somehow come to rest”. 44 In this respect, in falling, a person is perpetually
active. For example, the doctor I mentioned above, who ceaselessly cares for her patients, acts
perpetually; she never stops. Klein’s idea of “suspended animation” captures this phenomenon
very well. To be sure, for Klein, this “suspended animation” refers to perpetual libidinal activity,
the fact that the manic person never ceases acting on possibilities of expressing love. However,
just as the manic person is suspended in the animation of expressing love, so too the inauthentic
person is suspended in the animation of exercising her abilities.
Existential mania therefore comprises a person’s denial of death and anxiety; her understand-
ing her abilities to be limitless; and her perpetual activity. What I would now like to suggest is that
this existential mania gives rise to anonymity. This can be seen in two distinct ways.
(1) The existentially manic person is unable to understand herself in her individuality. Hei-
degger understands death as a person’s “ownmost” (eigenste) possibility.45 A person’s death is
what is most proper to a person herself. For Heidegger, therefore, in “authentic being-towards-
death” – that relation to death in which a person does not flee from death, but explicitly discloses
it – a person discloses herself. Authentic being-towards-death, Heidegger writes, “frees for death
the possibility of gaining power over the existence of Da-sein and of basically dispersing every
fugitive self-covering-over”.46 Connected to this, anxiety – insofar as it is that mood or attune-
ment in which a person discloses her death – is that mood or attunement in which a person dis-
closes herself. Heidegger writes that “[a]nxiety individuates Dasein” (Die Angst vereinzelt das
Dasein), and that anxiety “reveals in Dasein its … being free for the freedom of choosing and
grasping itself”.47 For this reason, however, the existentially manic person cannot understand
herself in her individuality. She denies death and anxiety. But she therefore does not disclose
herself, and does not experience that mood or attunement in which she could disclose herself.
There is a second reason why the existentially manic person cannot understand herself in her
individuality. In describing the “anticipation” (Vorlaufen) of death, which, for Heidegger, charac-
terises authentic being-towards-death, Heidegger writes,

[f]ree for its ownmost possibilities, that are determined by the end, and so understood as finite, Dasein
prevents the danger that it may, by its own finite understanding of existence, fail to recognize that it is
getting overtaken by the existence-possibilities of others, or that it may misinterpret these possibilities,
thus divesting itself of its ownmost factical existence … Because anticipation of the possibility not-to-
be-bypassed also disclosed all the possibilities lying before it, this anticipation includes the possibility
of taking the whole of Dasein in advance in an existentiell way, that is, the possibility of existing as a
whole potentiality-of-being.48

In authentic being-towards-death, a person understands that her abilities are ended by death: they
are “determined by the end” (vom Ende her bestimmten). Understanding her abilities in this way,
she understands that they are a “finite” (endlich) set of abilities, or a “whole” (Ganze) – a whole,
“lying before” (vorgelagerten) the end which is her death. This finite set of abilities or this whole

43
BT, 166/177.
44
BT, 166/177–8.
45
BT, 232/250.
46
BT, 286/310, italics in the original.
47
BT, 176/187–18.
48
BT, 244/264.
 The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 57

constitutes a person’s individuality, and, understanding it, she understands herself in her indivi-
duality. She prevents the danger of “divesting herself” (sich … begeben) of her ownmost factical
existence; and she can exist as a “whole potentiality-of-being” (ganzes Seinkönnen).49
However, the existentially manic person, by understanding her abilities as limitless, precisely
does not understand her abilities as finite or a whole. She is therefore unable to understand herself
in her individuality. Heidegger describes falling as a form of “alienation” (Entfremdung). But it is
alienation, not because it is a self-separation from an abstract human essence, but because it
involves an understanding of abilities as limitless. Heidegger writes that “[w]hen Dasein, tranquil-
lized and ‘understanding’ everything, thus compares itself with everything, it drifts towards an
alienation in which its ownmost potentiality for being-in-the-world is concealed”. And he adds
that “[w]hen Dasein, tranquillised and “understanding” everything, thus compares itself with
everything, it drifts toward an alienation in which its ownmost potentiality for being-in-the-
world is concealed”.50
In connection to this, I would like to cite a passage from Heidegger’s 1921–22 lecture course
on Aristotle. In this lecture course, Heidegger works out many of the concepts which he will elab-
orate in Being and Time, and, specifically, in his section on falling. Heidegger writes that, in “fac-
tical life”, there is a “multiplicity of possibilities”, and that this

always implies an increase in the possibilities of mistaking oneself in ever new ways. Factical life in
itself, qua factical, thereby brings to maturation a distantiated interminability of possible mistakes, and
insofar as these interminable mistakes are all of the character of meaningful things in which, as mean-
ingful-worldly objects, life lives, this interminability becomes what is formalistically characterized as
infinity and infinite abundance, inexhaustibility, that which can never be mastered, the “always more
of” life, and the “always more than” life. This infinity is the disguise factical life factically places upon
and holds before itself or its world.51

In factical life, a person holds before herself an “‘always more of’ life”, and, indeed, an “infinite
abundance” of life, and this infinite abundance is the “disguise” that factical life places on itself.
(2) The existentially manic person is unable to be individually responsible. For Heidegger, a
person’s ability to be individually responsible is linked to her ability to be anxious. Anxiety is that
mood or attunement in which a person discloses her death. In this respect, it discloses the possi-
bility that a person can be “primarily unsupported by concern taking care of things”. Anxiety dis-
closes the loss of worldly abilities. For this reason, in anxiety, a person’s uninhibited busyness
ceases. “Anxiety”, Heidegger writes, “fetches Dasein back out of its entangled absorption in
the world”.52 This allows a person to relate to her abilities in a new way. Heidegger writes:

Anxiety reveals in Dasein its being toward its ownmost potentiality of being, that is, being free for the
freedom of choosing and grasping itself. Anxiety brings Dasein before its being free for … (propensio
in), the authenticity of its being as possibility which it always already is.53

49
Charles Guignon has been particularly attentive to this way in which, in authentic being-towards-death, a
person understands herself in her individuality. See Charles Guignon, “Authenticity, Moral Values, and Psy-
chotherapy”, in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon, Cambridge University
Press, 2006. “Authentic self-focusing, understood as a resolute reaching forward into a finite range of pos-
sibilities, gives coherence, cohesiveness, and integrity to a life course”, 282.
50
BT, 166/178.
51
Martin Heidegger, Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological
Research, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, Indiana University Press, 2001, 80, italics in the original.
52
BT, 176/189.
53
BT, 176/188, italics in the original.
58 B. Shaw

In anxiety, a person’s uninhibited busyness ceases, but this allows a person to freely choose her
own abilities. It “brings Dasein before its being free for … ” One can here think of the doctor who
is entirely absorbed in her work – so much so that she is not really deciding to work. In anxiety,
she is “fetched” out of this absorption. But this anxiety therefore allows her to freely choose her
work for the first time – that is, to be individually responsible for it.
However, the existentially manic person is perpetually active, that is, her uninhibited busyness
never ceases. For this reason, she is never brought before her abilities in such a way that she can be
individually responsible for them. One could say that she lacks the patience to be individually
responsible – that patience in which, not acting perpetually, a person can make deliberate choices.
Existential mania therefore gives rise to anonymity. The existentially manic person is unable
to understand herself in her individuality, and is unable to be individually responsible. And exis-
tential mania gives rise to anonymity, without any conformity to das Man.

3 Existential Mania and Conformity

But if existential mania gives rise to anonymity, then what role does conformity to das Man have,
in relation to that anonymity?
In order to answer this question, I will look at another psychoanalytic theory of mania –
D. W. Winnicott’s. Winnicott’s theory of mania emphasises the dependence of mania on a
person’s conformity to certain social practices.
Winnicott’s theory of mania, which he gives in his paper “The Manic Defence”,54 is deeply
influenced by Klein. But there is a second, equally critical influence for Winnicott’s theory of
mania. This is the concept of the “flight to reality”, which had been developed by Nina Searl.55
According to Searl, repression should not only be understood on the model of a person’s repression
of a problematic reality, and her affirmation of an acceptable fantasy. Additionally, there are cases of
repression in which a person represses a problematic fantasy, and affirms an acceptable reality. This
has the paradoxical consequence that a person can suffer from a psychological pathology – can be
delusional – through the affirmation of reality. For example, a person has, in reality, loving parents,
but fantasises that they do not love her. This carries the threat that she will be abandoned – and,
perhaps, could die. This person then represses the fantasy that her parents do not love her, and
affirms the reality that they do love her. This repression gives rise to the delusion that she is omni-
potent – that her parents only love her, and that she will never die.
For Winnicott, mania is a flight to reality. Mania is a state in which a person represses a pro-
blematic fantasy, affirms an acceptable reality, but in this way suffers from a delusion. The specific
fantasy that mania repudiates is the fantasy which, for Klein, belongs to the depressive position:
the fantasy that a person – identifying with a good object – can destroy herself. The reality which
mania affirms, and which represses this fantasy, is a reality which represents a person’s indestruct-
ibility. Significantly, for Winnicott, this reality consists in a certain social practices, and the affir-
mation of this reality consists in a person’s participating in these social practices.
Winnicott gives two examples of these social practices. The first is theatrical social practices.
Winnicott writes:

For instance, one is at a music-hall and on to the stage come the dancers, trained to liveliness. One can
say that here is the primal scene, here is exhibitionism, here is anal control, here is masochistic

54
D.W. Winnicott, “The Manic Defence”, Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis, Brunner-Routledge,
1992.
55
Nina Searl, “The Flight to Reality”, International Journal of Psychoanalysis 10 (1929): 280–91.
 The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 59

submission to discipline, here is a defiance of the super-ego. Sooner or later one adds: here is LIFE.
Might it not be that the main point of the performance is a denial of deadness, a defence against
depressive “death inside” ideas, the sexualization being secondary.56

For Winnicott, theatrical practices allow a person to express sexual impulses. But the overriding
purpose of theatrical practices is that a person is “trained to liveliness”. By expressing these sexual
impulses, she finds herself filled with life, or, so to speak, purely alive. For Winnicott, the partici-
pation in these social practices represses a problematic fantasy: it is “a denial of deadness, a
defence against depressive ‘death inside’ ideas”. It therefore facilitates the delusion that a
person is indestructible – that she is purely alive.
The second example that Winnicott gives is urban social practices – practices characteristic of
modern cities:

What about such things as the wireless that is left on interminably? What about living in a town like
London with its noise that never ceases, and lights that are never extinguished? Each illustrates the
reassurance through reality against death inside, and a use of manic defence that can be normal.57

Unlike Benjamin, for whom urban life give rise to traumatic neurosis, for Winnicott, urban life
gives rise to mania. A person who participates in urban social practices – the interminable busy-
ness of cities, in which “the lights never go off” – believes that she is, herself, interminably alive.
But in this way she represses her destructibility, and maintains the delusion that she is perfectly
alive.
A significant implication of Winnicott’s understanding of mania is that a manic person is both
normal and pathological. She is normal insofar as she participates in conventional social prac-
tices. This makes her “normal”, not merely in the sense that she is “conventional”, but also
makes her “normal”, in the specifically psychoanalytic sense (and, even more specifically, in
the sense developed in ego psychology): she successfully adapts to social practices. On the
other hand, she is pathological: her adaptation to these social practices entails, after all, mania,
the delusion of indestructibility. Winnicott therefore writes:

The truth is, one can scarcely discuss in the abstract whether such devices [participation in social
practices] are a normal reassurance through reality or an abnormal manic defence; one can discuss,
however, the use of the defence that we meet with in the course of the analysis of a patient.58

For Winnicott, therefore, mania is a play between normalcy and pathology. The normal partici-
pation in social practices makes possible the pathological delusion of indestructibility.
What I suggest is that, for Heidegger, inauthenticity is characterised by this same play of nor-
malcy and pathology. In other words, the inauthentic person’s normalcy – her conformity to das
Man – makes possible her pathology – her existential mania.
For example, in introducing his discussion of falling, Heidegger states that a person is charac-
terised by falling “to the extent that [falling] … maintains itself in the mode of being of the
they”.59 A person falls – is existentially manic – to the extent that she conforms to impersonal
crowd. It is because a person conforms to the impersonal crowd that she is existentially manic.
Additionally, Heidegger writes that “falling prey to the ‘world’ means being absorbed in

56
“The Manic Defence”, 130.
57
“The Manic Defence”, 130.
58
“The Manic Defence”, 130, italics in the original.
59
BT, 156/167.
60 B. Shaw

being-with-one-another”, and that falling prey “constitutes precisely a distinctive kind of being-
in-the-world which is completely taken in by the world and the Mitda-sein of the others in the
they”.60 As I have discussed, “falling prey” (Verfallenheit) – another word that Heidegger uses
for “falling” – is an independent complex of existential properties; it constitutes existential
mania. However, Heidegger suggests here that this existential mania is ultimately due to a
person’s conformity to das Man: it is “a distinctive kind of being-in-the-world which is comple-
tely taken in by the world and the Mida-sein of the others in the they”.
The fact that, for Heidegger, conformity to das Man makes possible existential mania might
seem to defeat my thesis. After all, if conformity to das Man makes possible existential mania,
and existential mania gives rise to anonymity, then is it not the case that, ultimately, conformity
to das Man gives rise to anonymity? It is. However, according to the conformity interpretation, the
inauthentic person’s anonymity is due directly to her conformity. It is due to a person’s average-
ness, and her disburdening of her individual responsibility to das Man. What I have tried to show
is that, in fact, this conformity to das Man does not directly give rise to the inauthentic person’s
anonymity. Rather, it makes it possible – by making possible existential mania.

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