The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling: Revisioning the Psychoanalytic Theory of Mysticism

Couverture
Oxford University Press, 17 juin 1999 - 264 pages
This study examines the history of the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism, starting with the seminal correspondence between Freud and Romain Rolland concerning the concept of "oceanic feeling." Providing a corrective to current views which frame psychoanalysis as pathologizing mysticism, Parsons reveals the existence of three models entertained by Freud and Rolland: the classical reductive, ego-adaptive, and transformational (which allows for a transcendent dimension to mysticism). Then, reconstructing Rolland's personal mysticism (the "oceanic feeling") through texts and letters unavailable to Freud, Parsons argues that Freud misinterpreted the oceanic feeling. In offering a fresh interpretation of Rolland's mysticism, Parsons constructs a new dialogical approach for psychoanalytic theory of mysticism which integrates culture studies, developmental perspectives, and the deep epistemological and transcendent claims of the mystics.
 

Table des matières

Introduction
3
THE FREUDROLLAND CORRESPONDENCE
17
THE OCEANIC FEELING REVISITED
87
Conclusion
166
The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland
170

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Page 5 - This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness.

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