Image, Sense, Infinities, and Everyday Life

Image and sensing have been underrated in Western thought but have come into their own since the Romantic movement and have always been valued by poets and mystics. Images come in all shapes and sizes and give expression to our felt sense of life. We say we are made in the image of God, yet God has no image. What kind of image do we mean? An impalpable image carrying impalpable sense? An ineffable sense permeates and takes us beyond the five senses, creating infinities within everyday life. Some people report experiencing colour and sound when they write or hear words. Sensing mediates the feel of life, often giving birth to image. In this compelling book, Michael Eigen leads us through an array of images and sensing in many dimensions of experience, beginning with a sense of being born all through life, psychosis, mystical moments, the body, the pregnancy of "no", shame, his session with Andre Green, and his thoughts related to James Grotstein, Wilfred Bion, and Marion Milner. The author concludes with notes on his life as a young man leading him into the therapeutic vocation he has fostered and which has fostered him for nearly sixty years.

Table of Contents:
Preface , Being born , Image from the bushes , Fermenting devils in psychosis , Where is body? , There is no no , Shame , My session with André , Figments, facts, interruption, hints, and ... , Changing forms: session excerpts , Some biographical notes , Book review: On Not Being Able to Paint. Marion Milner. New York: International Universities Press, 1973 , Book review: Bothered by Alligators. Marion Milner. London: Routledge, 2012

About the Author :
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'.

Review :
'Michael Eigen writes about infinity and everyday life as if they are one and the same. As always, he weaves a magic spell. In this remarkable work, he turns the light within himself inside out and offers it up to us with generosity. Touching, honest and full of wisdom, it will benefit all who read it.'- Mark Epstein, MD, author of The Trauma of Everyday Life 'Eigen writes from his body, heart and soul in a way that is communicatively evocative to openhearted readers. He shares his experience as an analyst and as a person. He describes how our preconceptual capacities mate with our senses and, through intimate relationship, transform to symbolic, affective images reaching towards infinities in daily life. His writing helps us to be ourselves and facilitates self-discovery in others through everyday living.'- James Gooch, MD, Founding President, The Psychoanalytic Center of California