The Psychoanalytic Mystic [Paperback]

Michael Eigen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1883881315 | ISBN-13: 978-1883881313 | Publication Date: March 20, 1998

Advocating a call to the return to the spiritual in psychoanalysis, the author of this text illustrates his writing with the work of Bion, Milner and Winnicott. He expands on his call to celebrate and explore the meaning of mystical experience within psychoanalysis and considers how both patient and analyst to be immersed in each other. In the text he explores how this immersion restores and enriches, and drains.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"'Winnicott did not need an other world mysticism. The real of this world was more than enough' writes Eigen; true also of this deeply creative and moving thinker in his new book, The Psychoanalytic Mystic. And like the authors he admirers and uses as 'lenses' - Winnicott, Lacan, Bion, Milner - Eigen has not only assimilated the works of his intellectual tradition, they have travelled a dense journey into his unconscious and returned in the form of spontaneous original thinking, as rare as the authors he admirers. Do we know of any one who writes like an evocative amalgam of William Blake, Mark Twain, Freud, and Raymond Chandler? His voice is unique; his vision is singular yet embracing, his mysticism is of this earth yet transcendent, and each of his chapters is a wonderful 'spot in time'". -- Christopher Bollas

"At at time when contemporary psychoanalysis asks us to choose, with insufficient irony, between sexuality and relationships Michael Eigen, in this inspired book, adds the third term that might make the debate intelligible again. It is mysticism - not exactly sexuality, not quite aggression - that is the unacceptable in psychoanalysis; and it is the mystic - as both external and internal object - that is the true critic of psychoanalysis. The Psychoanalytic Mystic is unusually illuminating." -- Adam Phillips

"Michael Eigen is a mystical psychoanalyst and in this numinous work he makes us believe in the possibilities of both mysticism and psychoanalysis. Heart-stopping in its beauty and poignancy, Eigen's book, in Winnicott's words, 'carries all the sense of the real'. The Psychoanalytic Mystic is that rare combination, a treat for the senses and a feast for the mind." -- Mark Epstein

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: ESF Publishers (March 20, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883881315
• ISBN-13: 978-1883881313
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,885,669 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A candid poem to the unknown in human psychic experience, April 10, 1999

By 

D. J. Sapen - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Psychoanalytic Mystic (Paperback)

Eigen bravely redefines the canon of pschoanalytic discourse by bringing to the party a ridiculed stepson, namely mystical experience. He does so with neither Jung's fixation on the arcana of spiritual archetypal contents, nor Jung's relative absence of dedicated writing on the phenomenology of experience rather than the contents of experience. Marion Milner is given overdue attention; Eigen is a strong proponent of "independent", largely British, psychoanalytic thinking. Lacan himself, obtuse but hardly a mystic, is discussed for what he added to the gaze into the abyss (the real, what is left unaccounted for after the power of representation reaches its limits). The distillation of experience-near aspects of Lacan's thought is quite welcome and mostly absent from other available works about the difficult French analyst. Winnicott's tolerance of difference and paradox is central.

Most important of all is a sober, clear and at times shattering explication of some of Bion's most difficult, radical concepts, particularly the transformation in O and its relation to faith and growth in the capacity for experience. He achieves his end with scarcely a nod toward the particulars of organized worship; this is a generous offering from a mystical renaissance-man's reflective wanderings in various psychospiritual fields. He confines his subject to the mystical experience - the open attitude which reveals the vastness of what is known and can never be fully known throughout the spectrum of lived experience. He does so with a respect and a sober clinical head that right away puts the positivist naysayers back on their heels, in that he is explaining common experience and its underpinnings, good clean phenomenology, not arcane and spurious esoterica. Eigen does so from the mainstream heart of psychoanalytic thought, devoid of reductionism, subverting commonplace assumptions from within. He is so bold as to place the mystical at the point of the triumvirate bounded by sex and relation, without polemics or dogma.

Eigen opens the reader to uncommonly personal reflections and revelations, combined with sober self-analytic and solid philosophical criticism. The language is generally superb - funny, loose, poignant, eloquent and suffering only from an occasional overripe passion and a Taoist need to frequently articulate both parts of an antinomy. The reader should be quickly aware that lazy dualistic assumptions are cannon fodder for Eigen's analysis. All in all, though, a necessary, perhaps even epochal work from an analyst who knows the thousand wonderful and horrible forms of the soul as well as anyone, and has found a way to bring this knowledge into the psychoanalytic fold. The follow-up interview with Anthony Molino is indispensible.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refutes the notion that psychoanalysis is opposed to God, February 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Psychoanalytic Mystic (Paperback)

Eigen's book made me think about my biases toward therapy as somehow drawing clients away from God or a higher power. He crosses many boundaries (spiritual, emotional) to present a theory of the psychoanalyst as spiritually aware. Yet he also manages this without taking a Jungian, archetypal approach, which is a refreshing change. This is a technical discussion that presumes a great deal of prior reading (especially Bion), but it's worth the work. I found the case studies particularly absorbing.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Analyst as Mystic, January 28, 2006

By 

Black Flamenco - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Psychoanalytic Mystic (Paperback)

The Psychoanalytic Mystic is a luminous and originary work on the interpenetration of psychoanalysis and mysticism. Eigen avoids esoteric accounts of spirituality and articulates a mysticism of living, of the psyche, and of humanity. The mystical experience is forged in the kiln of the analytic setting as two souls open to one another in suffering, joy, struggle, and profound intimacy in order to give birth to emotional truth. This truth is not abstract but rather palpable and born from mutual impact, the latter experience being central to psychotherapy as Eigen envisions it. The book itself is passionately written, dense with a wisdom that one does well to contemplate and savor. Each reading will reveal yet another insight, develop a new sensitivity or perspective, so rich is its content. Eigen writes with a heartfelt openness, conveying a sense of himself in every sentence, and if the reader meets him in kind, the experience will be much more than a meeting of minds. It will be the mutual impact of two souls.