A collection of exceptional papers by Michael Eigen, selected and assembled by Adam Phillips, that represent 20 years of writing and 30 years of work. The papers examine the tension, caused by the conflict between poise and catastrophe, in the therapeutic relationship. This volume contains a thought-provoking introduction from Adam Phillips and includes introductory notes for the chapters and a detailed Afterword by Michael Eigen.
-Eigen is one of the dozen or so most interesting psychoanalysts writing today. -The Electrified Tightrope- presents him in his familiar function...
A collection of exceptional papers by Michael Eigen, selected and assembled by Adam Phillips, that represent 20 years of writing and 30 years of work....
Understanding the psychodynamics of madness is essential to the therapy of most patients, including those who are not diagnosed as mad in the literal sense. This volume draws on Freud, Jung, recent object relation and self psychologies, and, particularly, the work of Winnicott, Bion and Elkin. It describes and critiques the basic ideas on the dynamics of psychoses and provides a framework for interpretation.
-This book is a rich phenomenological and psychodynamic exploration of -the mad dimension of life-, a discussion which has both breadth and depth. Eigen must certainly rank...
Understanding the psychodynamics of madness is essential to the therapy of most patients, including those who are not diagnosed as mad in the literal ...
This is an astonishing and gripping psychoanalytic meditation on the collective psyche and the experiences of the recent traumatic past.
As always, Michael Eigen has an extraordinary ability to use language in a way that opens and deepens psychic reality. His form evokes what his theory proposes, the constant ebbing and flowing, opening and closing of our ability to stay in contact with that reality. He is a master of psychoanalytic theory who nonetheless brings us up constantly short in the face of what is shockingly raw and untheorizable in life. A master of the dialectic...
This is an astonishing and gripping psychoanalytic meditation on the collective psyche and the experiences of the recent traumatic past.
Many people seek help because they feel dragged down by a sense of inner deadness that persists in an otherwise full and meaningful life. These individuals somehow remain untouched by their own inner experiences; a deadness persists that can cripple their entire life or part of it. This book shows what is involved in enduring and working with psychic deadness in a day-to-day, session-by-session basis.
-Michael Eigen has time and time again drawn powerful and highly unique perspectives for us on fascinating and troubling clinical issues. In -Psychic Deadness-, he brings his exciting...
Many people seek help because they feel dragged down by a sense of inner deadness that persists in an otherwise full and meaningful life. These indivi...
This book is a transcription of a three-day, eighteen-hour seminar Michael Eigen gave in Seoul in 2009. It takes forward and complements the Seoul seminar in 2007 (Eigen in Seoul 1: Madness and Murder).
Eigen believes that -faith plays an important role in transformational processes in psychotherapy. I don't mean 'belief'. Belief may be a necessary part of the human condition but it tends to prematurely organize processes that remain unknown. For me, faith supports experimental exploration, imaginative conjecture, experiential probes. The more we explore therapy, the more...
This book is a transcription of a three-day, eighteen-hour seminar Michael Eigen gave in Seoul in 2009. It takes forward and complements the Seoul sem...
This book explores ways we make contact with the depths in ourselves and each other.
We are deeply moved by the contact we make with life, yet also puzzled by a need to break or lose contact, and often suffer wounds by the failure of that contact to be born. Our sense of contact is tenacious and fragile, subject to deformations, plagued with a sense of jeopardy.
In his new book, Michael Eigen focuses 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...
This book explores ways we make contact with the depths in ourselves and each other.
We are deeply moved by the contact we make with life,...
Totem conveys spirit, a sense of the sacred. Freud attempted to get under the totem and explore psychic forces and pressures below the surface. Jung opened further depths in exploration of the sacred. Engagement with a sense of mystery that permeates existence lives in many quarters, including art, music, religion and depth psychologies.
This book is an extended reverie, reflection, confession encounter with psychic reality, a profound intertwining of multiple dimensions of existence. Psychotherapy spans all dimensions of life, often drawing on capacities we did not know we had....
Totem conveys spirit, a sense of the sacred. Freud attempted to get under the totem and explore psychic forces and pressures below the surface. Jung o...
This book explores psychoanalytic faith and, more generally, the role of faith in the therapeutic process. In his earlier work, Eigen distinguished faith from beliefs used to organize it, the latter at once bringing people together and creating violent oppositions--belief as a defense against faith. In this new work, Eigen dives into faith experience itself and shares what he finds.
Faith spans many dimensions. The opening chapters focus on variations of faith, beginning with nature, sleep, beauty, goodness, the opening-closing of the human face, and the paradox of the growth of...
This book explores psychoanalytic faith and, more generally, the role of faith in the therapeutic process. In his earlier work, Eigen distinguished fa...