ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to give enough exposure to Herbert Silberer's thinking to answer the question in the affirmative – particularly given the fact he was writing, when the giants of psychoanalysis were only beginning to fathom the awesome implications of the unconscious. Silberer really was a brilliant theorist, and his observations clearly contributed to, if not ignited, some of the insights in psychoanalysis as well as psychology. His careful study of his own thought processes in the tradition of the true scientists of the past resulted in his very compelling, very logical, and very widely accepted description of hypnagogic phenomena replete with his functional, content, and somatic delineations. Silberer's acceptance, and frankly at times, robust endorsement of, transcendence and spirituality, as well as his consistent effort to try to merge the worlds of psychology and spirituality, was extremely controversial at the time – and clearly contributed to his alienation.
