Exploring the Work of Michael Eigen : Primary Process Impacts, Dreaming the Undreamable Object, Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds

These books explore key aspects and themes present in the work of Michael Eigen.

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. As primary process psychoanalyst, Eigen’s writing reflects a unique rhythm of faith able to 'revivify' union-distinction body-affect-thinking potentialities within a creative psychoanalytic dyad. In this book 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.

Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen examines Eigen’s rich phenomenological work on the Obstructive Object. This volume elaborates on the Obstructive Object through essays and poems that include poignant clinical examples, the impact of exceptionally traumatized patients on their analysts, literature comparisons, and the more ‘mystical aspect’ of Eigen’s influence on working with the obstructive object. Essays draw from Virginia Woolf, Elena Ferrante, Wilfred Bion, D.W. Winnicott, Andrè Greene, Christopher Bollas, and Adam Phillips, among many others, in exploring injury-rage, unwanted patients, psychoanalytic faith, toxic nourishment, and damaged bonds.

These books will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and all those with an interest in psychoanalytic and spiritual psychology.

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.

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.