A Felt Sense: More Explorations of Psychoanalysis and Kabbalah
What a treat to read Eigen on psychoanalysis and Kabbalah. This is a work that opens us as we open to it. It speaks of many things we do not ordinarily have words for and in so doing enriches, deepens, and connects us to the mysteries of our own lives."Every generation finds its language to refresh the faith that makes it possible to open the heart to the other, to the infinite beyond the impoverished smallness of mind of the grey everyday life filled with unsolved tensions and closed contrasts. The more I am exposed to the unique outlook of Michael Eigen concerning the sources of psychoanalysis and Judaism, and to the special way in which he expresses his ideas, I sense that Eigen is not only a sensitive psychoanalyst with immense knowledge, but that he is also endowed with an exceptional capacity to gently unravel complicated language-connections in order to open through it a peeping hole to the unified wonderful mystery, a mystery that encompasses even the daily moments heaped with these frustrating frictions and contrasts."Michael Eigen works and writes brilliantly along the boundary between psychoanalysis and mysticism, showing us how such things as an intuition of the infinite, faith in the unknown, and the experience of rupture and connection, identity and difference, and words and silence play critical roles in both the practice of Kabbalah and the process of psychotherapy. Eigen moves seamlessly across the borders of various psychoanalytic schools, embracing them, as well as the wisdom of multiple religious traditions, with the love and patience that he brings to the psychoanalytic encounter. He engages the Zohar in the same manner, patiently allowing its words to play on his and our psyches in new and creative ways. In the process, Eigen demonstrates how depth psychology and the Kabbalah are keys to entering into each other’s mysteries.