1st Edition
Primary Process Impacts and Dreaming the Undreamable Object in the Work of Michael Eigen Becoming the Welcoming Object
Primary Process Impacts and Dreaming the Undreamable Object in the Work of Michael Eigen examines Eigen’s rich phenomenological work on becoming a welcoming object.
The contributors to this collection explore the core theme with reference to key Eigen works including Feeling Matters and Contact with the Depths. As a primary process psychoanalyst, Eigen’s writing reflects a unique rhythm of faith that is able to "revivify" union-distinction body-affect-thinking potentialities within a creative psychoanalytic dyad. In this book, alongside its companion volume, Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen, contemporary Eigen readers and writers articulate the various welcoming processes and attitudes needed to cultivate a "Hearing Heart," a central ingredient in reaching and touching those parts of self-deemed unwanted, unwelcomed, and even traumatized. Primary Process Impacts and Dreaming the Undreamable Object in the Work of Michael Eigen represents a wide range of psychoanalytic perspectives, and the chapters describe the genius of Eigen as well as contribute their own clinical and academic acumen.
Presenting a key aspect of Michael Eigen's transformational aesthetic, this book will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and all those with an interest in psychoanalytic and spiritual psychology.
Acknowledgments
About the Editors and Contributors
Introduction
Foreword
1. Becoming a Welcoming Object: Personal Notes on Michael Eigen’s Impact
Jeffrey L. Eaton
2. The “Hearing Heart” and the Vanishing Scream of Being
Ofra Eshel
3. Welcoming Suchness
Jeffrey L. Eaton
4. The Join and Distinction-Union: A Resonant and Complex Oneness
Adam Shechter
5. Nomad to No-Mad – Welcoming the Psychotic Core: The Primary Process Psychoanalysis of Michael Eigen
Loray Daws
6. The Welcomed Object
Alitta Kullman
7. Welcoming Dreams
Willow Pearson Trimbach
8. Ah, Strawberries!
Shalini Masih
9. Welcoming the Eye/I of the Storm: A Homecoming Story
Epsita Sandhu
10. Listening in with Michael Eigen
Isolde Keilhofer
11. Faces of the Welcoming Object: Musings on Midlife, Madness, and Mysticism -Welcoming and Being Welcomed
Marian Campbell
12. Music as Dreaming: Welcoming Absence through Music
Stephen Bloch
13. Moving to Inner Lights
Ebru Salman
14. Seer, Mystic, Sage: Luminous Presence in the Work of Michael Eigen
Paul DeBlassie
Air Currents by Rachel Berghash
Biography
Loray Daws is a registered Clinical Psychologist in South Africa and British Columbia, Canada. He is currently in private practice and is a senior faculty member at the International Masterson Institute in New York, USA.
Keri S. Cohen is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a Board-Certified Diplomate in clinical social work. She is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Pennsylvania, USA.
"Meaning in Eigen's works always reflects the readers' efforts as much as they do Eigen's. In this book, Eigen's experts creatively discuss Eigen's texts on primary process impacts and dreaming. What a life project these authors imagine – one that encourages us to grow the capacity to open up and welcome any experience, including catastrophic ones. Irrespective of your analytic school, this book will profoundly influence your understanding of patients because it articulates the most thorny dimensions of human existence – the scream inside, the catastrophic change, the primary emotional storm, vulnerability, and permeability." - Professor Aner Govrin, The Program for Hermeneutics & Cultural Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
“This unique book Primary Process Impact and Dreaming the Undreamable Object in the Work of Michael Eigen edited in a highly committed way by Loray Daws and Keri Cohen, promises readers an extraordinary journey in which, chapter by chapter, fourteen authors, in a conversational style, share the inspirational work of Michael Eigen in both, clinically and personally. They also present sparkling and original ideas that show the creative internal dialogue that every author holds with Michael; in doing it, at every turn of the page, the reader will find infinite emotional experiences.” - Jani Santamaria, child and adult psychoanalyst, Mexican Psychoanalytic Association
This volume emerges as a breath of fresh air. Inspired by the work of Micheal Eigen, his many compatriots of writers, poets, and clinicians have recast the very nature of psychoanalysis, from one that was obsessively preoccupied with identifying and managing patient pathology, to the sublime study of what it means to become a vessel for healing, promoting health through the concept of the “Welcoming Object.” This immensely readable volume frees the practitioner from the repressive constructs of traditional psychoanalytic dogma to a new frontier of relational therapeutic encounter. Both building on and casting off the traditions psychoanalytic reasoning, this volume introduces us to a completely revolutionary paradigm that reformulates the concepts of transference, resistance, dream analysis, and relational encounter. This reformulation represents a much-needed refocusing of psychoanalytic theorizing and clinical application, creating a refreshing, humanely descriptive language to psychoanalytic rhetoric, that will no doubt define what psychoanalysis will look like in the years ahead. These many outstanding contributors are a testament to Michael Eigen’s growing legacy, replete with insight, passion, and the true poetic, and even mystical nature of psychoanalytic discourse. To that end, this enlightening volume’s central motif will, as Freud’s work once did, inspire generations of psychoanalysts that are to follow. Anyone interested in the deep study and advancement of the field as well as their practice, owes it to themselves to read this essential book. - Jack Schwartz, PsyD, NCPsyA, Faculty Member, Training and Supervising Analyst, The New Jersy Institute for Training in Psychoanalysis and Object Relations Institute, NYC
