This insightful book critically reviews and presents an accessible introduction to the life and work of one of the most celebrated modern psychoanalysts, Michael Eigen.

With work spanning over five decades, countless articles, and thirty published book volumes, Daws explores Eigen's main works through key themes and concepts such as working with our psychotic core, psychic deadness, primary affects, and the need for spirituality for practicing psychoanalysts. The book covers Eigen's early life and formative clinical years, explores his re-reading of Freud, Jung and Lacan, and lastly covers Eigen's Seoul seminars, the impact of trauma, the importance of faith and the use of Kabbalah as a framework for analysis.

This book will not only engage the first-time Eigen reader, but will also be of much interest to the experienced psychologist and psychoanalyst already familiar with Eigen's work.

Loray Daws is a registered Clinical Psychologist in South Africa and British Columbia, Canada. He is currently in private practice and serves as Senior Faculty Member at the International Masterson Institute in New York, and specializes in psychoanalysis and daseinsanalysis. He is the editor of 4 books in psychoanalysis and existential analysis.

Section 1: Being with Eigen 1. Introduction to healing, longing and the ever-healing wound 2. The primal background of experience: Eigen and his primary imaginal Others 3. Eigen's Area of Faith: Prominent theorists as background support Section 2: Clinical Eigen 4. The Psychotic Core and coming into Being: Eigen's primordial horizon 5. Psychic deadness: scaling mount shock, damanged phantasy pumps, and the need for psycho-dialysis 6. In the beginning... there was nourishment trauma 7. Eigen's radiant affective triptych: emotional storms in ecstacy, rage and lust 8. Faith and transformation: Eigen the psychoanalytic mystic 9. Epilogue: Eigen's love