Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

of the immaterial: words that have all suffered the weight of Freud's “oceanic feeling….”’
replies,
Well, I’ve felt the oceanic feeling. The term the self was unfortunately watereddown
psychoanalytic discussions of mysticism because mystics themselves, while
enjoying oceanic feelings, sometimes were often brought up short and left terrified
by the onset of a numinous awakening. They were overturned, and shaken to their
core. The prophets, whenever God or an angel appears, get the dickens scared out of
them, they get scared stiff and it is terror, terror... there’s such a terrifying impact of
the uncontainable and it's not all... oceanic bliss... that's the way it is with mystical
experiences, or encounters with the divine. They can be too much for the human
equipment at a certain time (1998: 190.).
Eigen uniquely synthesizes psychoanalytic theories and the language of mysticism to
illuminate what it is profoundly difficult to put words to. He writes to create evocative
responses in the reader that give a taste of what could possibly be. He offers a new form of
creating meaning.
4. Eigen’s hermeneutics
While Eigen does not use this term, it can be seen as an essential part of his approach.
Parker summarizes Habermas’ thinking on hermeneutics.
Psychoanalysis as a clinical practice is reflexive for it provokes self-reflection at the
individual level, and the knowledge … the patient in analysis gains does not cause a
cure to happen. Rather, it is self-knowledge and self reflection that is the cure: ‘the
act of understanding to which it (psychoanalytic depth hermeneutics) leads is self
reflection’ … the task is not explanation but understanding … The second aspect is
that the object of study is always a text … speeches and conversations can be treated
as texts … the third aspect of hermeneutics … is that the approach can be taken
further to apply to texts that are supra-individual, in which something beyond an
individual’s intentions are uncovered (Parker 1997: 142).
Eigen locates textuality, conversation and speech in the experience of the therapeutic
encounter, an encounter that is not just limited to psychoanalytic or psychological terms.
He sees these experiences, embracing the whole of life, as profoundly psychological and
profoundly religious and spiritual, influenced by his own personal history. Eigen’s work is
underpinned by the following loosely held ideas and concepts.
‘Parochial arrogance – religious or psychoanalytic - is out of order. Mutual permeability,
creative combinations, the generative unborn can’t be absorbed or channelled by overly
rigid postures. We are very much in process of discovering the what, how and who of
experience … regarding the immensity of what we are given, find, and create’ (1998: 25).
To this Eigen offers an elasticity of concept that allows different words to express the
dimension of other, something beyond self. He does not use mysticism as a signifier of
truth content unlike traditional religiously framed mysticism as found in the Christian
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