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Even without the evocative title, Flames from the Unconscious, few psychoanalytic readers would fail to recognize that this is a book written by Michael Eigen. Simply stated no one else writes with such grace, rhythm, unpretentious wisdom, and taut, engaging tension. Eigen turns a thought as easily as a sentence into something surprising and often strikingly original. The reader does not doze off with Eigen: He is just too thought provoking.
As chance would have it, I finished my reading of Flames as my wife was entering my office. She looked at the book, then at me, and announced, “You didn't read that book. You devoured it.” I looked at my copy with its turned down pages, highlighted passages, bracketed paragraphs, and notes arranged in all sorts of odd angles, and I agreed. So how does one review a book so fresh with ideas and insights? My choice is to write about what I found most compelling and challenging.
In Chapter 2, Eigen presents Winnicott as offering a “peace psychology” with his emphasis on primary aloneness as inseparable from unrecognized, unknown dependency. Through such support by the Unknown we can live our way into a radical, ever-evolving conception of faith as a core, essential human experience. Aloneness from such a perspective is valued, necessary, and defining. It is, however, a sense of aloneness, for aloneness is not absolute. At the base of this aloneness is the peace found in the “infinite other,” fostering a shared aloneness and a shared humanity. Eigen does not neglect conflict, but his initial focus lies elsewhere. He is highlighting a spiritual ethos that runs in tandem with psychoanalytic paradigms.