Psychotic Core

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'.

'This book is a rich phenomenological and psychodynamic exploration of "the mad dimension of life", a discussion which has both breadth and depth. Eigen must certainly rank amongst the foremost of contemporary analytic therapists and theorists who are making significant steps in furthering our understanding of madness. Any clinician who has ever attempted to understand the thoughts and experiences of psychotic patients will find much that is illuminating and well described in this book.'- Phil Mollon in British Journal of Psychiatry'An extraordinary book. Reading The Psychotic Core not only becomes an excursion through the (universal) elements of psychosis, but evolves into an encounter with the psychotic process itself. Eigen is, however, fundamentally a psychoanalyst in his approach and method, and his analytic view constitutes both a framework for interpretation and a mode of knowing. By listening to psychosis, by understanding its presence, by looking at (and interpreting) its symbolizations, we enhance our knowledge of what it means to live in a historical project that finds itself affected by periodic eruptions of a cultural and political madness.'- James M. Glass in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease'The Psychotic Core is one of the finest treatises I have ever read on the subject. It is solidly clinical and pragmatic on one hand, and yet it is a piece of exquisite, artistic phenomenology on the other. Eigen's concept of madness elegantly spans what we ordinarily mean by borderline states as well as the formal psychotic states. The work is a very creatively integrative one. The pigments on his palette include Freud, Jung, Bion, Winnicott, and many others.'- James Grotstein in Psychotherapy & Social Science Review

• Preface -- The Core of Psychosis -- Hallucination -- Mindlessness -- Boundaries -- Hate -- Epistemology and Reversal -- Schreber and Rena -- The Psychotic Self -- Epilogue