The Analyst and the Mystic

The Analyst and the Mystic
Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 96
Release: 1991
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0226422836

Kakar goes beyond the traditional psychoanalytic interpretation of Ramakrishna's mystical visions and practices. He clarifies their contribution to the psychic transformation of a mystic and offers fresh insight into the relation between sexuality and ecstatic mysticism. Through a comparison of the healing techniques of the mystical guru and those of the analyst, Kakar highlights the difference in their healing objectives and reveals the positive psychological aspects of the religious experience.

The Analyst and the Mystic

The Analyst and the Mystic
Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publisher: Prhi
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2007-03-05
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780143432890

The Centrepiece Of The Analyst And The Mystic Is The Absorbing Story Of The Nineteenth-Century Bengali Mystic And Hindu Saint Sri Ramakrishna. Using Ramakrishna S Life As A Case Study, Sudhir Kakar Discusses In Depth Three Interacting Factors That He Feels May Be Essential In The Making Of An Ecstatic Mystic: Particular Life Historical Experiences, The Presence Of A Specific Artistic Or Creative Gift, And A Facilitating Cultural Environment. Kakar Goes Beyond The Traditional Psychoanalytic Interpretation Of Ramakrishna S Mystical Visions And Practices. Going Beyond The Traditional Psychoanalytic Interpretation Of Ramakrishna S Mystical Visions And Practices, Kakar Clarifies Their Contribution To The Psychic Transformation Of A Mystic And Offers Fresh Insight Into The Relation Between Sexuality And Ecstatic Mysticism. Through A Comparison Of The Healing Techniques Of The Mystical Guru And Those Of The Analyst, Kakar Highlights The Difference In Their Healing Objectives And Reveals The Positive Psychological Aspects Of The Religious Experience.

Working with Mystical Experiences in Psychoanalysis

Working with Mystical Experiences in Psychoanalysis
Author: Leslie Stein
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429829663

A mystical experience, no matter what else, is a subjective occurrence in the psyche. However, when it appears in the psychoanalytic consulting room, its origin, content, and meaning are unknowable. Yet it is there in the room, and it must be addressed. It is not a minor illusion but rather one that requires attention as its occurrence may lead to a profound alteration of consciousness and, as Carl Jung suggests, a cure for neurosis. Leslie Stein interviewed twenty-nine mystics in order to understand the origin, progression, phasing, emotions, and individual variations of a mystical experience in order to make sense of how it should be addressed, the appropriate analytic attitude in the face of a mystery, the way to work with its content, and its psychological meaning. In doing so, he uncovered that there may be specific development markers that create a proclivity to be receptive to such an experience that has clinical significance for psychoanalysis.

The Psychoanalytic Mystic

The Psychoanalytic Mystic
Author: Michael Eigen
Publisher: Free Publishing Limited
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1998
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781853433986

Most psychoanalysts tend to be anti-mystical or , at least, non-mystical. Psychoanalysis is allied with science and, if anything, is capable of deconstructing mystical experience. Yet some psychoanalysts tend to be mystical or make use of the mystical experience as an intuitive model for psychoanalysis. Indeed, the greatest split in the psychodynamic movement, between Freud and Jung, partly hinged on the way in which mystical experience was to be understood. Michael Eigen has often advocated and encouraged a return to the spiritual in psychoannalysis-what Freud called the oceanic feeling. Here he expands on his call to celebrate and explore the meaning of mystical experience within psychoanalysis, illustrating his writing with the work of Bion, Milner, and Winncott. Like Bion, he explicitly relates psychoanalysis to faith. Both patient and analyst are immersed in each other and this immersion restores and enriches, and drains. Each has the chance to use their minds and feelings creatively. Each has to hold faith that something good will come of their work together. Professor Eigen, who received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the Graduate Faculty in 1974, has maintained this passion through a career that includes nineteen books, hundreds of journal papers, and forty years of work in clinical psychology. He is currently Associate Clinical Professor in NYU's Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and also a training and control analyst at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP) where he has served on the Board of Directors.

Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors

Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors
Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2013-04-03
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0307831795

Shamans, Mystics and Doctors is a detailed and thoroughly fascinating account of the many ways in which the ancient healing traditions of India—embodied in the rituals of shamans, the teachings of gurus and the precepts of the school of medicine known as Ayurveda—diagnose and treat emotional disorder. Drawing on three years of intensive fieldwork and his own psychoanalytic training and experience, Sudhir Kakar takes us into a world of Islamic mosques and Hindu temples, of assembled multitudes, and dingy, out-of-the-way consultation rooms… a world where patients and healers blame evil spirits for emotional disturbances… where dreams and symptoms that would be familiar to Freud are interpreted in terms of a myriad of deities and legends… where trance-like “dissociation states” are induced to bring out and resolve the conflicts of repressed anger, lust and envy… where proper grooming, diet, exercise and conduct are (and have been for centuries) seen as essential to the preservation of a healthy mind and body. As he witnesses the practitioners and their patients, as he elucidates the therapeutic systems on which their encounters are based, as he contrasts his own Western training and biases with evidence of his eyes (and the sympathies of his heart), Kakar reveals the universal concerns of these individuals and their admittedly foreign cultures—people we can recognize and feel for, people (like their Western counterparts) trying to find some balance between the pressures and rewards of the external world and the fantasies and desires of the internal. This is a major work of cultural interpretation, a book that challenges (and should enhance) our understanding of therapy, mental health and individual freedom.

Mad and Divine

Mad and Divine
Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2009-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0226422879

Sudhir Kakar, India’s foremost practitioner of psychoanalysis, has focused his career on infusing this preeminently Western discipline with ideas and views from the East. In Mad and Divine, he takes on the separation of the spirit and the body favored by psychoanalysts, cautioning that a single-minded focus on the physical denies a person’s wholeness. Similarly, Kakar argues, to focus on the spirit alone is to hold in contempt the body that makes us human. Mad and Divine looks at the interplay between spirit and psyche and the moments of creativity and transformation that occur when the spirit overcomes desire and narcissism. Kakar examines this relationship in religious rituals and healing traditions— both Eastern and Western—as well as in the lives of some extraordinary men: the mystic and guru Rajneesh, Gandhi, and the Buddhist saint Drukpa Kunley. Enriched with a novelist’s felicity of language and an analyst’s piercing insights and startling interpretations, Mad and Divine is a valuable addition to the literature on the integration of the spirit and psyche in the evolving psychology of the individual.

Shamans, Mystics and Doctors

Shamans, Mystics and Doctors
Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 1991
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0226422798

Sudhir Kakar, a psychoanalyst and scholar, brilliantly illuminates the ancient healing traditions of India embodied in the rituals of shamans, the teachings of gurus, and the precepts of the school of medicine known as Ayurveda. "With extraordinary sympathy, open-mindedness, and insight Sudhir Kakar has drawn from both his Eastern and Western backgrounds to show how the gulf that divides native healer from Western psychiatrist can be spanned."—Rosemary Dinnage, New York Review of Books "Each chapter describes the geographical and cultural context within which the healers work, their unique approach to healing mental illness, and . . . the philosophical and religious underpinnings of their theories compared with psychoanalytical theory."—Choice

Mysticism

Mysticism
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2021-09-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004494723

Although very different, and coming from a range of academic backgrounds, the contributors are nevertheless united in their attempts to understand more about mysticism, from a perspective that puts the human being in the center.

Psychoanalysis, Mysticism and the Problem of Epistemology

Psychoanalysis, Mysticism and the Problem of Epistemology
Author: Alice Bar Nes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000435768

This book presents key psychoanalytic theories from a fresh perspective: that of the mystical element. The author explores the depth-structure of central assumptions in psychoanalytic theory to uncover the mystical core of conventional analytic thinking. Exploring authors from Freud and Ferenczi, through Bion and Winnicott, to contemporary voices such as Ogden, Bollas and Eigen, the book shows that psychoanalysis has always operated on the assumption of psychic overlap, a "soul-to-soul" contact, between patient and analyst. Surprisingly, the book shows how this "magical" facet goes hand in hand with a pragmatic worldview that explores the epistemological complexities of psychoanalysis in search of a way to join the subjective, even the mystical, with the practical aim of serving as a validated mental health discipline. This is accomplished through an interdisciplinary and intertextual encounter between psychoanalysis and the innovative pairing of William James’ pragmatic philosophy and Martin Buber’s dialogic thought. The author's paradoxical stance surrounding the nature and role of psychoanalysis and its mystical facet resonate the great challenge embedded in Winnicott's insistence on tolerating paradox and Bion's demand to respect all parts of the (psychoanalytic) truth, in this case, the practical and mundane alongside the mystical and magical. The book’s broad, interdisciplinary outlook will captivate both psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic therapists as well as scholars of philosophy.

Reimagining God and Religion

Reimagining God and Religion
Author: Jerry R. Wright
Publisher: Chiron Publications
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2018-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1630514977

With the necessary demise and death of antique cosmologies and traditional religious paradigms dependent on external deities and devils, the modern religious challenge involves two simultaneous sacred endeavors: to eulogize, bury, and grieve the theistic and monotheistic god-images and the religions dependent on them; and, secondly, to bring fresh imagination to the meanings of god and religion, which will satisfy both the modern mind and ancient soul. Drawing on the insights of Jungian or analytical psychology, Dr. Wright offers depth psychological analysis of our contemporary religious and political dilemmas, as well as invites readers to be midwives for the emerging religious myth that many believe to be on our collective horizon -- a myth that will be more inclusive, intellectually and scientifically honest, and soul satisfying. The invitation is made urgent by his psychological conclusion: As long as our deities and devils are perceived to be beyond the physical domain and outside the human psyche, our species will continue to do great harm to each other and to our global nest. Combining personal testament and psychological commentary, the author explores heretofore taboo topics and reframes many traditional theological and Christological dogmas, making them more relevant to religious and non-religious alike. Jerry R. Wright, D.Min is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Flat Rock, North Carolina, and a training analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. An experienced conference and retreat leader, he has led pilgrimages to sacred sites in Iona, Scotland, Ireland, Peru, and India. Reimagining God and Religion continues his primary interest in bringing the insights of Jungian or analytical psychology to experiences deemed religious or spiritual. This interest inspired Dr. Wright’s doctoral dissertation, Symbols for the Christ in the Gospel of John and the Archetypal Self in the Psychology of C.G. Jung, and his Jungian thesis, Archetypal Thin Places: Experiencing The Numinosum.