Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen Working with the Obstructive Object

Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen examines Eigen?s rich phenomenological work on the Obstructive Object.

The contributors to this collection explore the core theme with reference to key Eigen works, including The Psychotic Core, Psychic Deadness, Toxic Nourishment, and Damaged Bonds. This volume seeks to elaborate on the Obstructive Object through essays and poems that include poignant clinical examples, the impact of exceptionally traumatized patients on their analysts, literature comparisons, and the more "mystical aspect" of Eigen?s influence on working with the obstructive object. Essays draw from Virginia Woolf, Elena Ferrante, Wilfred Bion, D.W. Winnicott, Andrè Greene, Christopher Bollas, and Adam Phillips, among many others, in exploring injury-rage, unwanted patients, psychoanalytic faith, toxic nourishment, and damaged bonds.

Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen will greatly interest psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and those interested in psychoanalytic and spiritual psychology.

Acknowledgments

About the Editors and the Contributors

Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen: Working with the Obstructive Object and Primary Process Impacts

Foreword

Morning Blues

1. The Obstructive Object

Jeffrey L. Eaton

2.A Fish in the Stream: Life in Creativity with Virginia Woolf

Meg Harris Williams

3.Occlusions, Metabolic Excess, and Other Risks to Subject Formation in the Child.

Michael O’Laughlin and Mila C. Kristie

4.Abraham’s and Isaac’s Fear and Silence

Louis Rothschild

5.Grappling with the Obstructive Object in the Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante: A Reflection Based on the Works of Michael Eigen

Marlene Goldsmith

6. Undreamable Dreams

Françoise Davoine

7. Impenetrable Obstructive Object: A Poem

Robin Bagai

8. Dreaming a Long Day With Michael Eigen

Stefanie Teitelbaum

9. Unwanted Nearings and Therapeutic Clearings: Holding on, in a Difficult Encounter, to Michael Eigen’s Clinical Wisdom

David Smith

10. Raging against Love – Surviving Injury-Rage Patients: A Personal Reverie

Richard Raubolt

11. Transcendent Intuition: Linking Fragments to Psychic Attunement across Time and Space

Keri Cohen

12. Welcoming Faith, Forgiveness, and Destruction: Being-with Sara

Brent Potter

13. A Cup of Love

Gagandeep Kaur Ahluwalia

God by Rachel Berghash

Keri S. Cohen is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a Board-Certified Diplomate in clinical social work. She is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Pennsylvania, USA.

Loray Daws is a registered Clinical Psychologist in South Africa and British Columbia, Canada. He is currently in private practice and is a senior faculty member at the International Masterson Institute in New York, USA.