ABSTRACT
Mystical experiences are a particular kind of spiritual experience, usually of great intensity and with a considerable, if temporary, loss of ego. Meissner, from his perspective as both psychoanalyst and Jesuit priest, warns that regression to an early mode of psychic functioning can be experienced as “profound and ecstatic mystical” experience, or as psychotic “delusions of total omnipotence and Godlike grandiosity”. Klein makes no mention of spiritual or mystical experiences, though her life’s work was focused on trying to understand and codify the earliest experiences a baby has with her mother. The sophisticated associations which Geraldine and Harriet, and their therapists, brought to help them understand the patients’ experiences happen to be the associations of those particular people. Techniques to develop and encourage the capacity for spiritual experiences are taught in many religious traditions. Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists all use fasting and meditation or prayer. The incense in some Hindu and Christian worship retains something of the same effect.
