ABSTRACT
This commentary highlights psychotic “operations,” including everyday examples and those from severe pathology. For the latter, Eigen divides the psychotic self into a “corrupt body self” and a “corrupt mental self,” linking these with omnipotence and omniscience, respectively. Omniscience is viewed as more dreadful because physical power can eventually be toppled, whereas omniscience can continue insidiously due to thoughts and beliefs being invisible. Eigen’s clinical examples include Dr. Omnis, a supervisee with an omniscient attitude that had already caused harm. The author explores how the dynamics of knowing and not knowing function in clinical practice. He notes James Grotstein’s idea of protecting the id from the ego, in contrast to Freud. Winnicott’s concept of unintegration, a state of mental chaos, not knowing, and formlessness, is contrasted with integration and disintegration. Eigen calls unintegration a kind of creative formlessness. At its best, unintegration is a state of genuine rest and emptiness where images arise that reflect the state of self and redirect the latter’s movement, unlike the rigidity and/or dissolution found in psychosis.
