On the Oceanic Experience

February 11, 1988

In a recent essay, Werman (1986) expressed several opinions which contrast sharply with my own, published in the same year.

Werman (1986) regards "merging" as an experience unique to the oceanic feeling, and conducive to a "pantheistic world view" toward which, he states, the oceanic feeling directs one; he seems to endorse this as a goal in life stating that "the oceanic experience can play an incisive role in creative activity" (p. 136), that Freud's "regression model omits several crucial elements" (p. 37), and that Romain Rolland's "reality-focused achievements were actually enhanced by his oceanic experiences, which by their very nature brought Rolland into greater connection with humanity" (1986).

I advanced an opinion that the oceanic feeling is a totally unscientific concept, based on a belief in the possibility of one psyche merging with another. Rolland drew the term from Ramakrishna's account of a mystical experience associated with drowning, and claimed that rich beneficent energies can be tapped through willing immersion in it. His initial account to Freud, which fascinated him, invoked the religious feeling Rolland believed to be available to every individual. Rolland subsequently described deepening the experience through Yoga, which alerted Freud to Rolland's mystical preoccupations.

In endorsing Rolland's belief in the beneficial effects of the oceanic feeling, Werman has not differentiated clearly the oceanic feeling from that of awe. I also failed to emphasize that distinction (1966), (1979), (1986). Both share a subjective quality of feeling considered ineffable by the person affected. A number of transient conscious experiences may properly be regarded as related to one or the other; among these are a sense of mystical union, uncanny and eerie experiences, déjà phenomena, states of ecstacy or of wonder, fusion, merger, "seeing the salamander" (Plank, 1957) and "visits to eternity" (Weiss, 1986). Each of these terms has its o