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The Psychoanalytic Mystic

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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.

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.

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.

I personally was disappointed. Michael Eigen is a skilled writer and brilliant psychoanalyst, but I thought this book would be more of an integration of psychoanalysis and eastern spiritual philosophy rather than just psychoanalysis with a spiritual touch.