ABSTRACT
The story of the mustard seed illustrates what a profound challenge traumatic grief can be. Michael Eigen places Wilfred Bion and D. W. Winnicott in concert with each other, and Winnicott's lack of intrusion is Bion's restraint that allows one to look with an "intense beam of darkness" so that healing may occur when the decency of compassion is needed. The "hard to avoid" Z, as most who are familiar with Eigen's work will know, is Winnicott's idea of a dimension consisting of the dire, if not irreparable, aspects of traumatic history. Central to Eigen's preference for multiple frames is the suggestion that one embodies an attitude appropriate for an encounter with poetry. Part of Eigen's contribution is that ideal experiencing such as this may not simply be reduced to the pathological. That observation helps make legitimate such a lively space within psychoanalysis itself.
