Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

The work of Eigen is a unique synthesis of Jewish mystical experience, Lacan, Bion, Buber,
Winnicott, Milner, Matte-Blanco, O and intersubjectivity in an ecumenical vision of the
psychoanalytic experience. Eigen brings these together in The Psychoanalytic Mystic
(Eigen 1998) where he refers to psychoanalysis as a form of holiness and prayer with
mystical and sacred dimensions, themes also found in other writings (Eigen 1993, 2001a,
2001b, 2001c). 323 Blass comments critically ‘Never really defining what holiness,
mysticism, sacredness and prayer are … he is using these terms to refer to a general and
vague kind of openness to experiencing’ (Blass 2006: 27). Eigen offers his own vision for
contemporary psychoanalysis that is ecstatic, blissful and poetic in character aimed at the
process of psychic aliveness. 324
The complexity and subtlety of Grotstein’s thought has yet to be expounded and defies
simple summary. 325 Building on concepts of resonance from Klein, Bion, Lacan, Ricoeur,
Plato, Heidegger and Matte Blanco, Grotstein’s Who is the dreamer who dreams the dream?
(Grotstein 2000) is his most explicitly religious and spiritual work. He examines the
unconscious as experienced numinous subjectivity encompassing a transcendent position.
This reveals and disguises O in moments of encounter within the sacred architecture of the
psyche expressed in the language of mysticism. Grotstein concludes that in psychoanalysis
323 See appendix seven, ‘Meeting Mike Eigen – a psychoanalytic mystic’.
324 Eigen is not unique in this. Julia Kristeva brings psychoanalysis into dialogue with her unique version of
post-structuralism allied to an awareness of religion influenced by Russian Orthodoxy. A recent overview of
Kristeva’s ideas can be found in McAfee (McAfee 2004): however she fails to deal sufficiently with Kristeva’s
religious background and ideas which are addressed in (Jonte-Pace 1997) and (Sayers 2003). Building on
Lacan, Winnicott and Green, Kristeva sees ‘transitions’ as uniquely important. A person inhabits an embodied
subjectivity replete with a desire for fusion with a transcendental other (as understood in Christian theology)
which for Kristeva has become a maternal sacred space (Fiddes 2000a; Clement and Kristeva 2001). A vital
aspect of this is the experience of the mystical, Kristeva advocating a ‘mystic atheism’ (Bradley 2008).
Psychoanalysis replaces illusions deemed to be wholly truthful, for illusions known to be partly truthful that
enhance creativity and the capacity for love (Kristeva 1987a, 1987b, 1995).
325 A brief summary can be found in (Skelton 2006). A detailed discussion of Who is the dreamer who dreams
the dream? is found in (Gordon 2004) and a critically helpful review in (Malin 2002) .
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