Psychic Deadness

Michael Eigen is a psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at New York University (adjunct), and a Senior Member of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. He is the author of a number of books, including 'Toxic Nourishment', 'The Psychoanalytic Mystic', 'Feeling Matters' and 'Flames from the Unconscious'.

'Michael Eigen has time and time again drawn powerful and highly unique perspectives for us on fascinating and troubling clinical issues. In Psychic Deadness, he brings his exciting vitality to bear on a clinical syndrome that has long eluded significant understanding and formulation - the phenomenon of being emotionally "dead". In elucidating this enigmatic, widespread entity he does "due diligence" to the works of a vast array of relevant contributors on the subject. His clinical examples, drawn as they are in such exquisite depth, reveal the tragic unaliveness of each patient with unforgettable poignancy. His depictions of his psychoanalytic resuscitation methods for treating them alone is worth more than the price of the book.'- James S. Grotstein'In Michael Eigen's remarkable new book, risks of tone and content in the writing are mirrored by risks of intuition and technique in the clinical encounter. No-one, perhaps since Ferenczi, has seen psychoanalysis as so essentially an experiment and therefore as something that, by definition, invites a wide range of response. Eigen's work is unusually open to the reactions of his readers, who are never indifferent to what he is doing. It is a paradox surely close to the heart of his work that he can make something so inspiring out of the ways in which we patch ourselves with deadness. Psychic Deadness will add immeasurably to Eigen's subtle, though not always acknowledged, influence on much of the most interesting contemporary psychoanalytic theory.'- Adam Phillips'This prolific writer offers us a stimulating, in-depth investigation of psychic deadness and demonstrates the way in which therapy can help the growth of psychic aliveness and achieve a balanced oscillation between these two states. Psychoanalysis is fortunate to have in its ranks a fine thinker who can vividly communicate through his writing (described by him as "one of my favorite torments") his passionate devotion to the study of the kaleidoscopic nature of human behaviour.'- Francesca Bion

• PART ONE: THEORETICAL SOUNDINGS, 1 Psychic Death, 2 The Destructive Force, 3 Goodness and Deadness, 4 Bion's No-thing, 5 Moral Violence. 6 Two Kinds of No-thing, 7 The Area of Freedom: The Point of No Compromise, PART TWO: CONICAL PROBES, 8 The Immoral Conscience, 9 The Counterpart, 10 Counterparts in a Couple, 11 From Attraction to Meditation, 12 Primary Process and Shock, 13 Being Too Good, 14 In Praise of Gender Uncertainty, 15 Emotional Starvation, 16 Disaster Anxiety, 17 Winning Lies, 18 Boa and Flowers, Epilogue, Credits, Index.