ABSTRACT
In this chapter, three patients are discussed to put the theory into an analytical frame. The patients were all seen twice a week in analysis in New York between 2011 and 2016. Clinical vignettes are important because I interviewed each of the mystics in New York and India for no more than a few hours, which made it impossible to make an accurate assessment of other factors that may have led to their pursuit of the numinous. Most of them manifested the two complexes, but with subtle differences each time. For example, one German mystic who was living in Pushkar, India, was born in a shelter during the bombing of Hamburg in July 1943, and shortly thereafter her father disappeared without explanation. This may have created other variables in her development of longing and her pursuit of MEs. Meanwhile, although a Western Buddhist monk fitted the two complexes precisely, he pointed to the existence of other factors by repeatedly stating, “There is more to it.”
