Psychic Deadness

Many people seek help because they feel dragged down by a sense of inner deadness that persists in an otherwise full and meaningful life. These individuals somehow remain untouched by their own inner experiences; a deadness persists that can cripple their entire life or part of it. This book shows what is involved in enduring and working with psychic deadness in a day-to-day, session-by-session basis.

"Michael Eigen has time and time again drawn powerful and highly unique perspectives for us on fascinating and troubling clinical issues. In "Psychic Deadness", he brings his exciting vitality to bear on a clinical syndrome that has long eluded significant understanding and formulation – the phenomenon of being emotionally "dead". In elucidating this enigmatic, widespread entity he does "due diligence" to the works of a vast array of relevant contributors on the subject. His clinical examples, drawn as they are in such exquisite depth, reveal the tragic unaliveness of each patient with unforgettable poignancy. His depictions of his psychoanalytic resuscitation methods for treating them alone is worth more than the price of the book." — James S. Grotstein

"In Michael Eigen's remarkable new book, risks of tone and content in the writing are mirrored by risks of intuition and technique in the clinical encounter. No-one, perhaps since Ferenczi, has seen psychoanalysis as so essentially an experiment and therefore as something that, by definition, invites a wide range of response. Eigen's work is unusually open to the reactions of his readers, who are never indifferent to what he is doing. It is a paradox surely close to the heart of his work that he can make something so inspiring out of the ways in which we patch ourselves with deadness."Psychic Deadness" will add immeasurably to Eigen's subtle, though not always acknowledged, influence on much of the most interesting contemporary psychoanalytic theory." — Adam Phillips

"This prolific writer offers us a stimulating, in-depth investigation of psychic deadness and demonstrates the way in which therapy can help the growth of psychic aliveness and achieve a balanced oscillation between these two states. Psychoanalysis is fortunate to have in its ranks a fine thinker who can vividly communicate through his writing (described by him as "one of my favorite torments") his passionate devotion to the study of the kaleidoscopic nature of human behaviour." — Francesca Bion
(Previously published 1996 by Jason Aronson Inc)

Moral violence/the immoral conscience/counterparts in a couple/emotional starvation/disaster anxiety/winning lies.

Many people seek help because they feel dragged down by a sense of inner deadness that persists in an otherwise full and meaningful life. These individuals somehow remain untouched by their own inner experiences; a deadness persists that can cripple their entire life or part of it. This book shows what is involved in enduring and working with psychic deadness in a day-to-day, session-by-session basis.

"Michael Eigen has time and time again drawn powerful and highly unique perspectives for us on fascinating and troubling clinical issues. In "Psychic Deadness", he brings his exciting vitality to bear on a clinical syndrome that has long eluded significant understanding and formulation – the phenomenon of being emotionally "dead". In elucidating this enigmatic, widespread entity he does "due diligence" to the works of a vast array of relevant contributors on the subject. His clinical examples, drawn as they are in such exquisite depth, reveal the tragic unaliveness of each patient with unforgettable poignancy. His depictions of his psychoanalytic resuscitation methods for treating them alone is worth more than the price of the book." -- James S. Grotstein

"In Michael Eigen's remarkable new book, risks of tone and content in the writing are mirrored by risks of intuition and technique in the clinical encounter. No-one, perhaps since Ferenczi, has seen psychoanalysis as so essentially an experiment and therefore as something that, by definition, invites a wide range of response. Eigen's work is unusually open to the reactions of his readers, who are never indifferent to what he is doing. It is a paradox surely close to the heart of his work that he can make something so inspiring out of the ways in which we patch ourselves with deadness."Psychic Deadness" will add immeasurably to Eigen's subtle, though not always acknowledged, influence on much of the most interesting contemporary psychoanalytic theory." -- Adam Phillips

"This prolific writer offers us a stimulating, in-depth investigation of psychic deadness and demonstrates the way in which therapy can help the growth of psychic aliveness and achieve a balanced oscillation between these two states. Psychoanalysis is fortunate to have in its ranks a fine thinker who can vividly communicate through his writing (described by him as "one of my favorite torments") his passionate devotion to the study of the kaleidoscopic nature of human behaviour." -- Francesca Bion
(Previously published 1996 by Jason Aronson Inc)

Michael Eigen is a psychologist and psychoanalyst as well as a senior member and training analyst with the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. He is also Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology and supervisor for the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. His other books include Damaged Bonds (Karnac 2001), Rage (2002), The Electrified Tightrope (Karnac 2004) and Feeling Matters (Karnac, 2007).