Faith and Transformation (Eigen in Seoul, Vol. 2)

This book is a transcription of a three-day, eighteen-hour seminar Michael Eigen gave in Seoul in 2009. It takes forward and complements the Seoul seminar in 2007 (Eigen in Seoul 1: Madness and Murder).

Eigen believes that “faith plays an important role in transformational processes in psychotherapy. I don't mean ‘belief’. Belief may be a necessary part of the human condition but it tends to prematurely organize processes that remain unknown. For me, faith supports experimental exploration, imaginative conjecture, experiential probes. The more we explore therapy, the more we appreciate how much our response capacity can grow. We are responsive beings, for good and ill. Too often, our responses hem us in. We short-circuit growth of responsiveness. Yet it is possible to become aware of the rich world our responsive nature opens, places it takes us, feelings with as yet no name, hints of contact that may never be exhausted…."

The author uses parts of W. R. Bion's and D. W. Winnicott's texts as points of departure for some of the explorations in the seminar and draw from his own work as well, weaving clinical and cultural concerns, the state of our persons and nations, how we feel, get along with ourselves, and obstacles that dog us but are widely undefined or defined wrongly. He concludes that if psychoanalysis has taught us anything, it is that we are persecuted by our own nature, which finds voice and resonance in structures of the outside world.