A Michael Eigen Companion: Moments of Wisdom from a Psychoanalytic Mystic

A Michael Eigen Companion offers 150 essential quotes, carefully selected from Michael Eigen's books, alongside explorative commentary. An expert on the work of Eigen, Bagai’s curated quotes are accompanied by commentary on particular topics to highlight their spiritual and psychoanalytic aspects. The excerpts offer moments of psychological and spiritual wisdom— gateways for quiet reflection and contemplation. Eigen's ecumenical theoretical approach fosters a humane and relational clinical attitude founded upon respectful care for wounded souls and their capacity for emotional growth and aliveness, even within the depths of psychic injury and despair. Bringing together quotes from Eigen’s published work, interviews and talks, this book provides a distilled guide to his voluminous oeuvre. At the confluence of psychoanalysis, spirituality, and psychology, A Michael Eigen Companion will be indispensable for readers from a wide range of psychoanalytic and spiritual backgrounds. It will also appeal to students of literature and philosophy, Jungians and Buddhists, as well as seekers of psychological and emotional wisdom.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Ebru Salman Preface and Acknowledgments Credits Introduction Selected Quotes and Commentary Holiness Beauty and Ethics Wonder, Awe and Not-Knowing Ethics of the Unknown Sensitivity and Ethics Wordless Immensity Awesome Living Being Knowledge and Being A Circle We Must Live With The Brain and Experience Evolution of Experience Health and Suffering Mastery and Mystery Horizon of Humility Our Mad Psyche Absolute States and Possessiveness Mutual Correctiveness A Mix of Infinities Psychic Binocularity On Hierarchy On Self-Destruction Can Life Survive Itself? Destructiveness Itself Creative Murder Psychic Destruction as Freeing Realness and Mystery Feeling Normal, Feeling Alive Beyond Reparation Actual and Ideal Satisfaction Music Wordlessness in Psychotherapy Psychotherapy as Letting Be Staying in Therapy Struggle Lie and Truth Emotional Experience Impact of Reality Medication Openness Within Closed Depths Sensing Instinct and Spirit The Fire that Never Goes Out Tolerating Frustration Insoluble Conflicts Disproportion with Ourselves How Does Change Happen? Psychological Amphibians Surviving Psyche's Pressures Full and Empty Artists of the Invisible Faith and Belief An Intimate Presence Ein Soph Within Inside Eyes Letting Emotion Speak Evocation of Meaning Inner Scream What Can We Give? Faith as Opening Psychoanalytic Intuition Infinity, Invisibility, and Experiencing Exploitation of Emotional Capacity Emotional Anorexia Assimilating Our Products Distinction-Union More Distinction-Union Mystical Distinction-Union Like Saint Augustine You Can't Literalize the Psyche Confucius and Compassion Surviving Aliveness Tool-Making and Reversal Psyche Never Stops Your First Patient A Root Sense Partners in Evolution Many Species Making Room for Experiencing "Have to" Thinking It Feels Right Blurring Complexity Chanting "I Don't Know" Psychosis and Creativity Knowing One Another Limits of Understanding The Beauty of Therapy Therapy for the Human Race Knowing and Not Knowing Practicing I Don't Know Unknown Intimacies Clinical Not Knowing Unsolvable Problems Words Touching Wordless Confessing Ignorance Unsolvable Difficulties Hatred in Response to Deficit Murder as Delaying Tactic Boundless Presence Inside Aloneness Love of the Invisible Beginning Never Stops Opening Doors Relief in Not Knowing Aliveness and Deadness Primary Process and Psychic Digestion Survival Needs and Integrity Psychic Infancy Reconciling Languages Real Water Imaginal Capacity Trying To Do Better Wholeness and Humility Transformational Processes Trauma Worlds and Sensitivity Sensing as Multidimensional St. Paul and Freud Substituting Pleasure for Pain Quality of Unconscious Life Modifying Winnicott's Use of Object Fighting Over Differences Waiting Building Tolerance and Deflecting Experience Making Room for Insufficiency Speaking and Breathing Creative Waiting Am I Alive Now? Smile and Scream Uneven Evolution Excitatory Powers Control and Impulse Faith and Catastrophe Faith and Destruction: Both are Deeper Toward Dreaming's Reach Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis Light and Faith Invagination Shame and Grandiosity Support for Dreaming Object Seeking and Projective Identification Our Drive for Psychophysical Nourishment Intolerant Object and Murderous Superego Sparks What is Faith? Therapy and Uncertainty Stainless Light and Stain of Life Frustration Modification and Evasion Hallucinatory Murder Quality of Life Common Sense and Visions of the Ideal Self as Family Wars Within and Without A Deeper Love

About the Author :
Robin Bagai, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist in Portland, Oregon, who has been practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapy for over 35 years. His book Commentaries on the Work of Michael Eigen (Routledge), adds to his publications in journals and anthologies. Dr. Bagai has been leading in-person and international seminars on over a dozen of Michael Eigen’s books since 2014.

Review :
“I am grateful Robin Bagai is sharing aspects of my work touching moments of feeling and reverie that enrich and nourish. His selections increase appreciation of our multi-dimensional existence and deepen a sense of being. Say hello to new and old experiential possibilities and the wonder and care they inspire.” —Michael Eigen, Ph.D., author of The Challenge of Being human and Contact with the Depths “Robin Bagai offers a luminous tribute to Michael Eigen. He has carefully and lovingly curated a treasure trove of quotes that throb with feeling, depth, aliveness and Eigen's timeless wisdom. A book to savor, return to, and be transformed by.” —Shalini Masih, United Kingdom, Psychotherapist and Author, Psychoanalytic Conversations with States of Spirit Possession: Beauty in Brokenness “Robin Bagai has accomplished an impossible feat, hand-selecting some of Eigen’s most memorable quotes, a creative task in itself. The book reads like mantras, each to be meditated upon, opening up new spheres of experience.” —Joon ho Lee, Korean translator for Michael Eigen’s Seminars in Seoul 1,2,3, and Director of the Korean Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis “I suppose that all endorsements I could be able to dedicate to "my good old Mike", a real friend in real psycho-analysis, would be too little to make justice to his larger-than-life dedication to approach truth, in his unique way. I suppose that Eigen's mode is a kind of psycho-analytic heredity, whose DNA is a mixture of Freud's unprejudiced truthfulness, Bion's unconditioned ability to face the unknown, and Winnicott's kindness, which enabled Eigen to get into the realm of the human unconscious. But Eigen is unique: not for a mere coincidence, he is one of the few people who lives up to his own family name. One may coin the neologism, "Eigen-ness", to describe Mike Eigen's inimitable "Eigentlich", in a resort to the German language that has the meaning of reality or truth. If I would ever be condemned to be exiled to a solitary island, and could take with me just one scientific definition from the many treasures one may find in Eigen's encyclopedic work, I would choose his differentiation of belief from faith, given in a lecture at Seoul.” —Paulo Cesar Sandler, MD, MSci, Brazil “In this Eigen Companion, Robin Bagai enlivens what companioning could mean in many of Michael Eigen's works: honoring the spirit, listening to the heart, bearing witness by walking alongside, cultivating stillness, discovering the gift of sacred silence, and partnering disorder, if not fertile confusion. Eigen's mystical clinical-theoretical touch is artfully illuminated through Bagai’s psychoanalytic vision.” —Loray Daws, Ph.D., D.Psa, Psychoanalyst and Clinical Psychologist “Robin Bagai provides us a gift with this stimulating compendium of Michael Eigen's psychoanalytic insights. Moments that touch spirit and soul from quotes that both edify and enlighten.” —Ofra Eshel, faculty, training and supervising analyst, Israel Psychoanalytic Society; author, The Emergence of Analytic Oneness: Into the Heart of Psychoanalysis “What a delight it is to meander through the fertile garden of Mike Eigen's enduring and generous testimony to the richness of analytic and lived experience as opened up by the many vivid selections in this book.” —Jeffrey Eaton, psychoanalyst and author of A Fruitful Harvest: Essays after Bion “Robin Bagai's book is an invitation to know Michael Eigen's work more intimately. It sheds light on Eigen's insights into the conditions, conflicts and inexplicable mystery of being human. And much like Eigen himself, Bagai's book is a wonderful friend and a fantastic teacher.” —Selma Duckler, Honorary Member of The American Psychoanalytic Association “Through 'Wisdom Moments' Robin Bagai takes the reader on a mystic path along the shadow lines of the human mind to come out eager and in love with Eigen's oeuvre and psychoanalysis.” —Shifa Haq, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Assistant Professor, Ambedkar University Delhi. Author of In Search of Return— Mourning the Disappearances in Kashmir “In this book Robin Bagai brings together 150 quotations that have accompanied the prolific psychoanalyst Michael Eigen in and out of the consulting room. Displaying knowledge, respect, and affection for Eigen, he transports us with gentleness and fearlessness into the depths of Eigen's work. The result is a unique collection in which each quote has a life of its own; the author turns the reading into an eloquent transformative experience. This book is an extraordinary contribution to the great themes of contemporary psychoanalysis.” —Jani Santamaría, PhD, co-editor of The Bion Seminars at the A-Santamaría Association and editor of Bion, Dreamwork and the Oneiric Dimensions of the Mind (both Routledge) "It is Michael Eigen's compassion for his fellow human beings that is the foundation of his many achievements. Robin Bagai gives us a sample of the thoughts this compassion engendered by carefully culling one hundred and fifty remarkable quotes from Michael Eigen's books, a daunting task that Bagai nevertheless manages to complete successfully. This collection of quotes will be welcome to those who are very familiar with Eigen's work and to those who are not." — Thomas R. Federn, New York City; grandson of Paul Federn, a founding member of Freud's Viennese Psychoanalytic Society “I am grateful Robin Bagai is sharing aspects of my work touching moments of feeling and reverie that enrich and nourish. His selections increase appreciation of our multi-dimensional existence and deepen a sense of being. Say hello to new and old experiential possibilities and the wonder and care they inspire.” —Michael Eigen, Ph.D., author of The Challenge of Being human and Contact with the Depths “Robin Bagai offers a luminous tribute to Michael Eigen. He has carefully and lovingly curated a treasure trove of quotes that throb with feeling, depth, aliveness and Eigen's timeless wisdom. A book to savor, return to, and be transformed by.” —Shalini Masih, United Kingdom, Psychotherapist and Author, Psychoanalytic Conversations with States of Spirit Possession: Beauty in Brokenness “Robin Bagai has accomplished an impossible feat, hand-selecting some of Eigen’s most memorable quotes, a creative task in itself. The book reads like mantras, each to be meditated upon, opening up new spheres of experience.” —Joon ho Lee, Korean translator for Michael Eigen’s Seminars in Seoul 1,2,3, and Director of the Korean Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis “I suppose that all endorsements I could be able to dedicate to "my good old Mike", a real friend in real psycho-analysis, would be too little to make justice to his larger-than-life dedication to approach truth, in his unique way. I suppose that Eigen's mode is a kind of psycho-analytic heredity, whose DNA is a mixture of Freud's unprejudiced truthfulness, Bion's unconditioned ability to face the unknown, and Winnicott's kindness, which enabled Eigen to get into the realm of the human unconscious. But Eigen is unique: not for a mere coincidence, he is one of the few people who lives up to his own family name. One may coin the neologism, "Eigen-ness", to describe Mike Eigen's inimitable "Eigentlich", in a resort to the German language that has the meaning of reality or truth. If I would ever be condemned to be exiled to a solitary island, and could take with me just one scientific definition from the many treasures one may find in Eigen's encyclopedic work, I would choose his differentiation of belief from faith, given in a lecture at Seoul.” —Paulo Cesar Sandler, MD, MSci, Brazil “In this Eigen Companion, Robin Bagai enlivens what companioning could mean in many of Michael Eigen's works: honoring the spirit, listening to the heart, bearing witness by walking alongside, cultivating stillness, discovering the gift of sacred silence, and partnering disorder, if not fertile confusion. Eigen's mystical clinical-theoretical touch is artfully illuminated through Bagai’s psychoanalytic vision.” —Loray Daws, Ph.D., D.Psa, Psychoanalyst and Clinical Psychologist “Robin Bagai provides us a gift with this stimulating compendium of Michael Eigen's psychoanalytic insights. Moments that touch spirit and soul from quotes that both edify and enlighten.” —Ofra Eshel, faculty, training and supervising analyst, Israel Psychoanalytic Society; author, The Emergence of Analytic Oneness: Into the Heart of Psychoanalysis “What a delight it is to meander through the fertile garden of Mike Eigen's enduring and generous testimony to the richness of analytic and lived experience as opened up by the many vivid selections in this book.” —Jeffrey Eaton, psychoanalyst and author of A Fruitful Harvest: Essays after Bion “Robin Bagai's book is an invitation to know Michael Eigen's work more intimately. It sheds light on Eigen's insights into the conditions, conflicts and inexplicable mystery of being human. And much like Eigen himself, Bagai's book is a wonderful friend and a fantastic teacher.” —Selma Duckler, Honorary Member of The American Psychoanalytic Association “Through 'Wisdom Moments' Robin Bagai takes the reader on a mystic path along the shadow lines of the human mind to come out eager and in love with Eigen's oeuvre and psychoanalysis.” —Shifa Haq, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Assistant Professor, Ambedkar University Delhi. Author of In Search of Return— Mourning the Disappearances in Kashmir “In this book Robin Bagai brings together 150 quotations that have accompanied the prolific psychoanalyst Michael Eigen in and out of the consulting room. Displaying knowledge, respect, and affection for Eigen, he transports us with gentleness and fearlessness into the depths of Eigen's work. The result is a unique collection in which each quote has a life of its own; the author turns the reading into an eloquent transformative experience. This book is an extraordinary contribution to the great themes of contemporary psychoanalysis.” —Jani Santamaría, PhD, co-editor of The Bion Seminars at the A-Santamaría Association and editor of Bion, Dreamwork and the Oneiric Dimensions of the Mind (both Routledge) "It is Michael Eigen's compassion for his fellow human beings that is the foundation of his many achievements. Robin Bagai gives us a sample of the thoughts this compassion engendered by carefully culling one hundred and fifty remarkable quotes from Michael Eigen's books, a daunting task that Bagai nevertheless manages to complete successfully. This collection of quotes will be welcome to those who are very familiar with Eigen's work and to those who are not." — Thomas R. Federn, New York City; grandson of Paul Federn, a founding member of Freud's Viennese Psychoanalytic Society