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What is important is to re-consider what Freud called the “pre-history” of psychoanalysis, to return to it with the suspicion that this “pre-history” belongs to a certain future of psychoanalysis rather than to a long-dead past.
This essay explores the idea that traces of Western esoteric traditions continue to exist as an active, albeit largely unacknowledged, influence within contemporary psychoanalysis through the writings of Wilfred Bion, James Grotstein, and Michael Eigen. Traditionally, psychoanalysis has been described as “officially nonmystical or antimystical…It understands mystical states as remnants of infantile experience, expressions of primitive drives and structures…” Even so, the existence of “complexities and countertendencies” has also been acknowledged (Eigen, 2001, p. 455). While esotericism in contemporary psychotherapy is commonly associated with the various transpersonal psychologies (Guest, 1989), as well as with Jungian analytical psychology (Hanegraaff, 2012), the notion of a purportedly “mystical” or “esoteric” tradition existing within psychoanalysis is a viewpoint that is encountered less frequently (Merkur, 2010; Timms, 2012; Main, 2015). While studies have been published examining the relations between psychoanalysis, spirituality, and religion (Merkur, 2010; Black, 2006), the specific indebtedness of psychoanalysis to the Western esoteric traditions deserves further