ABSTRACT
At the core of Michael Eigen's work, in conjunction with his attention to destructive forces, is a luminous affirmation of the wonder of human experience, especially emotional experience. Over decades, his work has drawn attention to, and celebrated, a deep feeling that Buddhists call the preciousness of human embodiment. Eigen's "welcoming" is part of the function of the mystic part of the personality, ultimately opening up to welcoming the presence of what Bion terms O and all its turbulent reverberations. Eigen has a knack for following the phenomenological trail of different flavors of emotional experience. In this way, Eigen becomes a kind of midwife creating space for surprises, for welcoming a new idea, exploring new energies, and dabbling in novel perceptions. Few analysts are more creative than Eigen in describing the turbulence of self–other and self-to-self impacts that emerge through the evolving adventure of psychoanalytic dialogue.
