The enigma of the oceanic feeling : revisioning the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism
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 leaf
Collected Correspondence
1 online resource (ix, 252 pages)
9780195354089, 0195354087
433060731
1. Across all boundaries : the atheistic Jew and the apostle of love
2. The enigma of the oceanic feeling
3. Rolland and the emerging psychology and religion movement
4. The debate continued
5. A congregation of one
6. Mysticism east and west
7. The oceanic feeling interpreted
Appendix : the letters of Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland