Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis

154 Pages·2012·0.64 MB·English

by  Michael Eigen

CHAPTERTITLE I
KABBALAH AND
PSYCHOANALYSIS

KABBALAH AND
PSYCHOANALYSIS
Michael Eigen
First published in 2012 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2012 to Michael Eigen.
The right of Michael Eigen to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78049 080 9
Edited, designed and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd
www.publishingservicesuk.co.uk
e-mail: [email protected]
Printed in Great Britain
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CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR vii
PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION ix
CHAPTER ONE 1
CHAPTER TWO 39
Appendix 1: Ein Sofand the Sephirot (Tree of Life) 79
Appendix 2: Four worlds 93
Appendix 3: Circle and rays 97
Appendix 4: O-grams 101
Appendix 5: Bion’s Grid 107
Appendix 6: Bion quotes 115
Appendix 7: Rabbi Nachman’s paths 125
Appendix 8: Selected readings 129
REFERENCES 133
INDEX 137
v
I use the Kabbalah as a framework for psychoanalysis.
(W. R. Bion)
To tear even three letters from a page of Torah, put them in your
mouth and taste, your tongue will burn like the child Moses with a
holy fire that never goes out. The fire that never goes out meets the
wound that never heals.
(Michael Eigen)
Weeping is lodged in one side of my heart, and joy is lodged in the
other.
(The Zohar)
I go out to seek You and find You coming towards me.
(Yehudah Halevi)
Nothing is more whole than a broken heart.
(Rabbi Nachman)
There is something about going into the depths, and even further,
beyond what we think the depths can be.
(Merle Molofsky)
My cup runneth over.
(Psalm 23)
Open heart, mind breathes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Eigen worked with disturbed, especially psychotic, children
in his twenties, then with adults in his thirties onwards. He directed
an institute program for working with creative individuals at the
Center for Psychoanalytic Training and was the first Director of
Educational Training at the Institute for Expressive Analysis. He was
on the Board of Directors at the National Psychological Association
for Psychoanalysis for eight years, first as Program Chair, then editor
of The Psychoanalytic Review. He taught at many institutes and colleges
and gave talks and seminars internationally. For the past twenty years
he has taught and supervised mainly at the National Psychological
Association for Psychoanalysis and the New York University
Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He has
given private seminars on Winnicott, Bion, Lacan and his own work,
over thirty-five years and still ongoing. Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis is
his twenty-first book. It is based on recent seminars given for the New
York University Contemplative Studies Project.
vii
To
Shirah Kober Zeller and Jerry Zeller
Vision and support
Preface and Introduction
This book grew out of two seminars on Kabbalah and psychoanalysis
given for the New York University Postdoctoral Contemplative
Studies Project (10 October 2010 and 3 April 2011) at the suggestion of
Dr James Ogilvie. Daniel Wentworth transcribed the tapes of these
seminars. I have added some new material without disturbing the
flow of the seminar as it happened. The Appendices stand as a little
book in itself. I think of how enthralled I was with the appendix to
Marion Milner’s On Not Being Able to Paint, which opens dimensions
only hinted at in the text. That remains as a background model for the
importance of what is added on.
Part of the impetus for this work, although I did not suspect it
then, was a spontaneous interchange I had with Wilfred R. Bion in
1978, the year before he died. We were speaking, and out of the blue
he asked, “Do you know the Kabbalah, the Zohar?” As far as I was
aware, there was no preparation for this remark. He just said it. I was
a bit taken aback and said, “Well, I know it, but don’t really knowit.”
I read bits of Kabbalah since my early twenties and, without conscious
awareness, it was part of my lived background from early childhood.
I was in my early forties when I met Bion. He quickly said, “I don’t
either, really know it,” modestly reassuring me. It was established that
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