- Thread starter Daniel E.
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"When I was a little boy I remember seeing a tree. Half of it was withered and dead and the other half was blooming. Then I realized that one could be dead and very much alive, concurrently. We are not monolithic, and can experience vitality and life on certain levels and on others total deadness."
"With Bion I felt a deeper sense of – what to call it? An unpopular word now – essence. Essence to essence in the passing moment. I felt he somehow found me."
"One moment can help things. It’s not just a matter of reliving lost or dead parts. More like something happened, something changed, opened. Something totally new was going on within me. It was like an intuition, a birth of intuition, vision, a taste bud talking to you. Freud calls the dream ‘the other space.’ Sometimes I feel it as a talking from the heart, from another space within you. It is like a trance of reaching out of yourself. "
“At the beginning I didn’t know that therapy deals with unsolvable fracture. When I began practicing I thought it could be mended. Today I understand that it cannot. You can try to soften the rupture. Actually, I don’t believe in therapy. Therapy is a path, a dedication, a search.”
"Sometimes we hide ourselves to survive. To make pain go away we simply make ourselves go away, and that is how madness is created. Freud teaches that trauma is overwhelming, like a baby after screaming out of hunger, that unknowingly sinks, falls asleep, ‘loses consciousness.’ We also do the same, as adults. But we always return and always survive."
from Therapist from the Depths: A Conversation with Michael Eigen
"With Bion I felt a deeper sense of – what to call it? An unpopular word now – essence. Essence to essence in the passing moment. I felt he somehow found me."
"One moment can help things. It’s not just a matter of reliving lost or dead parts. More like something happened, something changed, opened. Something totally new was going on within me. It was like an intuition, a birth of intuition, vision, a taste bud talking to you. Freud calls the dream ‘the other space.’ Sometimes I feel it as a talking from the heart, from another space within you. It is like a trance of reaching out of yourself. "
“At the beginning I didn’t know that therapy deals with unsolvable fracture. When I began practicing I thought it could be mended. Today I understand that it cannot. You can try to soften the rupture. Actually, I don’t believe in therapy. Therapy is a path, a dedication, a search.”
"Sometimes we hide ourselves to survive. To make pain go away we simply make ourselves go away, and that is how madness is created. Freud teaches that trauma is overwhelming, like a baby after screaming out of hunger, that unknowingly sinks, falls asleep, ‘loses consciousness.’ We also do the same, as adults. But we always return and always survive."
from Therapist from the Depths: A Conversation with Michael Eigen
“One of the great secrets of trauma is that it trades in radiance. Not simply that radiance and black hole mirror, filter, mix with each other, which they do. Pain and something beatific inextricably fuse, creating a more intense, endurable bond than either alone. One becomes bonded to one’s own deranged structures, self as one knows it, as well as to warps of others… Freud recognized a certain helplessness in the face of a destructive force he could not fathom. Blake recognized Satan’s radiance. There are heavenly and hellish ecstasies and everything in between. Radiance is not limited to goodness. Demonic glows captivate, enthrall.”
~ Emotional Storm (2005)
~ Emotional Storm (2005)
"The world has and will outlast all of us. It is still going after atom bomb blasts that should not have happened. There have been worse times in history, yet I am not sure I have ever lived through a crazier moment of abrasive fragility. Tension between self-hate and self-love is increasing. Some feel it intensely. In others it works invisibly or, as Freud suggested, through disguises, causing much damage in so many. We are more than compliant–defiant beings. Can we, little by little, discover ways to offset self-hate with deeper love? I do not mean the self-love of egomania, which tramples others and damages oneself as well. There is another love, deeper love that helps, or tries to. We have a deep need—but I can’t quite say what it is. Faith is part of it, but it is much more."
~ The Challenge of Being Human (2018)
~ The Challenge of Being Human (2018)
This is a recording of an April 11, 2021 talk by Michael Eigen on “Rebirth: It’s Been Around A Long Time,” followed by commentary from Loray Daws and Keri Cohen. Dr. Eigen is a psychoanalyst who, among other things, incorporates various religious traditions into psychoanalysis.
He is highly esteemed by prominent psychoanalysts. Adam Phillips says Eigen has a “new kind of moral seriousness.” Christopher Bollas says that Eigen’s work is “literature for the ages.” Jessica Benjamin describes Eigen as “a person of rare wisdom, courage, and heart who has the “mind of a brilliantly creative thinker.” Commentators Loray Daws and Keri Cohen are both experts on Eigen’s writings. Clinical Psychologist Daws has edited two books on Eigen’s writings and is senior faculty member at the International Masterson Institute. Social worker Cohen is a co-moderator of the international online Studying Eigen group. She has attended Michael Eigen’s Bion seminars for fifteen years.
The full essay on “Rebirth…” appears in Healing, Rebirth and the Work of Michael Eigen edited by Ken Fuchsman and Keri Cohen and published by Routledge in March 2021.
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