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.

1. 5/5

   Eigen takes us across and through

   Michael Eigen is a real favourite author, an eclectic jazzpianist of souls and psyches of sorts. I've read serveral of his books but rate this one to be among his stronger ones. Eigen shows us how destructiveness, evil and violence are always lurking in all of our respective psyches and illustrates some of the forms, warps and explosions that these forces manifest within and throughout our lives. By delving into such thematics, the book (like so many of all his other works) therefore breathes of the very character, courage and suffering needed, and always at play, when meeting with one's psyche, when confronting, dancing or wrestling with that evil and when coming through the very whirlwind - as Eigen surely would say - surviving oneself. Surviving each other. Surviving life itself, with all of its inbuilt psychic deadness. This book deals with psychic death using pairs such as emptiness/fullness rage/desperation/helplessnessunion/distinction and so on. A core feature theme of what I take from this book concerns primary process and affects. No amount of secondary process work in the world can help heal a primary process gone boozing. So to get there, we have to go there. And in doing that - anything can happen. In a way, that's what it's all about. With an apmlitude of clinical vignettes as well as slices of apt contemporary social critique (primarily of American politics), Eigen illuminates and ruminates (!) on psychic deadness and it's discontents from a multiplicity of theoretical and phenomenological angles: From Freud's deathdrive, Bions explosive oblivion, through Klein and infantile rage/jealousy and into Winnicott, and the power found in a mother/friend/partner who can hold and contain agression. Even though you are angry, I will still love you. Even you you have no trust to n me, I will have in you. People surviving people. Us surviving each other. Life surviving life. Psychic deadness is a book that gives the reader a real sense of what life can be about, for those who dare to sense. weep. Call out. For those who have the courage to seek to live freely, open souls and hearts towards one another. In Psychic Deadness Eigen has done it again; with great empathy toward the human predicament he helps us find that within us which has goodness and radiance while letting us see (and smell!) abysses of our own confusion were swimming in. For that lit up candle, I owe the biggest amount of respect and appreciation to Mr Michal Eigen. His music verberates in me for times to come. Hat off

   Martin

   06 december 2018