The Mystical Experience: Substance of an Illusion
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association April 1, 1974 Paul Horton 48 citations
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Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
ISSN 1941-2460
2 papers in the library · 51 citations · publishing 1974-2022
Papers
The Psychoanalytic Mystic and the Interpretive Word.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association October 1, 2022 Alice Bar Nes 3 citations
Psychoanalytic cure involves a synthesis of the old duality between insight through interpretation and healing through relational experience. This synthesis recognizes a long-denied mystical facet of psychoanalysis: mystical communication through psychic overlap is deeply interdependent with interpretive words. Analytic interpretations emerge from the depths of a mystical experience of psychic unity and separateness, shaped by the patient-therapist caesura. Words give contour to the closeness-separateness matrix on which psychoanalysis depends. Insight into another's psychic reality often requires crossing from the nonverbal toward consciousness and language. Clinical vignettes illustrate the constant movement between verbalization and the nonverbal, stressing the interplay of the mystical and the symbolized, of interpretation and intuition.