Michael Eigen

The author relates the stories of two patients reshaping their lives into something they could believe in, and examines the complex roles of the therapist and therapy, self/other and mind/body relations, and the dramatic interplay of faith and catastrophe.

Wilfred Bion once said, "I use the Kabbalah as a framework for psychoanalysis." Both are preoccupied with catastrophe and faith, infinity and intensity of experience, shatter and growth of being that supports dimensions which sensitivity opens. Both are preoccupied with ontological implications of the Unknown and the importance of emotional life. This work is a psychospiritual adventure touching the places Kabbalah and psychoanalysis give something to each other. Michael Eigen uses aspects of Bion, Winnicott, Akivah, Luria and Nachman (and many more) as colours on a palette to open realities for growth of experience. Bion called faith "the psychoanalytic attitude" and Eigen here explores creative, paradoxical, multidimensional aspects of faith. Eigen previously wrote of psychoanalysis as a form of prayer in The Psychoanalytic Mystic. In Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis he writes of creative faith. Sessions as crucibles in which diverse currents of personality mix in new ways, alchemy or soul chemistry perhaps, or simply homage to our embryonic nature which responds to the breath of feeling moment to moment.

This book explores ways we make contact with the depths in ourselves and each other. We are deeply moved by contact we make with life, yet also puzzled by a need to break or lose contact, and often suffer wounds by failure of contact to be born. Our sense of contact is tenacious and fragile, subject to deformations, plagued with a sense of jeopardy. Chapters focus on ways we make-and-break contact in the wounded aloneness of addiction, the wounded beauty of psychosis, the importance of not knowing and wordlessness, ways we transmit emotions, the need to start over, and harm we cause by trying to get rid of and misuse tendencies that are part of our makeup. Our contact with life, ourselves, each other is challenged. And through it all, we have need for deep contact, contact with the depths, fulfilling and suspenseful. Contact we never stop growing into, part of the mystery, care and love of everyday life.

Freud wrote that the greatest problem facing humanity is its destructive urge. There is no one factor that solves the issue. The Challenge of Being Human explores tendencies that make us up and capacities that try to meet them. The shock of ourselves is perennial. We are challenged by our own aliveness and a need to open doors as yet unknown. We are not done evolving, growing, learning, feeling, caring. Growth of capacity to tolerate and work with experience is part of our evolutionary challenge. This book seeks to support us in whatever ways we can begin to meet this challenge.

Wilfred Bion once said, "I use the Kabbalah as a framework for psychoanalysis." Both are preoccupied with catastrophe and faith, infinity and intensity of experience, shatter and growth of being that supports dimensions which sensitivity opens. Both are preoccupied with ontological implications of the Unknown and the importance of emotional life. This work is a psychospiritual adventure touching the places Kabbalah and psychoanalysis give something to each other. Michael Eigen uses aspects of Bion, Winnicott, Akivah, Luria and Nachman (and many more) as colours on a palette to open realities for growth of experience. Bion called faith "the psychoanalytic attitude" and Eigen here explores creative, paradoxical, multidimensional aspects of faith. Eigen previously wrote of psychoanalysis as a form of prayer in The Psychoanalytic Mystic. In Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis he writes of creative faith. Sessions as crucibles in which diverse currents of personality mix in new ways, alchemy or soul chemistry perhaps, or simply homage to our embryonic nature which responds to the breath of feeling moment to moment.

As long as feelings are second-class citizens, people will be second class citizens. Experience is an endangered species. An important function of psychotherapy is to make time for experiencing. Psychic taste buds really exist and rarely rest. They feed us each other, gauge states of being, states of spirit. We taste each other's feelings and intentions. An important aim of this book is to build psychic taste buds, not put them down or pretend they don't exist. A positive feeling runs through this book, a love of life, an affirmation. Yet we discover many feel they do not have an impact. A sense of helplessness and impotence in face of awesome forces seems to be increasing. Health is a broad term with many dark threads. A creeping annihilating sense varies from pockets we try not to notice to soul murder that must be addressed. Yet individuals do try, in their private struggles and in the larger social sphere.

"When two personalities meet, an emotional storm is created." This provocative quote by renowned psychoanalyst W.R. Bion is the point of departure for Eigen's new work. In the tradition of Martin Buber, Eigen explores the broad spectrum of emotions we experience in our relatedness to others, from feelings of longing, plenitude, and fulfillment to starvation, suffocation, and blind rage. Unlike authors of "easy" self-help books, Eigen embraces the storms of life as a critical aspect of our human bond. For Eigen, the emotional storm is not pathological, but rather integral to our humanity and instrumental to our growth and development. For this reason, he looks critically at our attempts to blunt our emotional response to the world around us. Like Eigen's other work, Emotional Storm weaves case studies, literary references, and psychoanalytic theory into an integrated, complex understanding.

This book examines the tension, caused by the conflict between poise and catastrophe, in the therapeutic relationship. It emphasizes positive contributions to growth of self made by seemingly pathological or disruptive movements within the therapy situation.

We are all sensitive beings, both physically and emotionally. What do we do with our sensitivity? How much of our sensitivity can we take? How do we become partners with our sensitivity in ways that make life worthwhile? In The Sensitive Self, renowned psychologist Michael Eigen explores the varied nuances of sensitivity as it threads its way through all facets of our lives. Individual case studies, often achingly honest, are woven together by Eigen's deeply felt meditations, bringing us into the heart of psychotherapy. We see how our sensitivity to self and others plays a crucial role in sustaining our sense of aliveness. Ultimately, Eigen argues, sensitivity is the basis for a humane ethics. Powerful and illuminating, The Sensitive Self follows up on the themes of Eigen's previous books, Rage and Ecstasy, with which Eigen has established himself as one of today's most creative thinkers in psychology.

In this provocative and insightful new book, psychologist Michael Eigen presents a phenomenology of ecstatic states. Ecstasy is a force to be reckoned with -- sometimes creative, sometimes destructive. Eigen argues that there is an ecstasy that comes through the ever-necessary confrontation of our psychic cores with suffering and degradation, and he shows that when we can learn to be present with these feelings, they add to the tone and texture of our lives, and help us to feel real. The author draws heavily on autobiographical material, psychotherapy sessions, case studies and psychoanalytic thinking, along with literary and biblical sources, demonstrating his reputation as one of the leading creative thinkers among psychotherapists in America. The result is an extremely intelligent, lyrical work, which succeeds in being theoretically well-informed without being pedantic. Written as a subjective first-hand account, Ecstasy will appeal to psychotherapists as well as to readers and students interested in spirituality and philosophy.

This book portrays a range of individuals who seek nourishment from poisons or, to variable extents, are poisoned by the nourishment they seek. It describes the analyses leading to de-programming the patients from their toxins and intoxicators.

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.