Feeling Matters
Each of the patients described in Feeling Matters exemplifies a major dilema for even the most experienced psychoanalyst.  This book allows the reader to see a dilemma dthrough the eyes of a master and also to arrive at this or her own creative response.  Feeling Matters is a gripping work of psychoanalytic art spanning the breadth of our field.  We venture inside Eigen as he struggles to find and stay with his patients.  These are riveting accounts of work with patients who defy every attempt to "treat" them and insist on being encountered raw.“Michael Eigen’s latest work reads like a gripping existential novel were it not for its sound psychoanalytic moorings. The title of the book expresses the theme with stark poetic compression: ‘Feeling (the verb) Matters.’ We have come to realize that feelings (as a noun) matter, but Eigen takes a dramatic step further by asking us to take the risk of uniting the verb feeling with our sense of personal agency. He further reveals the theme of his book with another example of poetic compression: ‘To try to sustain the growth of psychic taste buds…’. This is an extraordinary and extraordinarily moving archive of how we lead our daily lives as derelict non-feelers—with a reminder of what we are ever missing. I highly recommend this work for all mental health professionals and for the lay public as well.”“A gripping work of psychoanalytic art encompassing the breadth of life for those touched by our field. We venture inside Eigen as he struggles to find and stay with his patients. He teps deep into the primal layers beneath everyday events and onnocuous words. These are riveting accounts of work with patients who defy every attempt to ‘treat’ them and insist on being encountered raw.”“In an era when emotional processing and affective expression is either trivialized or comodified, Michael Eigen gives passionate voice to the need to grapple with psychic reality. A poet and psychoanalytic visionary, Eigen presents a humanistic, spiritual, and ethical conception of psychotherapy that refuses to ignore the dark side, but rather recognizes that suffering and even agony must be borne, and destructiveness faced head on, to enable development and growth in the individual and society.”“Michael Eigen is a living national treasure of psychoanalysis. His words have the fire and intensity of the Old Testament but his wisdom is ageless and of our time. Feeling Matters is a declaration of our common humanity written by an uncommonly human psychotherapist. It is a gift for all who read it.”