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This book builds on Eigen's previous writings on Bion, Winnicott, Milner, and the connection between psychoanalysis and religion. (One chapter titled “The Fire that Never Goes Out” was also the title of a journal article in The Psychoanalytic Review 79 [2]). It is a book without an explicitly stated thesis, although it is clear that Eigen intends to make a case for the legitimate place of mystical experience within the psychoanalytic process. Amidst much difficult prose, there are a number of statements that set out Eigen's views on this relationship. He says, “For me, psychotherapy is a psycho-spiritual journey” (160), and he implies that therapy is a kind of “soul-making” (160). In a longer account he says, “For many individuals meditation and prayer are forms of psychotherapy, and psychotherapy is a form of meditation and prayer. The boundaries between them are not clear cut. There may be a point where the branches diverge, but for most people there is enormous overlap. Too rigid a conception of what one ought to get from which discipline can make it impossible to open oneself to the work of the One Reality that flows through all. We are all partners here” (165). Apart from the clarity of the theme, however, the reader will not find a series of arguments and evidence to support his claim for the inseparability of the psychoanalytic and the mystical. Rather, the book is written in a predominately reflective style, in the manner of an extended meditation, free-association, and, in several notable passages, confession.
In the course of his narrative, Eigen touches on many topics: the biblical stories of Jacob, Esau, Abraham, and Isaac, Kabbalah, Flannery O'Connor, D. T. Suzuki, Martin Buber, Buddhism, Judaism, and the Roman Catholic Church. Of special note is the first three-quarters of chapter 1, which contains a thought provoking presentation of mystical antecedents in Freud, Milner, Bion, Winnicott, and Lacan, and which helps orient the reader to Eigen's frame of